Antisocial Personality Disorder

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is described by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fourth edition (DSM-IV-TR), as an Axis II personality disorder characterized by "...a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood."

The World Health Organization's International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems', tenth edition (ICD-10), defines a conceptually similar disorder to antisocial personality disorder called (F60.2) Dissocial personality disorder.

Though the diagnostic criteria for ASPD were based in part on Hervey Cleckley's pioneering work on psychopathy, ASPD is not synonymous with psychopathy and the diagnostic criteria are different.

Read more about Antisocial Personality Disorder:  Treatment, Prognosis, Epidemiology

Famous quotes containing the words antisocial, personality and/or disorder:

    It is impossible to think of Howard Hughes without seeing the apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and what we do want, between what we officially admire and secretly desire, between, in the largest sense, the people we marry and the people we love. In a nation which increasingly appears to prize social virtues, Howard Hughes remains not merely antisocial but grandly, brilliantly, surpassingly, asocial. He is the last private man, the dream we no longer admit.
    Joan Didion (b. 1934)

    A personality is an indefinite quantum of traits which is subject to constant flux, change, and growth from the birth of the individual in the world to his death. A character, on the other hand, is a fixed and definite quantum of traits which, though it may be interpreted with slight differences from age to age and actor to actor, is nevertheless in its essentials forever fixed.
    Hubert C. Heffner (1901–1985)

    When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind’s disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.
    Gérard De Nerval (1808–1855)