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The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues about the So-Called Psychopathic Personality
The classic that has transformed the psychiatric definition of sanity and continues to provide insight on American society and psychological introspection. Although highly controversial, Hervey Cleckley’s Mask of Sanity provides one of the most influential clinical descriptions of psychopathy in the twentieth century. At the crux of his argument, Cleckley claims that many psychopathic personalities go undiagnosed because they maintain a social mask that conceals their mental disorder and enables them to blend in with society. Furthermore, many of these affected individuals appear to function normally in accordance with standard psychiatric criteria. Intent on detecting and diagnosing the elusive psychopath, Cleckley has compiled an assortment of case studies and offers suggestions for palliative care. This ambitious work aims to define and examine every aspect of this abstract state of being. Ultimately, Cleckley refines the term “psychopath” and strips it of stigmatization. “I know of no more stirring presentation of the clinical picture, the social consequences, and the therapeutic difficulties incident to the problem of the psychopath.” — The Quarterly Review of Biology
585 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1941
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About the author
Hervey M. Cleckley
8 books34 followersDr. Hervey Milton Cleckley (1903 - January 28, 1984) was an American psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of psychopathy. His book, The Mask of Sanity, originally published in 1941, provided the most influential clinical description of psychopathy in the 20th Century. The term "mask of sanity" derived from Cleckley's observations that, unlike people with major mental disorders, a "psychopath" can appear to be normal and even engaging, while typically not suffering overtly from hallucinations or delusions.[1] However, the "mask" covered a concealed psychosis.
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February 27, 2013
I wanted to read Hervey Cleckley’s The Mask of Sanity because it is referenced in other psychopathology books as the leader of psychopathology for its time. Robert D. Hare’s Without Conscience, a book on psychopaths I’ve read a few times, references it and I thought I would check it out. To be clear, I read the fourth (1964) edition. I found this book fascinating for probably all the wrong reasons.
To put this book in its proper perspective, the bulk of the book (research and writing) was done in 1941. This is before the Second World War, before Elvis, the Beatles, and (essentially) television. People still had servants (those who could afford them) and families of distinction could trace their histories back to colonial times: “the patient’s remote antecedents had lived in or about Charleston, SC, in colonial times. They had never been famous for wealth…but in the Revolutionary War, as well as the in the War Between the States…” (101). Women, for the most part, were expected to get married and have children. Men had jobs. People still drank highballs (it’s a cocktail of some sort and it’s mentioned surprisingly frequently in a textbook about psychopathology) and smoked cigarettes. In other words, it was a totally different era and I found it an amusing, fascinating, naïve, and disturbing world.
There is a certain innocence to the America in this book. Deals are considered legal contracts by handshakes and man’s word is gold. The government seems to care about its citizens. Cleckley often mentions how lawyers and judges and police officers have a certain amount of sympathy for the patients he’s worked with; they know these people aren’t quite right because they keep committing idiotic crimes that really have no pay-off, but they aren’t legally insane. When the patients show up in mental hospitals (this is when America still had a large network of hospitals to treat the mentally ill—how quaint!), the psychologists and psychiatrists know they don’t meet the legal definition of insanity and can’t justify keeping them locked in an institution with clearly disturbed patients. Lawyers, judges, and politicians would write letters on the behalf of the patients asking for them to be released from mental hospitals (and loan them money!). This surprises me because I can’t imagine that happens often today. There’s a real sense that everyone involved in dealing with these patients are concerned about them and wanted to help them become better people and citizens and gave them numerous chances to do so (and of course, since they are psychopaths, they always disappointed their benefactors).
What I found most disturbing about this book is the overwhelming sense of paternalism and male chauvinism. While women are mentioned as having jobs, it’s understood that of course they do that until they follow the natural course of life and get married and have children. A case study of one woman was particularly horrifying to me. The woman was considered to be a “deviant” and show signs of psychopathology merely because she was a lesbian and had the audacity to say that she did not want to be married. No worries—she was soon “cured” of those two unnatural conditions. Deviant behavior abounds in this book. There is a terrible chapter titled: “Homosexuality and other consistent sexual deviations.” Wow. I know, it was written in the early twentieth century, but this chapter is amazingly wrong, full of incredible stereotypes, and horrifying. There is also a certain amount of “white man knows best” kind of racism too. It’s not overt, but when Cleckley mentions “Negros” his tone is insufferably smug.
I’m not going to debate Cleckley’s research or anything like that. I am not an expert in any way in the field of abnormal psychology; I just find it fascinating and have read a few books on the subject. I mostly want to make observations on his writing style. What I was most surprised about when reading this is that I (due to the amount of knowledge available now about psychopaths) know more about psychopaths than he does! At the time this book was written (even with the later fourth edition I read), psychologists don’t know a lot about psychopathology. Some psychologists think patients do all the socially-unacceptable, illegal things they do because they are guilty about having bad feelings/impulses and want to be caught and punished by the law or put in a mental institution so they can receive help. They just don’t know they want this because the emotions/thoughts are buried so deeply. Cleckley thinks that’s a bunch of nonsense and that the evidence and research don’t support this theory. He’s not sure why they do the things they do, but he’s very close to the modern theory when he proposes it’s because they don't care. The mental health community is still trying to decide if it’s lack of emotional development or a lack of biological (underdeveloped brain) development. The modern theory is the brain is underdeveloped and thus psychopaths will never be able to be cured. They just don’t have the brain parts. The part of you that allows you to feel strong emotions, to have a conscience, to worry about the consequences of your actions, or to even have a deep interest in a hobby is missing from psychopaths. They are incapable of feeling strong emotions. They don’t care about the consequences of their actions, don’t care what others think of them, and don’t recognize emotions in others. When you know this, the things that psychopaths do make sense.
