Syrio said:
Based on these definitions, it seems pretty clear that being a sociopath is not really related to game/pua other than the one symptom from that list (deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure)
I have to disagree with you there, Syrio, in your honoring of the DSM's definitions.
Based on my small experience in the mental health world and study of psychology, my opinion is that the personality and human mind is still basically a black box from the point of view of established science or medicine. We could get into details, but I will just say that there are enough unknowns involved that most psychological assessments are, in my view, a Rohrschach-test performed on the researchers themselves. Not that they aren't informative or valid, but I would never, ever, turn your back on your own powers of inference in trying to assess human personality traits in deference to a dictionary definition.
As an example, part of the solidity of those definitions stems from the fact that current psychological research groups are using those same definitions as a selective filter for admission of cases into their research studies. The definition of Sociopath looks more like the DSM's every single year, because the first citation in any study of Sociopathy would be
the DSM itself. The edge cases would not make the study.
The same medical establishment that rubber-stamped that definition list was performing frontal lobotomies just 60 years ago, and is in the middle of a neuropharma-perscription epidemic that is costing peoples lives, all of which is supported by the usual plethora of studies. As always, on paper, everything checks out. It had to, otherwise it wouldn't be published.
I have no major point except to say that, as crazy as us wild-eyed armchair internet theorists are, in terms of reaching a deep understanding of how human beings actually function, I believe anyone with a free thought process and some real life experience has a leg up over the generations of graduate student mules and hurried publication-chefs whose work informs bureaucratic standards manuals like the DSM.