Abstract

POZUECO ROMERO, J.M.; ROMERO GUILLENA, S.L.  and  CASAS BARQUERO, N.. Psychopathy, violence and crime: a psychological-forensic, psychiatric-legal and criminological analysis (Part I). Cuad. med. forense [online]. 2011, vol.17, n.3, pp.123-136. ISSN 1988-611X.  https://dx.doi.org/10.4321/S1135-76062011000300004.

After more than 200 years of history, the concept of "psychopathy" has been undergoing an authentic and varied terminological metamorphosis. Except for those periods in the Medieval Age in which it was believed that psychopathy and other "abnormal" behaviors and personalities were either from a demonic origin, or from a strictly hereditarian-bilogicist-physiognomic-anthropometric origin, the other theoretical-research approaches have cast on light that, on today, and after over 200 years of bitter and controversial history of the term, allow us to have reached a broad consensus among scholars of psychopathy from a clinical-forensic and criminological standpoint. This first paper or Part I is a review that aims to delve into the controversial and often unverifiable origins of the term "psychopath". On the other hand, after intense empirical research since the 70's and focused primarily on the prison population, modernity it has begun to talk differently about both criminal psychopaths as successful psychopaths, having found that the main difference between the two types of psychopaths lies simply in the concrete crimes, being as the basic structure of personality is almost the same in both types of psychopaths. Finally, it's very necessary to emphasize that the antisocial character of the personality and behavior is observed, by definition, in any criminal, whether or not psychopaths, an antisocial character, on the other hand, which does not always or necessarily seen between the so-called successful psychopaths.

Keywords : Antisocial; PCL-R; Psychopathic personality; Psychopathy; Sociopathy.

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