One of the biggest dilemmas (and probably still today) facing the legal system and the mental health system is that psychopathology is not curable. However, psychopaths (or sociopaths) are not clinically insane. They know the difference between right and wrong, legal and illegal, ethical and unethical. They just don’t care. So they take actions that are often harmful to themselves or others (and I don’t just mean violence; most psychopaths are not the serial murderers you see on television or in movies. They are often just your average criminal and their crimes are non-violent but can cause many problems to the people around them) without thought of the consequences. They do what they want because it is a passing whim, a way to stave off boredom. But how to handle these people? The legal system (at least when this book was written) couldn’t/wouldn’t keep them in jail for long. The mental hospitals that often took them couldn’t treat them because they weren’t ill. So these patients were shuttled between jail and mental hospitals, neither of which could deal with the root of the problem (psychopathology). Today, with our decline of treatment options for the mentally ill, these people are often in prison (or working on Wall Street. Robert Hare’s Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us discusses this). Is that where they should be? Maybe, maybe not. That’s still the problem. They know what they’ve done is illegal. But due to their psychopathic condition, not only are they incapable of stopping their harmful/illegal activities, they are not inclined to stop them. But that doesn’t mean they should escape justice. Who knows if there will ever be a solution to this.
However, aside from the subject matter, what I found most fascinating (and often funny) about this book is how it is written. Cleckley phrases even the most distasteful statements so delicately (and in an old-fashioned, scholarly way) that I couldn’t help laughing throughout this book. I don’t think he is attempting to amuse, but he does. He is a good writer and expresses himself eloquently. Some examples:
Cleckley is drawing the line between people who are mentally ill (out and out nuts) and those normal, average citizens who, for some reason, fixate on something and go temporarily nuts. He’s using as an example people who believe in “end of the world” prophesies and are reasonably sane until the doomsday arrives and they go bonkers:
“Indeed, conviction was so great that at sunrise many leaped from cliffs, roofs, and silos, one zealot having tied turkey wings to his arms the better to provide for flight. Those who had hoped to ascend found gravity unchanged, the earth still solid, and the inevitable contact jarring” (22).
His tone is so understated and calm; I don’t know if the man had a very dry wit or was oblivious to the humor, but that is funny: “the inevitable contact jarring.” Indeed. I bet it was jarring. And the guy with the turkey wings is either a) a complete moron or b) not trustful of his god or c) both. If he didn’t trust god to have the power to just grab him up and take him straight to heaven, did he really think turkey wings would give him that extra “oomph” god needed? Of course, there’s no sense in applying logic to a situation in which a guy is willing to jump off a cliff with turkey arms tied to his human arms. I mean, do turkeys even use those arms for flying? Whenever I see wild turkeys in a field, they’re walking.
I’m not sure what social life was like in the pre-WW2 days, but apparently brothels, casinos, and other socially-unacceptable places were well-known and (apparently?) legal. Here’s a description of a patient’s problematic social routine: “If not through his daily and nightly brawls or uproars in various low grogshops, dancehalls, ‘juke joints,’ etc., then by putting slugs into slot machines or serving as fence in some petty thieving racket, he brought the police in search of him down on the ‘house of joy’ which maintained him” (53). Max’s wife is the owner/operator of a brothel and what’s so funny is that Cleckley, while not approving of the brothel, is much more dismayed by the problems Max causes for his wife and the ladies at the brothel: “No one realized better than his wife, a woman of experience and good judgment in these matters, what an unhappy effect these antics had on her clientele quietly seeking pleasure behind doors before which Max roared and paraded [Max is a noisy, pugilistic drunk]” (53). And because Max is such an entertaining psychopath and Cleckley writes so amusingly about him, here’s one more sentence, this time describing Max and his wife’s fights: “She often fought back vigorously and, though she seldom succeeded in landing a telling blow that would discourage her marital opponent, her resistance made the fight much more lively and greatly augmented the uproar of thuds, slaps, crashes, oaths, grunts, and honest yells of pain” (53). Who writes like this anymore? No one. This is superb writing.
Cleckley eloquently handles farting: “On being approached, he cursed, sobbed feebly, and was brought back to bed, passing intestinal gas with frequent loud and unpleasant effects, grinning almost triumphantly at the nurse who had hurried to him at each detonation” (77). Had this guy been born later in the twentieth century, he would have made a great novelist.
Cleckley’s complicated and awe-inspiring way of saying, “Yeah, boys like to hang out and when they do hang out, they talk trash and make a lot of poop/sex jokes”:
“Numerous small groups of boys, sometimes only three or four, sometimes more, banded by a common interest in postage stamps [Philatelists! Kinky!], firearms, a secret shack in the woods where they met to gamble, or in some other affair, often reserved for themselves a peculiar connotation in bits of familiar language or devised codes of slang, verbal, digital, and postural, to transmit among the elect understandings of special recognitions best reserved from the surrounding masses..Groping among confused and paradoxical concepts of virility, some boys could find stimulus (or protectiveness) in neologisms and fresh innuendos pertaining to the act of excretion and its subtle relationships to insult, sexuality, and infinite defilement” (127).
I wonder if Cleckley would be disturbed to discover that men (boys) still joke about sex and poop, still love their guns as much as their dicks and continue to engage in posturing? Probably not.
This book is chock-full of these nuggets of awesomeness. I have several more folded over pages of underlined passages I could quote, but I think any reader of this way-too-long review has comprehended my message: this dude’s writing style has tickled my fancy. Of course, he crafted just as many not-so-amusing sentences regarding homosexuals and how they go against the natural and biologically correct order of life (man has the outey, woman the inney—what about that can’t gay people get, he asks?) and describes in a very long chapter how immoral, unhappy, and confused gay people are due to their “deviant” sexual practices. That chapter, and the subtle “awww, women want to be independent and have jobs? Silly women!” tone regarding his discussions of some of the women patients angered me. I realize that at the time Cleckley was considered correct and culturally in sync, but reading his thoughts on those subjects makes me thankful for being alive now, even if we still have a lot of progress to make.
This is quite a (long) interesting book to read. Anyone wanting to read about psychopathology however should avoid this book and maybe start with Robert Hare (Without Conscience). Columbine by Dave Cullen also has an outstanding discussion of psychopaths. Plus, it’s a great book about the Columbine shooting.
