To really qualify as a Sociopath one needs to be almost, if not all, pure evil. Strike like an animal on the prowl & have no quams about putting their teeth into your neck with out flinching. Some people may have some of the above traits but they also posess other traits to offset the negitive ones. Hardly is someone almost all rotten
I have known one person who really fits this bill. I knew him as a child, knew his brothers, worked with him & his brothers as an adult. He was always in & out of prison, even his brothers couldn't be around him. You couldn't turn your back with hm around & most everyone prayed that he stayed in prison.
I met one other person like this & that was Steve "the Rifleman" Flemmi. My father knew 2 that fit the same bill, Flemmi's partner Whitey Bulger. The other was a family friend's brother, William "Wimpy" Bennett. What the last 3 all had in common was they were all common career criminals tied to orgianized crime. Usually these people cannot survive undertected & unprotected for long without the cover that the criminal world offers them. They are even feared but are used by those that live in the same enviorment. They are mostly "hit men" & by their nature they're very good at what they do.
The strange thing about the two families I mentioned. The guy I knew, his 2 brothers thought him worst than dirt & they themselves were hard working family men who were graet people. The same with the family my father knew. The brother he knew (& I knew) was a great family guy & would help anyone & so I've heard of his other brother. But "Wimpy" was a disaster, though my father loved his brother he hated "Wimpy". All bad, not a shimer of good in his bones.
Funny, (no really) those last 3 were all assocates.

You've never met someone all bad until you've met a human that can walk & talk, smile & chat like the rest of us then turn & saw the head off a living body. You couldn't make a horror movie that comes close to covering the truth.

Barry

typos fixed
joe clone