People do not choose the brains they are born with. And, some people are born without sufficient mirror neurons and are therefore sociopaths or psychopaths. This does not mean, however, that they cannot learn what is or is not acceptable behavior. They may not be able to empathize with another's pain,or situation, but they can know it is not acceptable to harm that person. And, if we want to maintain a civilized society, we must separate from society those who do harm to others. I heard a man tell his story about being a sociopath. He lacks the ability to empathize and knows he can be rude and difficult to be around at times. He credits his ability to overcome this by his upbringing and by those around him who know and understand his limitations. Had he been raised in a violent, or less loving/understanding environment he might have turned out very different.

Humans are hard-wired to protect themselves from sociopaths by locking them up or whatever it takes.

We just can’t help ourselves.

Psychopaths and sociopaths know exactly what they are doing, but are hard-wired to think only of themselves. They do not care about consequences for others. The only times that they show any concerns for others is when they see some advantage for them to do so. In a sense they cannot control that tendency., Nevertheless, they are evil in what they do.

A mental illness is a mental illness and I don't believe you have control over it. The only thing you can control is if you choose to get help for your problem through psychotherapy and/or medication

I think you are confusing the issue with the wording of your question. You seem to be conflating sadistic and malevolent with sociopath and psychopath. That simply isn’t the case.

The condition simply stated is that the individual doesn’t regard other beings as individual consciousnesses but rather as any other object in the world. Simply an obstacle to navigate.

Sure, at the root of it, they are as likely to smash a plate as your face when they are angry. This doesn’t necessarily mean they WANT to smash your face. That’s sadism and a different condition altogether.

Sociopaths can do great good and are often found in places where having feelings for others can be detrimental to the task at hand. Battlefield triage for instance. They will find it easy to help who they can by leaving those they cannot save to die while many of us would waste time trying to save the unsaveable thereby risking those that could benefit.

Yes, they're aware the things they do are wrong by society's standards but it's not wrong by their own. These people are wired badly at birth. They are selfish to a degree most of us will never understand. If there's no conscience or empathy to restrict you then anything goes.: lies, cheating, rape, fraud, murder, none of it is wrong to them and they feel no guilt or remorse for any of it.

Yes, by middle age about a third of true sociopaths/psychopaths are living more or less normal lives. Some of them even study psychology to learn how to mimic normal emotions. All because they figured out that having friends/family/career in the long run is a much better deal than screwing over everyone they meet for short term gain. (The other 2/3 rds are mostly dead or in jail.) It is a terrible mental pathology, "madness without delusion" as first described. But yes, except when they are blinded by rage, they are as in control as other people, possibly even more so.

I had recently read that serial murders are born with abnormal Serotonin levels. This article also explains some things [npr.org] From what I have learned is several conditions create abnormalities to explain psychopath like behavior. One of the big ones is early head/brain trauma. Then there is home and society mistreatment and bullying. Then comes chemical imbalance do to either DNA or substance abuse. Ther are other factors, the ones I mentioned in combination are the most likely culprits.

Can't help being sick but what they do is on them you can choose to be good or a monster

Generally I agree with the counselor’s sentiment. That seems to be true for most of us at least, and I have anecdotally heard of people who could be called sociopaths with a conscience. They may think cruel things but behave well and display empathetic behaviors whether or not they’re genuine.

I do think evidence supports a tragic level of determinism. Most everything seems like an inevitable reaction if you break it down far enough to cellular behavior and brain chemistry. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Between nature, nurture, and chaos, we definitely have less free will than many imagine, but the small part we may have offers just enough constraint to make creativity possible. Creativity is hard to accomplish without some limiting parameters to urge you in a certain direction. When you’ve only got a limited set of options, that’s when self expression becomes vital.

As I said on the last post I saw talking about free will today, I don’t believe we have much if any of it, strictly speaking, but it’s best to labor under the assumption that we do. People definitely can choose to better themselves, but whether or not they will could practically be biologically predestined for all I know. The notion I like regarding mental health is: thoughts are like birds. You can’t control which ones land on your head but you can decide which ones make a nest there.

I don't think anyone can help their actions, not just psychos/sociopaths. I don't think there is any good evidence of free will, and I don't know why people think they know for sure that there is. People will have two options in front of them and "choose" one and that is their evidence of free will. You can't see the process underneath the surface that led to that. I think we either have no free will or very limited free will depending on our DNA, environmental guidance, our experiences, and maybe even other factors.

The argument from people who hear you say that people aren't responsible for their actions take that to mean that we shouldn't punish anyone for their behavior. No, that's not what people mean when they say that people aren't responsible for their actions. It just means that someone who is either "programmed" or conditioned to feel or behave in a certain way aren't responsible for the mechanisms that got them to that point. Those people still need to be kept away from others to protect others from the harm that the offenders cause.

One of the first major scientific journal works I read - back in HS in the 60's.....blew me away.