Okay, damn, I can’t stop myself. One last funny sentence: “Another conventional and well-adjusted adult recalls an incident after a beer party following the last football game of the season when a fair proportion of the celebrants went out together to a pasture and there pursued and constrained a number of cows in efforts to achieve sexual relations with the patient but reluctant animals” (285).
To put this book in its proper perspective, the bulk of the book (research and writing) was done in 1941. This is before the Second World War, before Elvis, the Beatles, and (essentially) television. People still had servants (those who could afford them) and families of distinction could trace their histories back to colonial times: “the patient’s remote antecedents had lived in or about Charleston, SC, in colonial times. They had never been famous for wealth…but in the Revolutionary War, as well as the in the War Between the States…” (101). Women, for the most part, were expected to get married and have children. Men had jobs. People still drank highballs (it’s a cocktail of some sort and it’s mentioned surprisingly frequently in a textbook about psychopathology) and smoked cigarettes. In other words, it was a totally different era and I found it an amusing, fascinating, naïve, and disturbing world.
There is a certain innocence to the America in this book. Deals are considered legal contracts by handshakes and man’s word is gold. The government seems to care about its citizens. Cleckley often mentions how lawyers and judges and police officers have a certain amount of sympathy for the patients he’s worked with; they know these people aren’t quite right because they keep committing idiotic crimes that really have no pay-off, but they aren’t legally insane. When the patients show up in mental hospitals (this is when America still had a large network of hospitals to treat the mentally ill—how quaint!), the psychologists and psychiatrists know they don’t meet the legal definition of insanity and can’t justify keeping them locked in an institution with clearly disturbed patients. Lawyers, judges, and politicians would write letters on the behalf of the patients asking for them to be released from mental hospitals (and loan them money!). This surprises me because I can’t imagine that happens often today. There’s a real sense that everyone involved in dealing with these patients are concerned about them and wanted to help them become better people and citizens and gave them numerous chances to do so (and of course, since they are psychopaths, they always disappointed their benefactors).
What I found most disturbing about this book is the overwhelming sense of paternalism and male chauvinism. While women are mentioned as having jobs, it’s understood that of course they do that until they follow the natural course of life and get married and have children. A case study of one woman was particularly horrifying to me. The woman was considered to be a “deviant” and show signs of psychopathology merely because she was a lesbian and had the audacity to say that she did not want to be married. No worries—she was soon “cured” of those two unnatural conditions. Deviant behavior abounds in this book. There is a terrible chapter titled: “Homosexuality and other consistent sexual deviations.” Wow. I know, it was written in the early twentieth century, but this chapter is amazingly wrong, full of incredible stereotypes, and horrifying. There is also a certain amount of “white man knows best” kind of racism too. It’s not overt, but when Cleckley mentions “Negros” his tone is insufferably smug.
I’m not going to debate Cleckley’s research or anything like that. I am not an expert in any way in the field of abnormal psychology; I just find it fascinating and have read a few books on the subject. I mostly want to make observations on his writing style. What I was most surprised about when reading this is that I (due to the amount of knowledge available now about psychopaths) know more about psychopaths than he does! At the time this book was written (even with the later fourth edition I read), psychologists don’t know a lot about psychopathology. Some psychologists think patients do all the socially-unacceptable, illegal things they do because they are guilty about having bad feelings/impulses and want to be caught and punished by the law or put in a mental institution so they can receive help. They just don’t know they want this because the emotions/thoughts are buried so deeply. Cleckley thinks that’s a bunch of nonsense and that the evidence and research don’t support this theory. He’s not sure why they do the things they do, but he’s very close to the modern theory when he proposes it’s because they don't care. The mental health community is still trying to decide if it’s lack of emotional development or a lack of biological (underdeveloped brain) development. The modern theory is the brain is underdeveloped and thus psychopaths will never be able to be cured. They just don’t have the brain parts. The part of you that allows you to feel strong emotions, to have a conscience, to worry about the consequences of your actions, or to even have a deep interest in a hobby is missing from psychopaths. They are incapable of feeling strong emotions. They don’t care about the consequences of their actions, don’t care what others think of them, and don’t recognize emotions in others. When you know this, the things that psychopaths do make sense.
One of the biggest dilemmas (and probably still today) facing the legal system and the mental health system is that psychopathology is not curable. However, psychopaths (or sociopaths) are not clinically insane. They know the difference between right and wrong, legal and illegal, ethical and unethical. They just don’t care. So they take actions that are often harmful to themselves or others (and I don’t just mean violence; most psychopaths are not the serial murderers you see on television or in movies. They are often just your average criminal and their crimes are non-violent but can cause many problems to the people around them) without thought of the consequences. They do what they want because it is a passing whim, a way to stave off boredom. But how to handle these people? The legal system (at least when this book was written) couldn’t/wouldn’t keep them in jail for long. The mental hospitals that often took them couldn’t treat them because they weren’t ill. So these patients were shuttled between jail and mental hospitals, neither of which could deal with the root of the problem (psychopathology). Today, with our decline of treatment options for the mentally ill, these people are often in prison (or working on Wall Street. Robert Hare’s Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us discusses this). Is that where they should be? Maybe, maybe not. That’s still the problem. They know what they’ve done is illegal. But due to their psychopathic condition, not only are they incapable of stopping their harmful/illegal activities, they are not inclined to stop them. But that doesn’t mean they should escape justice. Who knows if there will ever be a solution to this.
However, aside from the subject matter, what I found most fascinating (and often funny) about this book is how it is written. Cleckley phrases even the most distasteful statements so delicately (and in an old-fashioned, scholarly way) that I couldn’t help laughing throughout this book. I don’t think he is attempting to amuse, but he does. He is a good writer and expresses himself eloquently. Some examples:
Cleckley is drawing the line between people who are mentally ill (out and out nuts) and those normal, average citizens who, for some reason, fixate on something and go temporarily nuts. He’s using as an example people who believe in “end of the world” prophesies and are reasonably sane until the doomsday arrives and they go bonkers:
“Indeed, conviction was so great that at sunrise many leaped from cliffs, roofs, and silos, one zealot having tied turkey wings to his arms the better to provide for flight. Those who had hoped to ascend found gravity unchanged, the earth still solid, and the inevitable contact jarring” (22).
