welcome to my scientifically informed
insider look at mental health topics
if you find this video to be interesting
or helpful please like it
and subscribe to my channel hello this
is dr grande
today's question is what did kati morton
get wrong
about sociopathy so this video departs
from my usual format a little bit
but i had a lot of requests to answer
this particular question
and this question is based on a recent
video that was on
a youtube creator's channel his name was
shane dawson
and he interviewed another youtube
content creator named katie morton
now katie morton is a licensed marriage
and family therapist and just to be
clear from the
outset i don't know either one of these
content creators
so the description of sociopathy that
was offered as part of this video
has offended a number of people and a
number of other people have said
it's just so technically inaccurate that
there needs to be some sort of
adjustment some sort of clarification
offered as i mentioned i received
a number of requests to do this video
and if you look at the
impact of this particular video it's
exceedingly popular
so i'm worried about how some of this
misinformation is getting out there
and i think it makes some sense to offer
clarification to allow people who are
interested
to know the scientific facts behind
sociopathy
for those of you who are new to my
channel my channel really is based on
the science of mental health so i'm not
going to offer any commentary
about anyone's character i don't offer
judgment about people
this is really just a focus on the
accuracy or
inaccuracy of this particular
description of sociopathy
so let me start by drawing a distinction
between the type of videos that i do and
the type of technical information that i
give
versus the information we see in that
particular interview and this
part really isn't a criticism at all
this is just pointing out that there are
two different formats
i'm what they call a scientist
practitioner i have a phd in counselor
education supervision
i'm a licensed professional counselor
mental health a licensed chemical
dependency professional
a certified advanced alcohol and drug
counselor and a national certified
counselor
so i'm both a scientist and a clinical
practitioner
so i conduct research and i treat people
who are trying to
reduce mental health symptoms and meet
other goals
as i understand it as i mentioned kati
morton is a licensed marriage and family
therapist
so she's a practitioner so it makes
sense that
her description of sociopathy wouldn't
necessarily involve a lot of technical
detail
so that's something to keep in mind when
reviewing my criticism
of her description of course i'm going
to go into a lot of technical detail
because that's what i do that's really
the point of my channel
her particular interview there with
shane dawson that wasn't necessarily the
goal
so in all fairness that's important to
keep in mind
so on my channel in prior videos i've
covered anti-social personality disorder
i've covered sociopathy and psychopathy
many times
and from many different perspectives so
i'm just going to give a brief summary
of those constructs here and i'll move
directly to
my concerns with this particular video
i'm talking about so antisocial
personalities where is a cluster b
personality disorder in the diagnostic
and statistical manual this is the
dramatic
erratic and emotional cluster the same
cluster is narcissistic
borderline and histrionic personality
disorders we see certain symptom
criteria
with antisocial personality disorder a
tendency to violate society's norms
deceitfulness impulsivity irritability
or aggression
a disregard for safety irresponsibility
and lack of remorse
as you can see this description is
largely behavioral
the definition the official diagnosis in
the dsm
emphasizes behavior now moving on to the
constructs of psychopathy
and sociopathy it's first important note
here that sociopathy is not a term
that we really use too much anymore in
research literature
and it's very easy and really
understandable
that psychopathy sociopathy and
antisocial personality disorder
are confused with one another the
overarching construct
of interest most of the time is actually
psychopathy
psychopathy has depending on the
research that you look at
two main factors there's an
interpersonal affective factor
and a social deviance factor sociopathy
is really just that second factor
it's factor two psychopathy and
sociopathy
closely aligns with that definition of
anti-social personality disorder we see
in the dsm
so real quickly going over factor one
and factor two psychopathy
with factor one we see superficial charm
grandiosity pathological lying
being manipulative lack of remorse
shallow affect
being callous having a lack of empathy
and a failure to accept responsibility
with factor two which i mentioned before
is really that sociopathy piece
we see a need for sensations so
sensation seeking
parasitic lifestyle lack of realistic
long-term goals
impulsivity but here it's really more of
a boredom driven impulsivity
irresponsibility poor behavioral
controls early
behavioral problems juvenile delinquency
revocation of conditional release
and criminal versatility this is having
the ability
and desire to engage in a number of
different criminal activities
so again sociopathy lines up with
antisocial personality disorder
psychopathy overall is different than
antisocial personality disorder but
factor one is particularly different
the way we could think about it would be
most everyone
who has psychopathy would probably
qualify
for a diagnosis of antisocial
personality disorder
but only some individuals with
antisocial personality disorder
would qualify as having psychopathy so
now i'm going to go through item by item
and discuss the different statements
made by kati morton in this interview
and talk about some of the technical
inaccuracies
some of these aren't really a big deal
but when i looked at that interview
and i got all the requested this video i
realized that might as well just cover
every technical inaccuracy that really
stood out to me and not just pick and
choose
so the first thing that she said that
kind of worried me was this idea that
an individual with anti-social
personality disorder has no empathy
and no feelings so first of all you have
to understand that there's cognitive
empathy
the ability to empathize with somebody
else based on thinking
and affective empathy that's the part
where somebody can use their ability to
feel
