Psychopathy

Psychopaths and sociopaths are characterized by a lack of empathy and remorse engaging in manipulative, deceitful, and other antisocial behaviors. A psychopath is born that way while a sociopath is shaped by their environment. For simplicity's sake both will be referred to as psychopathy for the remainder of this explanation.

Psychopathy is different from narcissism because narcissism is based on getting validation and admiration while psychopathy is more about getting what is wanted. Psychopaths are considered more cold and calculating than narcissists and more emotionally stable in that they don't require or seek the validation that narcissists do. Psychopaths are also more prone to violence than narcissists.

In our society we are only used to thinking about psychopaths as the villains of the world, which they typically are. Oddly enough, they are also often the heroes of the world, something they tend to get little credit for.

In the book The Wisdom of Psychopaths by Kevin Dutton he found several surprising things about psychopaths, the most surprising of which is how their brain patterns match those of the highly spiritual. In the picture below he shows the traits of psychopaths and spiritual traits delineating the traits they share as well as those they don't.

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Turns out that psychopathy and sainthood are two paths from the same cloth, the saints just chose to heal themselves.