His tone is so understated and calm; I don’t know if the man had a very dry wit or was oblivious to the humor, but that is funny: “the inevitable contact jarring.” Indeed. I bet it was jarring. And the guy with the turkey wings is either a) a complete moron or b) not trustful of his god or c) both. If he didn’t trust god to have the power to just grab him up and take him straight to heaven, did he really think turkey wings would give him that extra “oomph” god needed? Of course, there’s no sense in applying logic to a situation in which a guy is willing to jump off a cliff with turkey arms tied to his human arms. I mean, do turkeys even use those arms for flying? Whenever I see wild turkeys in a field, they’re walking.
I’m not sure what social life was like in the pre-WW2 days, but apparently brothels, casinos, and other socially-unacceptable places were well-known and (apparently?) legal. Here’s a description of a patient’s problematic social routine: “If not through his daily and nightly brawls or uproars in various low grogshops, dancehalls, ‘juke joints,’ etc., then by putting slugs into slot machines or serving as fence in some petty thieving racket, he brought the police in search of him down on the ‘house of joy’ which maintained him” (53). Max’s wife is the owner/operator of a brothel and what’s so funny is that Cleckley, while not approving of the brothel, is much more dismayed by the problems Max causes for his wife and the ladies at the brothel: “No one realized better than his wife, a woman of experience and good judgment in these matters, what an unhappy effect these antics had on her clientele quietly seeking pleasure behind doors before which Max roared and paraded [Max is a noisy, pugilistic drunk]” (53). And because Max is such an entertaining psychopath and Cleckley writes so amusingly about him, here’s one more sentence, this time describing Max and his wife’s fights: “She often fought back vigorously and, though she seldom succeeded in landing a telling blow that would discourage her marital opponent, her resistance made the fight much more lively and greatly augmented the uproar of thuds, slaps, crashes, oaths, grunts, and honest yells of pain” (53). Who writes like this anymore? No one. This is superb writing.
Cleckley eloquently handles farting: “On being approached, he cursed, sobbed feebly, and was brought back to bed, passing intestinal gas with frequent loud and unpleasant effects, grinning almost triumphantly at the nurse who had hurried to him at each detonation” (77). Had this guy been born later in the twentieth century, he would have made a great novelist.
Cleckley’s complicated and awe-inspiring way of saying, “Yeah, boys like to hang out and when they do hang out, they talk trash and make a lot of poop/sex jokes”:
“Numerous small groups of boys, sometimes only three or four, sometimes more, banded by a common interest in postage stamps [Philatelists! Kinky!], firearms, a secret shack in the woods where they met to gamble, or in some other affair, often reserved for themselves a peculiar connotation in bits of familiar language or devised codes of slang, verbal, digital, and postural, to transmit among the elect understandings of special recognitions best reserved from the surrounding masses..Groping among confused and paradoxical concepts of virility, some boys could find stimulus (or protectiveness) in neologisms and fresh innuendos pertaining to the act of excretion and its subtle relationships to insult, sexuality, and infinite defilement” (127).
I wonder if Cleckley would be disturbed to discover that men (boys) still joke about sex and poop, still love their guns as much as their dicks and continue to engage in posturing? Probably not.
This book is chock-full of these nuggets of awesomeness. I have several more folded over pages of underlined passages I could quote, but I think any reader of this way-too-long review has comprehended my message: this dude’s writing style has tickled my fancy. Of course, he crafted just as many not-so-amusing sentences regarding homosexuals and how they go against the natural and biologically correct order of life (man has the outey, woman the inney—what about that can’t gay people get, he asks?) and describes in a very long chapter how immoral, unhappy, and confused gay people are due to their “deviant” sexual practices. That chapter, and the subtle “awww, women want to be independent and have jobs? Silly women!” tone regarding his discussions of some of the women patients angered me. I realize that at the time Cleckley was considered correct and culturally in sync, but reading his thoughts on those subjects makes me thankful for being alive now, even if we still have a lot of progress to make.
This is quite a (long) interesting book to read. Anyone wanting to read about psychopathology however should avoid this book and maybe start with Robert Hare (Without Conscience). Columbine by Dave Cullen also has an outstanding discussion of psychopaths. Plus, it’s a great book about the Columbine shooting.
Okay, damn, I can’t stop myself. One last funny sentence: “Another conventional and well-adjusted adult recalls an incident after a beer party following the last football game of the season when a fair proportion of the celebrants went out together to a pasture and there pursued and constrained a number of cows in efforts to achieve sexual relations with the patient but reluctant animals” (285).
Read
December 17, 2018Cleckley's book is out of print, so I read a pdf version of a scanned copy made available at http://cassiopaea.org/2011/02/10/the-...
... this online essay is informative if you can handle/ignore the New Age Twilight Zone stuff at the end.
Cleckley provides detailed case histories of psychopaths ... incredible reading if you are interested in stories of dysfunctional people/families.
Medical discussions in Cleckley's book are fascinating from an historical viewpoint ... obviously info is dated.
Consider a spectrum of anxiety, with the psychoneurotic at one endpoint and the psychopath at the other:
"People who suffer from personality disorders which cause them to be anxious, restless, unhappy, and obsessed with thoughts they themselves recognize as absurd but who are, in the lay sense, altogether sane have for years been classed as psychoneurotic. They recognize reason in general, often admit that their symptoms arise from emotional conflicts, and are free from delusions and hallucinations.
"....They are often resistant to reasoning but more in the sense of a person with strong prejudices than of one with delusions or with intellectual dilapidation. Sometimes they feel strong fears that they may carry out acts which they dread and which would indeed be tragic or criminal, but they recognize the nature of these acts and do not carry them out. Other acts, all patently senseless but relatively harmless, they do carry out, recognizing the absurdity of feeling that they must do so but becoming anxious if they resist the impulse.
