I think describing Napoleon as a sociopath is perfectly in keeping with the evidence. Here's the DSM-IV on antisocial personality disorder (which roughly corresponds to the older idea of sociopathy or psychopathy), which can be detected by the presence of at least three of the following:
- failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
- deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
- impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
- irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
- reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
- consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
- lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another;
I'd say that several pretty clearly apply, and others are certainly arguable.
I think that it would be helpful to take a couple of introductory psychology courses and a couple semesters of statistics to understand where DSM is coming from. A working knowlege of the behavioural sciences is extrmely helpful for anyone majoring in the social sciences these days. But a brief explanation will have to suffice now.
In the first place, the title is Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual. Which means that there is a statistical component to every one of these psychological traits.
It is not just a matter of having a trait such as impulsiity or irritability or aggressiveness, but it is also a question of whether one has more or less of that trait than the people around one. And that question is determined according to where one fits for that trait on a statistical bell curve. The question becomes: Does one have more than one statistical deviation of that trait from the norm for that population (87.5% ) And yes, populations in different countries can differ significantly on statistical norms.
A certain amount of sociopathy is actually
normal and healthy and necessary. If one looks closely at a self report standardized clinical test such as the Catell 16 Personality Factor Test and Clinical Analysis Questionnaire, the variable "Sociopathic Deviation" if relatively high can prevent relatively high scores on other variables such as paranoia or schizophrenia (which has a number of questions which also are indicative of dissociatiive disorders) from resulting in a high composite score for the variable of Psychoticism. In other words, a certain amount of sociopathy may be necessary for people to look objectively at the social world around them and realize that the problem is not all themselves. Without
any sociopatby, people are either total conformists or they go crazy. Or in a military situation, they become cannon or wall fodder and are killed by the enemy. The problem becomes when there is too much sociopathy and the person decides that it is ALWAYS the other person's problem and that there is no reason to have any empathy for anyone. That is when we get psychopathy. So it's a matter of degree, and not just a matter of a yes-no on a DSM-IV checklist but a numeric score for each trait. (And yes, the DSM-IV has a Strutured Clinical Interview that psychologists use).
So getting back to the question at hand about to what degree Napoleon is a sociopath, we need to remember that there is a good reason why Napoleon is entombed with honour in the Place of the Invalides in Paris. Napoleon came into prominence in France at a very bad time for France. Have we all heard so much British propaganda that we have forgotten that all of the nations surrounding France ganged up on France in 1792 to restore the Bourbon Monarchy and destroy the 1st Republic? And that they came very close to succeeding? And that it was Napoleon Bonaparte who rallied French troops to defeat those invading armies?
That was why the French followed Napoleon and responded to his "levies en masse" until his final defeat in 1814. And even afterword, supported his grandson, Louis Napoleon for another 22 years from 1848 to 1870. Whatever Napoleon's sociopathy, it was a sociopathy that most French people at the time shared with him. There were no psychologists to interview Napoleon, but I suspect that between what he did for France and his development of the Code Napoleon, the man would probably not test above one standard deviation on a measure of psychopathic deviation from a sample drawn from French citizens of the time.
If that is the case, to call Napoleon a psychopath is to take the side of the British and the Austrians and the Spanish who believed that France had gone off the rails as soon as the French deposed their king. Under the circumstances, I do not think that the French did, speaking only for myself. The French went for empire, yes. But if we look at history as we all do, Rome, Q'in, Ashur, England, France Russia,, Germany (both times), all of these marches toward empire were started by nations which had been picked on because they were somehow different from their neighbours and had the national idea that the empire was necessary in order to defend themselves. In many cases, those empires started after attempts at invasion. France was no different, and Napoleon was merely the military genius who made it work. Which made Napoleon no different, really, than Queen Elizabeth I for England 250 years earlier, except perhaps that he ultimately bit off more than France could chew.
Maybe the real question that we need to be asking ourselves is: Was there ever a point in the history of the late 18th and early 19th Century in which Ancien Regime Europe would have agreed to peacefully coexist with a Republican or Bonapartist France?
If the answer is no, then all we are really discussing in the history of the time OTL is how the rest of Europe doggedly put together coalition after coalition until it finally brought Napoleon's experiment with government based on reason down. And perhaps in that case Americans are lucky that Napoleon exhausted the Restorationists so that they had no energy left to extinguish the American Republican Experiment too.