You almost certainly know a psychopath in real life… and you may very well be one yourself. And that might even be a good thing.
We’ve recognized psychopathy in science and culture for thousands of years, yet we still don’t know what to do about it. Yet we use the word itself now more than ever, so much that the meaning of the word “psychopath” has become diluted in popular culture. As we increasingly learn more about the science of psychopathy, we should get better at deploying the term more accurately -- but instead, it’s become a catch-all for unconscionable human behavior and a mainstay of true crime stories.
Psychopaths are much more complex than that… for better and worse.