"In general, psychoneurotic people recognize objective reality and try to adapt themselves like most others to the ways of society."
Kindle location 4788-4802
"On the contrary, those called psychopaths are very sharply characterized by the lack of anxiety (remorse, uneasy anticipation, apprehensive scrupulousness, the sense of being under stress or strain) and, less than the average person, show what is widely regarded as basic in the neurotic....
".... the interpretation of the psychopath's behavior as symptomatic 'acting out' against his surroundings, in contrast with the development of anxiety or headache or obsession is, it seems to me, an interesting formulation.... I do not believe that psychopaths should be identified with the psychoneurotic group, for this would imply that they possess full social and legal competency, that they are capable of handling adequately their own affairs, and that they are earnestly seeking relief from unpleasant symptoms.
"There are disorders in which the two diverse types of reaction (developing subjectively unpleasant symptoms versus callously carrying out socially destructive acts) seem to exist in the same symptom. The so-called pyromaniac (and kleptomaniac) often seems motivated by forces similar to the classic obsessive-compulsive patient ....
".... The distinction emphasized by Fenichel between ego-syntonic and ego-alien motivations (compulsive acts of caution versus so-called 'compulsive' antisocial acts) is a fundamental point and brings out a distinction not merely of degree but of quality....."
Kindle 4809-4833
And the bottom line is that psychopaths are BORED:
"If, as we maintain, the big rewards of love, of the hard job well done, of faith kept despite sacrifices, do not enter significantly in the equation, it is not difficult to see that the psychopath is likely to be bored.....
"Apparently blocked from fulfillment at deep levels, the psychopath is not unnaturally pushed toward some sort of divertissement. Even weak impulses, petty and fleeting gratifications, are sufficient to produce in him injudicious, distasteful, and even outlandish misbehavior. Major positive attractions are not present to compete successfully with whims, and the major negative deterrents (hot, persistent shame, profound regret) do not loom ahead to influence him."
Kindle location 7204-7217
Herge, the Tintin cartoonist, and musings on deceitful facial expressions
...
... this online essay is informative if you can handle/ignore the New Age Twilight Zone stuff at the end.
Cleckley provides detailed case histories of psychopaths ... incredible reading if you are interested in stories of dysfunctional people/families.
Medical discussions in Cleckley's book are fascinating from an historical viewpoint ... obviously info is dated.
Consider a spectrum of anxiety, with the psychoneurotic at one endpoint and the psychopath at the other:
"People who suffer from personality disorders which cause them to be anxious, restless, unhappy, and obsessed with thoughts they themselves recognize as absurd but who are, in the lay sense, altogether sane have for years been classed as psychoneurotic. They recognize reason in general, often admit that their symptoms arise from emotional conflicts, and are free from delusions and hallucinations.
"....They are often resistant to reasoning but more in the sense of a person with strong prejudices than of one with delusions or with intellectual dilapidation. Sometimes they feel strong fears that they may carry out acts which they dread and which would indeed be tragic or criminal, but they recognize the nature of these acts and do not carry them out. Other acts, all patently senseless but relatively harmless, they do carry out, recognizing the absurdity of feeling that they must do so but becoming anxious if they resist the impulse.
"In general, psychoneurotic people recognize objective reality and try to adapt themselves like most others to the ways of society."
Kindle location 4788-4802
"On the contrary, those called psychopaths are very sharply characterized by the lack of anxiety (remorse, uneasy anticipation, apprehensive scrupulousness, the sense of being under stress or strain) and, less than the average person, show what is widely regarded as basic in the neurotic....
".... the interpretation of the psychopath's behavior as symptomatic 'acting out' against his surroundings, in contrast with the development of anxiety or headache or obsession is, it seems to me, an interesting formulation.... I do not believe that psychopaths should be identified with the psychoneurotic group, for this would imply that they possess full social and legal competency, that they are capable of handling adequately their own affairs, and that they are earnestly seeking relief from unpleasant symptoms.
"There are disorders in which the two diverse types of reaction (developing subjectively unpleasant symptoms versus callously carrying out socially destructive acts) seem to exist in the same symptom. The so-called pyromaniac (and kleptomaniac) often seems motivated by forces similar to the classic obsessive-compulsive patient ....
".... The distinction emphasized by Fenichel between ego-syntonic and ego-alien motivations (compulsive acts of caution versus so-called 'compulsive' antisocial acts) is a fundamental point and brings out a distinction not merely of degree but of quality....."
Kindle 4809-4833
And the bottom line is that psychopaths are BORED:
"If, as we maintain, the big rewards of love, of the hard job well done, of faith kept despite sacrifices, do not enter significantly in the equation, it is not difficult to see that the psychopath is likely to be bored.....
"Apparently blocked from fulfillment at deep levels, the psychopath is not unnaturally pushed toward some sort of divertissement. Even weak impulses, petty and fleeting gratifications, are sufficient to produce in him injudicious, distasteful, and even outlandish misbehavior. Major positive attractions are not present to compete successfully with whims, and the major negative deterrents (hot, persistent shame, profound regret) do not loom ahead to influence him."
Kindle location 7204-7217
Herge, the Tintin cartoonist, and musings on deceitful facial expressions
...
September 21, 2016
Phew!!!! THANK FUCK FOR THAT, EVERYBODY!!
I've been reading this for research for a story. Perhaps fortuitously I picked the toughest book I needed to read for this research. That means I'll be able to plough through the rest by the end of the month in time to get back to editing the story throughout October in time to start a new story for NaNoWriMo November! We're on schedule, everybody!
Pfffft not like you'll get to see anything I'm writing until someone publishes it, but, sorry folks, that part of the process is out of my hands. I'm holding my end up, he said.
