I've noticed a lot of posts on this site use psychopath and sociopath interchangeably.
There is only one post I can find where it's explicitly parsed: "Psychopaths cannot tell the difference between right and wrong. Sociopaths usually can, they just don't care."
So a sociopath is what then; just a more philosophical less retarded psychopath?
it would depend a bit on culture and upbringing. a lot of people i know arent really educated on the terms at all and just assume its all some rediculous mental illness that causes the afflicted person to be a serial killer or something. its dissapointing to see them all blather away about it and act like they know what theyre talking about
You will not find the answer to that question in a book. You will not get one definitive answer from professionals even. This zoo might give you opinions. I say look the definitions up via Merriam-Webster, do a little research and come up with an answer that is good for you. My take is me are playing with synonyms. There is something about the word "sociopath" I just don't like. But, that's probably because I adopted some bias against the word "soc" from the book and movie "The Outsiders". Psychopath on the other hand... I think that one just gets over played.
OK, since I'm all nice I will explain.
Psychopath is the older term. Psychopaths were seen as born evil, almost in a biblical sense. There was just a consensus that something was wrong with them. Why it was, wasn't discussed all that much.
Then came the movement that nothin is your own fault, every child is born exactly the same and everything is nurture. They looked at the same group of people and thought that the cause was poor parenting. They renamed psychopath sociopath.
Later on there was this nature-nurture debate, and some confused people started calling born that way psychopaths psychopaths, and made psychopaths sociopaths. The words were not intended to be used like this, but it didn't bother them much.
Today, even the concept of a psychopath is broader, thanks to Hare basically. He suggested several things, that a psychopath might be anyone you know, a non criminal, that a psychopath might be high up in big organisations and also that you can be a psychopath lacking intelligence.
The diagnosing is even broader than Hare's definition, when you diagnose dissocial PD or antisocial PD. Those still in need of calling them psychopaths solved it in this manner. Someone born that way is a primary psychopath. Someone growing up under hardening circumstances is a secondary psychopath, since he probably would not have been dissocial/antisocial with a more normal life. Both types make up ASPD.
The term sociopath should be dead. It was created to free the psychopath from any genetic/epigenetic/brain damage cause. Today we know life doesn't always spit out perfect babies.