re: #231 MandyManners

PD’s are like everyone else except for one thing: they have no conscience.

Mental illness includes such things as paranoid-schizophrenia and the like.

Well now we’re getting deep into philosophy/theology as well as medicine. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Is lack of a conscience a disorder? The term personality disorder implies that it is. And what would be disordered if not the mind? Like some people can’t distinguish between colors - it’s a brain deficit. And its inclusion in the DSM seems to say that’s what it is.

Or is it both a disorder and a moral failing? The sociopaths I have known certainly seemed morally deficient to me. And the only remedy for people affected by them (my sister was married to a sociopath) seems to be to get the hell away from them.

Is it treatable? Serious question. I don’t know.

I do agree with Iceweasel that my diagnosis in the above-referenced case was off. Definitely more a matter of narcissism. Of course a narcissist can be just as devastating to those who trust him or her. In our instance, the voters of Alaska.