Oh, what do I think of this? I understand the need to include so many case studies, but as Cleckley openly acknowledges, psychopaths are utter dickheads. The problem here is that, as it turns out, everyone is happy in their own way, and unhappy people are all unhappy in the same way. Isn't that interesting? That's something I honestly believe.
Side note: sorry, but I wish you'd stop writing about your depression for other people. By all means journal your way to good mental health again, but that's it! Write it off. While once the material of this book was important clinical evidence, hearing different unhappy people be unhappy in the exact same way again and again and again becomes hypnotically bleak, and that's all. That's just what I think. That's why you're reading this, right?
Anyways, the book opened with countless case studies and only later developed interesting arguments and suppositions that were worth reading. I'm glad I began to skim and picked up what I could of these. Including an account that you'll understand was hilarious for multiple reasons about a normally heterosexual gentleman who drove to a worksite and picked up four "unwashed" "Negros", transporting them in his pickup truck to a tent were he was caught performing fellatio on them. To quote Cleckley (if I recall correctly), "He took on the oral role." This after a decent chapter of interesting reasoning about how the reader was not to consider homosexuality a psychological disorder based on scientific evidence of the comportment of homosexuals. Indeed, they are lawyers, scientists, architects and other decent folk contributing to their society! What a modern marvel!
Okay maybe that chapter is worth reading but in general this is not recommended to the general public, who should instead read Hare's Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, which was designed for public consumption and incorporates the necessary theories and info from Cleckley's work.
Oh: you should also read the story I'm writing based on all this research because it's going to be meticulous as FUCK.
I've been reading this for research for a story. Perhaps fortuitously I picked the toughest book I needed to read for this research. That means I'll be able to plough through the rest by the end of the month in time to get back to editing the story throughout October in time to start a new story for NaNoWriMo November! We're on schedule, everybody!
Pfffft not like you'll get to see anything I'm writing until someone publishes it, but, sorry folks, that part of the process is out of my hands. I'm holding my end up, he said.
Oh, what do I think of this? I understand the need to include so many case studies, but as Cleckley openly acknowledges, psychopaths are utter dickheads. The problem here is that, as it turns out, everyone is happy in their own way, and unhappy people are all unhappy in the same way. Isn't that interesting? That's something I honestly believe.
Side note: sorry, but I wish you'd stop writing about your depression for other people. By all means journal your way to good mental health again, but that's it! Write it off. While once the material of this book was important clinical evidence, hearing different unhappy people be unhappy in the exact same way again and again and again becomes hypnotically bleak, and that's all. That's just what I think. That's why you're reading this, right?
Anyways, the book opened with countless case studies and only later developed interesting arguments and suppositions that were worth reading. I'm glad I began to skim and picked up what I could of these. Including an account that you'll understand was hilarious for multiple reasons about a normally heterosexual gentleman who drove to a worksite and picked up four "unwashed" "Negros", transporting them in his pickup truck to a tent were he was caught performing fellatio on them. To quote Cleckley (if I recall correctly), "He took on the oral role." This after a decent chapter of interesting reasoning about how the reader was not to consider homosexuality a psychological disorder based on scientific evidence of the comportment of homosexuals. Indeed, they are lawyers, scientists, architects and other decent folk contributing to their society! What a modern marvel!
Okay maybe that chapter is worth reading but in general this is not recommended to the general public, who should instead read Hare's Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, which was designed for public consumption and incorporates the necessary theories and info from Cleckley's work.
Oh: you should also read the story I'm writing based on all this research because it's going to be meticulous as FUCK.
April 24, 2018
a perfect snapshot of how mental health was perceived, observed, treated and studied in the 40s.
Suffice to say: mental health terminologies and approaches/treatments are way better now but mental health issues were taken more seriously back then
Suffice to say: mental health terminologies and approaches/treatments are way better now but mental health issues were taken more seriously back then
November 12, 2020
Moved to gwern.net.
February 13, 2022
This book was a trailblazer in the 40's. It was assumed that if one encountered a sociopath that he would be easy to read. But the author describes subjects who were great actors, who could really put on the charm by wearing the mask of sanity. They're not the obvious psychopaths that were depicted in movies. They are without remorse, which makes it easier to exploit others.
February 25, 2016
Considered a revolutionary study of psychopathy upon its initial publication in 1941, Hervey Cleckley's The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues about the So-Called Psychopathic Personality offers useful insight into the affliction almost eighty years later. Faced with a poor understanding of psychopathy throughout society as well as the legal and psychiatric community, Dr. Cleckley hoped to identify the common symptoms of psychopaths and improve their treatment options. Working in a psychiatric hospital, he routinely saw individuals who were arrested for committing some petty crime, feigned insanity or bluffed at suicide to escape legal consequences for psychiatric institutions, then convincingly demonstrated apparently sound minds and above-average intelligence in order to effect their discharge from the hospital, only to commit further crimes and repeat the entire process all over again. Cleckley aspired to break this cycle by categorizing the characteristic traits of the psychopathic personality so that such individuals could be recognized by judges and psychiatrists alike, while simultaneously advocating for a reform of the medicolegal system that would enforce treatment at the discretion of a psychopath's physician. Given that questions of legal insanity are prevalent in modern criminal trials, these concerns remain relevant today.
The most useful part of Cleckley's book is the 200 pages devoted to case studies of psychopathic patients observed under his care. These portraits form a cohesive profile of the psychopath as an otherwise intelligent individual with a startling inability to pursue long-term goals or act with consequences in mind. They lie on a whim, steal paltry sums of money, drink to excess, pursue frequent sexual encounters without affection and generally have no comprehension that their actions are harmful or troubling to those around them. Cleckley refreshingly refrains from sensationalism in these pages. Despite popular culture's depiction of the conscience-less serial killer, the psychopaths Cleckley encounters may threaten violence, but rarely (if ever) carry out regular acts of serious brutality. The cases described in these pages may have no moral compass, but they also lack the foresight required to pursue any far-reaching act of grave consequence.
