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At first I thought you were disagreeing that Lara Pulver's Irene Adler was psychologically aberrant, but I see that you actually want to ramp her up from my diagnosis. I'm not well-versed enough in the distinctions between sociopathy and psychopathy, though I would consider the level of antisocial behaviors to be on a spectrum. In my opinion, Adler is a sociopath in a mutually advantageous arrangement with a psychopath--Moriarty. Irene is his handmaiden, very definitely his subordinate. She works for him. She gets him juicy information on the powerful men she sees to be used for his own nefarious purposes and in return she gets the protection which he can offer her from her powerful enemies. Her phone is her protection, for what's on it, but I'd wager Moriarty has duplicates of all that information. He protects her as long as she is a useful tool to him. Once she stops being useful or compromises his own operation . . she gets turned into shoes . . or allowed to be captured and beheaded by the Taliban who whoever. She was in that spot at the end of the episode because Moriarty had withdrawn his protection. At Christmas, when the dead doppelganger turned up in the morgue, Adler was still useful to M, still supplying information, and principally, still in communication with Sherlock Holmes. Irene had infiltrated herself with Sherlock . . on her boss's order. He lets her pretend that she's got autonomy but the fact that she's working with him shows that she's not a free agent. So when she needed to 'disappear', a convenient body that looked just like her was provided for the purpose. Don't we think it's more likely that Jim provided that body? I do. He made all the arrangements and got her out of London because she was still a useful asset. Frankly, this Adler isn't that smart to be an international criminal mastermind. She picked a pretty simple code for her phone in the end. Her feelings for Sherlock where her undoing in the end. If she were a true psychopath, she wouldn't have any feelings. She could fake some, but her pulse wouldn't have risen. The way it was explained to me is: Sociopaths are made, through early trauma but psychopaths are born that way. Their brains and limbic systems do not function like normal people's. They have no conscience, which is also shared by sociopaths, but they also do not experience any physical reactions to stress. They have no fear. Sociopaths can still experience being upset, they can be afraid or panic if things are not going according to their plans. They are slightly more human. Adler is a bad girl but she's a rank amateur when you stack her against psychos like Moriarty or CAM. She can dominate weak and needy men for money and thrills but she is the dominated one in the relationship with Moriarty. Hence that's why Sherlock saved her from being decapitated in Karachi. She'll get in with bad types again, so a smarter tactical move would have been to let her get executed. But Sherl likes her, despite the risk to himself. Which proves that he's not a psychopath, either. Moriarty blew out his own brains just to screw with Sherlock. We really didn't see that coming, but real psychos aren't attached to anything, even their own continued existences.