The word psychopathy was first used in the early 20th century. It was just a filler for an unknown mental disease, something that didn’t fit into the other mental disorders at the time. People with depression, anxiety, insecurity, they were all labeled “psychopathic”. Since then, the word has grown and expanded to fit in a variety of sublevels, like anti-social personality disorder (ASPD), narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), and psychosis. 

Psychopathy is commonly characterized as a mental disorder where someone has a lack of empathy and remorse, dishonesty, and superficial charm. It was believed that psychopathy was something that was a result of the way people grew up and their environment, although there is new evidence to prove otherwise. 

There have been discoveries made to show that psychopathy may not just be a mental disorder. Scientists have done multiple MRI scans and the scans have shown something new; there are anatomical differences in the way a psychopathic brain works with different internal connections, according to School of Medicine and Public Health. In all these MRI scans, each brain has consistent changes from a “normal” functioning brain. Psychopathy was originally believed to be a direct result of a person’s childhood and environment, but an environment cannot cause a person’s brain to have such changes. These changes are consistent across the board, leading scientists to believe that psychopathy may be something people are born with. It has been thought that this could be an inherited disorder; it might actually be a physically inherited change that leads to higher chances of psychopathy. 

In a human brain, there’s a region called the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that is responsible for a person’s self control. A psychopath has a higher density of grey in that region, showing that they also have a higher sense of self-control, which is how they go unnoticed in our society, says BBC Science Focus.

Another characteristic of psychopathy that scientists have previously thought to be, may not be after all. Psychopaths have been diagnosed with a “lack of empathy”, as they cannot feel for others’ emotions. However, recent evidence suggests that isn’t entirely true, shedding light on a new type of person: a “dark empath”. BBC Science Focus says that a dark empath is someone with psychopathic tendencies that, instead of having no empathy at all, has a higher sense of empathy than the average person. The term “dark empath” comes from the phrase used for people with psychopathic, sociopathic, or narcissistic traits, “dark traits”. Dark empaths have a stronger likelihood of using their empathy to manipulate people around them, and it’s important that scientists learn more about this.

Psychopathy, and people’s understanding of it, has come a long way since its first use hundreds of years ago. The illness, and our knowledge of it, is constantly changing, but it’s necessary to learn more about this, in order to help people with this illness, and those around them.