At times however, Cleckley's work offers unfortunate reminders of the era in which it was written. Much of his psychological analysis is couched in Freudian interpretations, like the Oedipus complex. A chapter on "Sexual Deviation" is filled with outdated and offensive depictions of homosexuality. And of course, there has been significant progress in psychology in general and the study of psychopathy in particular since The Mask's publication. Yet as a whole, the book offers a thorough depiction of the psychopathic personality that is likely to stand the test of time. For readers like me looking for a basic introduction to the subject, Cleckley's book serves its purpose as a clarification of psychopathic behavior.
The most useful part of Cleckley's book is the 200 pages devoted to case studies of psychopathic patients observed under his care. These portraits form a cohesive profile of the psychopath as an otherwise intelligent individual with a startling inability to pursue long-term goals or act with consequences in mind. They lie on a whim, steal paltry sums of money, drink to excess, pursue frequent sexual encounters without affection and generally have no comprehension that their actions are harmful or troubling to those around them. Cleckley refreshingly refrains from sensationalism in these pages. Despite popular culture's depiction of the conscience-less serial killer, the psychopaths Cleckley encounters may threaten violence, but rarely (if ever) carry out regular acts of serious brutality. The cases described in these pages may have no moral compass, but they also lack the foresight required to pursue any far-reaching act of grave consequence.
At times however, Cleckley's work offers unfortunate reminders of the era in which it was written. Much of his psychological analysis is couched in Freudian interpretations, like the Oedipus complex. A chapter on "Sexual Deviation" is filled with outdated and offensive depictions of homosexuality. And of course, there has been significant progress in psychology in general and the study of psychopathy in particular since The Mask's publication. Yet as a whole, the book offers a thorough depiction of the psychopathic personality that is likely to stand the test of time. For readers like me looking for a basic introduction to the subject, Cleckley's book serves its purpose as a clarification of psychopathic behavior.
May 28, 2018
An immensely useful read for those interested in psychopathy, particularly if you are/were a Psychology/Psychiatry/Criminology student. Keep in mind that it was originally published in 1941, and you will have to sit through an entire chapter which calls homosexuality a mental disorder. Barring that, this book is one of the cardinal works on psychopathy, from a pioneer in the field, and it contains tens of detailed cases and clinical considerations from a practitioner who believed that psychopathy should have its own classification and should be dealt with differently by a system which was not equipped to treat this disorder. It's pretty long, so I would only recommend it to those armed with patience.
August 4, 2014
Cleckley can write about all the myriad ways circumscribed to scrubbing toilet bowls while somaticizing such tribulations through delineating the less than perfunctory actions required to achieve such immaculate results and still find himself amenable even to the most dyspeptic individual as well as still be considered the pioneer in such a boring field.. entertaining you quite propitiously along the way! His writing style is superb!
May 13, 2015
I learnt all I can about sociopaths from this book. The case studies were by far the most interesting part of the book. Can be a little dry and it's definitely out dated. Most of the behaviours in this book that point to someone being a sociopath are socially acceptable ways for people to behave today.....so either the book is REALLY out of date or we are living in the era of the sociopath.
July 21, 2016
Hervey Cleckley is regarded as the father of the field of psychopathy studies. His first book was published in 1941, and this version of the book is his 1975 revised edition. He died in 1984, and the last edition of this book came out in 1888. It is a fascinating read, but it does require dedication to one's purpose to see it through to the end. Mr. Cleckley's writing style is to be commended, but he is nonetheless writing from a medical stand point, and the average lay person must focus carefully on the text in order to fully learn from it.
For any author considering creation of psychopathic characters, this book is a must read. The case studies alone will be of invaluable aid to accuracy. Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of this book is in its latter portions, where Mr. Cleckley observes the character of the psychopath in history and in literature.
We can all of us only ever pray to be spared dealing with a real life psychopath, but for anyone who has the painful experience of it, this book brings with it much clarity on the nature of the human disaster, even though it regrettably offers little in the way of solutions.
For any author considering creation of psychopathic characters, this book is a must read. The case studies alone will be of invaluable aid to accuracy. Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of this book is in its latter portions, where Mr. Cleckley observes the character of the psychopath in history and in literature.
We can all of us only ever pray to be spared dealing with a real life psychopath, but for anyone who has the painful experience of it, this book brings with it much clarity on the nature of the human disaster, even though it regrettably offers little in the way of solutions.
January 19, 2008
I just remembered this book from way back. I think I must have read this one sometime in the late 1970's or early 1980's. It is very hard sledding being a textbook written I believe in the 1940's. I took nearly a year to read it -- I was doing other reading also, but largely it was my intent to read this slowly and to absorb it thoroughly. I was spurred into this by hearing Dr. Laura -- oh yes, not intentionally tuned in but in passing I heard some discussion of a caller which led me to lissten to her response. I'm ever so glad I did. This book was part of her answer -- she said this was the definitive explanation of what a sociopathic personality is. While not a fan of Dr. Laura -- I am a believer in her answer to that caller and I am a believer in the truth of her praise of this book.
March 24, 2020
One of the earliest works on psychopaths. Very relevant now as we're seeing the mask start to slip in the face of our current crisis. Already there are those who are openly calling for allowing the virus runs it course and "Weed out" the elderly and already sick. They've always been here, but the last few years they've been getting bolder.
June 4, 2008
An amazingly outdated yet completely fascinating description of the modern psychopath. With tons of actual case studies, you will not believe what you read here. Truth is stranger than fiction. It's hard to find, and you have to slog through parts, but it is worth it.
August 25, 2019
First published in 1941 and revised numerous times, I read the 5th edition published in 1975.
Whilst updated as time passed, the 5th edition still included the now known to be incorrect hypothesis that homosexuality is a mental disorder. Asides for this the book, although written academically, and as such quite dry, is up to par with the theories of today.
I encoutered mention of this work in Robert D Hare's Without Conscience which noted it was one of the pivotal and first works on psychopathology.
It is an interesting book, yet I found the manner in which it is written made the 596 pages feel more like 1,000. I wouldn't recommend it for recreational reading, however if you have an interest in the topic it is quite the seminal work and worthwhile to see where theories and practice came from.