It was printed in '62. I read it my senior year of HS...and it gave me direction in college to focus on Demography and Environmental science....

It's title is "Population Density and Social Pathology" - and John B. Calhoun simply took thousands of rats, kept them in cages. Kept them well fed and clean. He only closed the walls in with different populations at different rates. (see and read the article, below).

I bet you can guess what he discovered.
-increased mentally disturbed behavior
-unexplained greed/hoarding
-grouping/gang formation
-unexplained violence.
-child abuse/neglect
aberrant/abnormal sexual behavior (males more aggressive with females. males mounting males. Females mounting females. Females avoiding males).
obesity/overeating.

All the ills that are happening to us.

Back when this study was done the world was at 3.3 billion. Today we're more than double that number, and growing by 158 more births, than deaths, per minute.

Check my stats here if you will....
[poodwaddle.com]

The problem then; mental illness is a direct result of population pressure. proven decades ago.

Or, as Malthus put it, over 200 years ago; "As the quantity (of life in a given area) increases, the quality of life decreases"

Solution? Simple. ZPG. Family planning. We know how to do this; we have the tools and the technology.

Too bad that most of us just haven't been proven this clearly enough to act on it.

It's been proven to me.

[ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

I have worked with lots of psychopaths over the years and yes I would suggest their cognitions are beyond their control but their loci of control most definitely is. One guy I remember asked me why I had shared my fizzy water with another patient. He genuinely did not appreciate sharing when it did not benefit me. Imagine living your entire life without feeling human compassion, empathy and love?
Brain self-regulation in criminal psychopaths
LK Konicar, NB Birbaumer, LP Poustka
Brain Stimulation: Basic, Translational, and Clinical Research in Neuromodulation 10 (2), 514, 2017

"If neurosis and psychosis were diseases like leukaemia and pneumonia it should therefore be possible to have both, however, the rules of psychiatric syntax make such a diagnostic combination absurd. If you suspect that you have leukaemia or pneumonia a medical//biological test will confirm whether or not such is the case. There is no medical/biological test for any so-called mental illness. Psychiatry and psychoanalysis are the only professions that can conceive of acts without actors." Thomas Szasz

I recommend staying away from both and not think about them.

I have never met any. There are things in life you can totally avoid such as - a bad job, bad friends, bad company, bad neighborhoods, bad house. I have never seen a real gun with my eyes. I have not seen what drugs look like with my eyes. We have a choice in almost all things in life except our parents and where we are born. All else is under our control.

Think about love, think of flowers, think about many beautiful things in this world.

I think the disease model is more realistic and practical than moralizing but this also allows that punishment could be an evidence based intervention. Whether we love them or hate them is less important than can we teach them or force them to behave in a manner consistent with the greater good.

"Good" and "Bad" are subjective. There is a lot of wiggle room with self justifying actions.

Both psychopaths are sociopaths have medical mental disorders that can be treated or alleviated through therapy and medication once properly diagnosed. Their symptoms begin to be outwardly established at approximately fifteen years of age and are initially manifested by excessive cruelty to animals. As the disease progresses the main symptoms include: a lack of what society normally deems a ‘conscience,’ lack of remorse or guilt for hurtful actions to others, an intellectual understanding of appropriate social behavior but no emotional response to the actions of others, an inability to form genuine relationships, and inappropriate or out of proportion responses to perceived slights.

If you believe they are not aware of their actions, you are just another one of their victims !

As a practicing sociopath, I consider my condition a super-power. I'm completely aware of it.

they are completely helpless in the face of it.

Sociopaths lack working mirror neurons (empathy) and so do not see the problem with harming others.

It's a hard problem.

The truth is that non-sociopaths have lots of emotions to help them see that maintaining trust relationships and social reciprocity is in their long term rational self interest, or we'd all tend to be selfish and self-serving. These emotions are both positive (e.g., the good feeling you get when you've earned security and trust in a social group, or when you help someone in need because you know that is likely to be generally reciprocated) and negative (e.g., guilt or shame when you harm others, or a sense of abandonment if socially shunned). Imagine having to slog through every day delaying personal gratification and doing the Right Thing when all it means to you is sacrificing what you want in the moment for some nebulous, abstract benefit that you never really FEEL and which may be some distance into the future.

Not trying to be snarky, wikipedia's article on psychopathy has a good explanation on the subject. Questions of law and safety aside, I don't think we should pass judgment on anybody by calling them inhuman or evil. We're all human.

They simply lack the normal amount of emotion. As a person with empath like traits. I attract and am attracted to them. They are very hard to have relationships with as they have very little emotional attachment, but it varies with each one. They are no more evil than those with red hair or brown eyes, they are just different.
They are probabaly the most stable people you know as they don't go through the strong emotional stuff that most of us do.
They are not all lying killers like on T.V. they are also confused with selfiah people, something very different.