Well, well, I have a son who is a diagnosed psychopath and did have a son who was a violent sociopath. Based on seeing them grow up I can tell you what I experienced as the difference.
The psychotic/schizophrenic struggled constantly with trying to separate delusions from reality. He was angry a lot because he said he knew what people meant to say but they were NOT SAYING IT. They were saying something else. He is doing well on medication and still has random flashes of irrational anger but is never violent because he has empathy. He has compassion, takes insects outdoors (whereas I just kill them). He can't watch sad shows and had to stop watching TV during Newtown, etc. He was a super bright child who took too much LSD and then was shot in a holdup, after which his longtime girlfriend broke up with him. After his psychotic break it came out that he was raped by his sociopath brother--I never knew this. The psychiatrist told me that all these factors lead to his break--he was 23 at the time.
The sociopath on the other hand thought other people's suffering was interesting and sometimes quite entertaining. He just didn't feel what other people felt and looked down on the rest of us as being inferior because of our emotions. He could manipulate me easily because I loved him and felt I deserved to be tricked if I was that gullible. He was violent even to people he loved, raped his brother because he could, fractured his best friend's skull and blamed it on (the usual) random black people. He let me take him to the hospital and sit with him in Emergency for five hours while he watched football. Never had the least bit of regret. This same friend and my son started fights in bars for the opportunity (for my son) to have the joy of beating people up. He learned how to kill people with his bare hands in jail and cheerfully offered to off my exhusband the next time we went to court. (I am not kidding here- he told me the details of his plan). I was horrified beyond belief.
I changed the court date and never told anyone the new date. My son told me he thought he could get "a free one," meaning a murder, because he would easily be diagnosed as psychotic by just acting like his brother. The sociopath was always the way he was from childhood, never had a "breakdown" or a change of personality. He was always cold and always violent--and always handsome and charismatic.
That's my experience, for what it's worth.
