ABSTRACT
Psychopathic behaviors have been an object of fascination throughout history. Psychopathy is a way of acting in the world. Personality disorders are patterns of behavior and relationships with the environment that are relatively stable, inflexible, and, most importantly, socially inappropriate, and that involve a great diversity of situations. From a clinical perspective, being a psychopath does not mean being a criminal. From a biological point of view, psychopaths are considered to be physiologically underactivated; that is, they are people who experience less fear and anxiety than normal people. Current neuroimaging techniques (positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)) allow brain structures to be studied in detail, along with the changes associated with emotional processing produced in the brain. There have been reported cases in which violent actions have been shown to originate from certain genetic alterations in the person. In relationships where domestic violence occurs, there is often a codependency between the psychopathic abuser and the victim.
