Antisocial Personality Disorder

Antisocial Personality Disorders and Criminal Behaviors

Introduction

Different terms are used to define people who constantly go against rules and norms of the society and exploit others for their personal gain as a result of their specific personality traits. These terms include sociopathy, psychopathy and personality disorder. The concepts of antisocial personality disorder which are followed and studied in today's modern have their roots in the early 19th century, and therefore they continue to have a close connection with the social attitudes in the contemporary world that prevail in context of civil liberties and criminal justice (Ferguson & Tyrer, 2000).

Back in the 1800s, psychiatrists and clinicians made attempts to understand the behavioral patterns and psyche of criminals who had committed such abhorrent crimes that they were conceived to be insane and were perceived as having a distorted mental condition. However, the clinical presentations of the clinicians did not prove to be consistent with the mental syndromes that were recognized. They could only be categorized as insane and the term moral insanity was used for them, which was actually a form of mental derangement in which the individual's intellectual faculties were unimpaired, but the functions of the mind of the individual could be described as perverted or appeared to be depraved. This caused the individual to carry on normally with his life and meant that he was unable to conduct himself with propriety and decency in the workings of life.

History and Background

There is a strong association between offenses and antisocial personality disorders, and a lot of studies and research has been conducted about the implications of this relationship. Previously, it was argued that moral insanity could only be described as a type of mental alienation which resembled crime and vice to such a great extent that people started calling it a medical invention which was unfounded. The issue was the fact that it was not viable to form a connection between the two types of deviances from the rules and norms of society; one deviance was criminality and the other deviance was the antisocial personality disorder.

As time passed, moral insanity was accepted in the American and European regions and courts of law and that caused them to become sympathetic towards such defenses, but later on it was referred to as psychopathic inferiority.

Definition of Antisocial Personality Disorder in Context of Criminal Justice

Ambivalence exists among mental health professionals regarding those who have personality disorders and particularly regarding those who are categorized as having antisocial personality disorder. The individuals having antisocial personality disorder are not just driven towards infringement of norms of the society, they are also likely to have complex needs that need to be correctly identified, corrected and addressed, while being inside or outside the criminal justice system.

The criteria which has been outlined in DSM-IV for antisocial personality disorder focuses on the antisocial behavior and does not take into account the underlying structure of an individual's personality (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). This can result in the over-diagnosis of the ...