Do sociopaths recognize themselves as such?

not always

Sometimes, but I don’t think that they always do. They may be aware that their capacity for empathy is dampened (or that they think other people and other peoples’ feelings are a nuisance) but they may not always have the insight to piece together why that might be. I don’t think that sociopaths are necessarily always intelligent. Manipulative, yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re insightful.

Sometimes.

And there’s a difference between a sociopath and a psychopath, though some sociopaths can also be psychopaths.

Here is an interesting article describing the difference between the two.

It amuses me that in the hit BBC series “Sherlock”, the titular character refers to himself as a “high-functioning sociopath,” when others accuse him of being a psychopath, when in actuality he does more closely resemble a high-functioning psychopath, rather than a sociopath (who would be more like, say, Moriarty).

I think a lot of them do, and I’d bet a lot of the sharper ones choose to study psychology in an effort to figure themselves out. To my mind a sociopath is just someone without empathy. In other words an inability to put yourself in another’s shoes. And I know a couple of people that I swear spend a lot of time trying to mimic the way one is “supposed” to act when it comes to human interactions.

The sociopaths I’ve come in contact with aren’t especially introspective, but I think they wonder sometimes why they can’t connect more closely with people like they see others do.

@Seek That’s some article! Thank you!

One does, that I know of (if I take her own self-report as my “knowing”). She used to be active on another site at the same time that I was, and she was a convincingly self-described sociopath. She said she was working, with therapeutic help, at recognizing and unlearning the behaviors that characterized her disorder. She also frankly acknowledged that it was essentially maintaining an act.

Similarly, I’ve heard that some high-functioning autistic people can learn techniques of better social interaction, such as interpreting facial expressions, even if they are never going to do it naturally or have the expected emotional accompaniments.

Interesting question. I wonder if sociopaths see other sociopaths for who they are.

@Seek Good article. I’ve always known there’s some argument in the psychology community about the two terms or whether they’re interchangeable, so it’s kind of confusing figuring out which to use.

But yeah, after all of the reading I’ve done, I have no doubt about the person I mentioned earlier. What a ride that was before I started suspecting, too.

I don’t think they do. I think that after counseling and such they can admit their oddness, but in doing so they think they are absolved of any responsibilities for them.

Well, they tend to have different perspectives and meanings and attach very different levels of significance to things. Lack of a conscience doesn’t leave room for the same meaning of “sociopath” that it may have for those with a conscience.

I’m familiar with one flavor which self-justifies to keep itself from realizing what it does.

That’s pretty distinct from the type that whose conscience is so far gone they think having conscience is just foolishness.

I think it may fundamentally be a question of how deeply buried (and how long ago) the conscience is.