Psychopathy: A comprehensive review of its assessment and intervention

Psychopathy is one of the most studied personality disorders, in terms of the negative impact that the behaviors associated with this disorder — particularly, the criminal behavior — have in the community where the individual lives. The aim of this article is to present a comprehensive literature review on psychopathy, focusing some difficulties related to its concept, assessment, and intervention. Here, psychopathy is presented as a construct resulting from decades of clinical and empirical research, and whose dimensional nature justifies the possibility of assessing the general population. Studies indicate that psychopathy is manifested in a number of behaviors resulting from biological and personality factors related to a series of family history and environmental factors. We emphasize the need for more empirical research on psychopathy in the general population in Portugal, regarding the development and adaptation of measures of the construct.