to experience empathy cognitive empathy
is intact
with psychopathy and this includes
sociopathy
so with antisocial personality disorder
cognitive empathy
is intact the affect of empathy peace is
where we see a deficit
with factor one psychopathy and we see a
disturbance
with factor two psychopathy or
sociopathy
so the feeling including empathy is
still there
it's just more of an emotional
dysregulation a disturbance
than it is a deficit with sociopathy the
next statement was regarding this
ability to
feel when somebody has anti-social
personality disorder
now i get that we all react to
observations and sometimes we
detect the feeling before we think about
it
but what worries me about this
particular statement this idea that
clinicians or other people could go
around and feel
sociopathy is it makes the appraisal
look easy it makes it look like
scientists and
clinicians just base diagnoses
diagnoses that people carry around
potentially for life
we base it on feelings we actually base
it on
actual evidence information that can be
quantified and behavior that we can
observe
so there is a feeling part to being a
clinician
but this isn't it appraisal is based on
actual evidence
the next point is this idea that
individuals with anti-social personality
disorder need to feel important to
everybody they need to feel better than
other people
this is really a confusion of sociopathy
with narcissism i understand this
confusion though because the two
constructs
often times co-occur so antisocial
personality disorder
oftentimes is comorbid with narcissistic
personality disorder
the next point of clarification is the
statement about individuals anti-social
personality disorder
not caring about themselves or other
people now certainly this can be
an associated characteristic of the
disorder but to understand this you
really have to understand the difference
between
ego syntonic and ego dystonic
antisocial personality disorder with ego
syntonic
someone's aware of their thoughts
feelings and behaviors
and they accept them so in that case
they wouldn't really care too much
about what they're doing with ego
dystonic
somebody's aware of their thoughts
feelings and behaviors
and they do care so here they would care
quite a bit
about how their behaviors affect
themselves and potentially how they
affect other people
so this distinction between ego syntonic
and egotisonic is really crucial
around clarifying the statement of
individuals with this disorder not
caring
the next item i want to address here is
the statement that was made about
individuals with sociopathy trying to
mimic other
people's emotions trying to fit in and
even
learning from therapy how to be more
effective
at manipulating other people
there is some evidence to support the
imitation of other feelings and trying
to fit in a little bit
but for most people with this disorder i
would say that's not true
and this idea of learning from therapy
how to be
manipulative that might be true in a
very small percentage
but that really is not a characteristic
of psychopathy
or antisocial personality disorder the
next three points have to do with really
clarification between psychopathy
and sociopathy so there's a statement
about individuals with sociopathy
being charismatic that's really more
psychopathy
there's another statement about them
being dramatic that is consistent with
sociopathy
we hardly ever see that with psychopathy
and the prevalence was stated as four
percent
it's really about two to three percent
for antisocial personality disorder and
about one percent
for psychopathy the last two points i
think are a little more important
the second to last here is this idea
that individuals with anti-social
personality disorder
are super intelligent there is no
evidence to support this
this is a common misconception so i can
understand why it was said
but it's important to realize this just
isn't true i have a video i did about
this where i talk about this
in depth and the last statement the one
that really bothered me the most and i
think this
is the one that had the most impact on
people in terms of the negative impact
was the idea that individuals with this
disorder are gross
or creepy and i know later this was
clarified to indicate the symptoms were
gross or creepy
as mental health clinicians and as
scientists we have to be non-judgmental
it's simply not our job to judge other
people
and we certainly don't want to
perpetuate a stigma
and i think these comments were really
just ill-advised
and i can understand why people would be
offended by this i think this was just
a mistake i don't have any evidence to
suggest this anything more than that
but of all the mistakes i saw here
really was the most serious mistake
the interview format overall really
seemed dramatic and sensational
like it was really trying to
sensationalize
the condition the construct of
sociopathy
and i think it did so in part at the
expense of individuals
who have these traits that's really not
fair and it's really not reasonable and
it's certainly not consistent with
being a mental health clinician or being
a scientist
and again i realize kati morton is not a
scientist but it's important too that we
specify
in interviews like this what our
qualifications are and at what level
we're discussing the topic i really
don't like this material being
sensationalized
at the expense of people who suffer
tremendously
with personality disorders including of
course anti-social personality disorder
so this is really just something i'm
pointing out because it's important
again
this isn't to make any judgment or to
hold anybody in a negative light just
pointing out something i think
that must be said in terms of what we
saw here with this interview
there was a lot of information that
katie morton provided which was correct
it was out of the dsm
and i think this interview was really a
tough format for technical depth as i
indicated before
so overall i think that there were a lot
of positives
and we just have to look at these more
as technical clarifications
i don't really see any evidence that
katie morton's channel for example
is negative overall it actually appears
to be positive
i can't really endorse it though because
i haven't watched every video but of the
videos i've seen
it tends to be positive in terms of
shane dawson's channel i've only watched
that one video
so i really can't make any useful
commentary there
i hope you found this description of
sociopathy
and some of these technical corrections
to be helpful thanks for watching