Whilst updated as time passed, the 5th edition still included the now known to be incorrect hypothesis that homosexuality is a mental disorder. Asides for this the book, although written academically, and as such quite dry, is up to par with the theories of today.
I encoutered mention of this work in Robert D Hare's Without Conscience which noted it was one of the pivotal and first works on psychopathology.
It is an interesting book, yet I found the manner in which it is written made the 596 pages feel more like 1,000. I wouldn't recommend it for recreational reading, however if you have an interest in the topic it is quite the seminal work and worthwhile to see where theories and practice came from.
January 29, 2016
I expected a rather different book when I decided to read this. I thought it would afford me some better understanding of the psychopathic personality. Instead, the author presented many case histories of people in all walks of life who didn't act in ways one would expect from a psychopath, but rather in flamboyant, self-destructive, illegal and bizarre behavior in ways I would think are more often associated with alcohol abuse and/or severe lack of impulse control. More, in fact, in keeping with my experiences with people with borderline personality disorder. I am not a psychiatrist, and therefore am probably wrong, but I am disappointed with this book.
November 13, 2014
Here's one of the first formal studies of psychopathy, under that name. There are several "flavors" of psychopaths. This one's about psychopaths who are lifetime screw-ups. They just can't get their life together. To the people around them, they're like a bad odor. To themselves, they're just strolling through life, oblivious to the havoc they wreak.
I don't think this book is in print, but you might find the PDF online.
By the way, I consider sociopaths and psychopath the same thing. It's unclear to me whether I'm correct on this point; but I think I am.
I don't think this book is in print, but you might find the PDF online.
By the way, I consider sociopaths and psychopath the same thing. It's unclear to me whether I'm correct on this point; but I think I am.
February 26, 2008
First written in 1941, a seminal work on psycopaths. However, written 1941 = language and social conditions that no longer exist. Available for free on-line as a pdf.
April 25, 2021
The classic study about narcissistic personality disorder.
Available at the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/maskofsan...
Available at the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/maskofsan...
August 12, 2012
A clinical textbook on psychopathy. I read this in college after a friend recommended it.
January 14, 2013
Amazing Book and a must read for someone who wishes to understand the depth in being human/inhuman. Human is an animal and the line between normal and abnormal is thin, biased and often misleading.
September 29, 2013
I couldn't take it anymore so I'm calling it quits on this one, although it sits proudly on my bookshelf at work!
October 9, 2015
Interesting to know there's thin line between saint and psychopath.
May 22, 2021
This is one of the first books in the US to attempt to codify the traits of psychopathy. It seems psychopathy used to be a sort of catch-all term for patients who didn't appear to qualify for diagnoses of psychotic or neurotic conditions, and could therefore be considered "sane," but still exhibited some form of maladjustment that severely impacted relationships with other people and society at large. These people who seemed to defy treatment (consciously and unconsciously) began to accumulate in mental hospitals. Psychiatrists began to pool their case histories together, research began to compile statistics, and eventually traits and patterns of behavior began to emerge. This book attempts to coalesce that research into a personality type describing people who compulsively lie, behave in antisocial and self-destructive ways, exhibit relentless narcissism, feel little to no remorse or emotion, and fail to find fault with themselves: the psychopath.
The book begins with a very brief and broad overview of mental illness and ideas of sanity and insanity at the time (this book was originally published in 1941), then plunges headlong into case histories before beginning to delineate the characteristics of psychopaths. I found this to be a very interesting idea because it allows people to experience these patients' lives free from academic dogma. The author tries to keep these descriptions as factual as possible, but some editorializing does creep in, especially with the women. I've studied psychopathy a fair bit, but I think anyone reading this book would see the common thread that weaves through these peoples' profiles, and notice the traits and behaviors that cause these people problems that lead to jail and/or mental hospitals.
After a brief discussion of psychopathy in the medical literature, the next chapters differentiate psychopathy from various other mental illnesses, disorders, and personality types. Some of these differences seem obvious: psychosis, alcoholism, neurosis. Others seem out of place at first but make interesting points: genius, hedonism. Chapters about antisocial behavior in general are very helpful, because not all people who commit antisocial acts are psychopaths, and the differences between antisocial and psychopathic personalities can be very subtle. The chapter about sexual deviance stood out most to me among all these. It's important to remember that this book was written during the time that homosexuality was considered a mental disorder. The author spends most of the chapter discussing the difference between homosexuality and psychopathy, and very little on other sexual behavior, generally concluding that psychopaths engage in sex less for pleasure than pure impulse. What I found most interesting, and what I wish the author had spent more time elaborating, is the recognition of psychopathic sexual sadists as extraordinarily dangerous people. He also identifies two grandiose and manipulative behaviors commonly attributed to psychopathic serial killers: inserting oneself into the investigation and returning to the scene of the crime, especially as it's being investigated. To me, the fact that these behaviors are now widely known shows how much Cleckley got right.
The second half of the book lays out Cleckley's model of psychopathy, beginning with a list of traits and behaviors. Hare created the modern-day Psychopathy Checklist which lists 20 of these. He was strongly influenced by Cleckley's list of 17, so it's no surprise that there's a great deal of overlap, but I was struck by the direction that the research and clinical experience was pointing, even nearly a hundred years ago. Hare's list contains several of Cleckley's original 17: superficial charm, irresponsibility, compulsive lying, lack of remorse, impulsivity, poor behavioral controls, failure to accept responsibility for one's actions, lack of realistic long-term goals, shallow emotions, sexual promiscuity, many short-term relationships. Although not part of the modern Psychopathy Checklist, some of Cleckley's traits are usually demonstrated by psychopaths: lack of nervousness or immunity to fear, egocentricity and narcissism, intelligence, and suicide rarely carried out.
Much of the rest of the book delves into the research of the time to attempt to answer important questions. What causes psychopathy? How can it be treated? How should society handle psychopaths? The answer to these questions, ultimately, is the same as it is today: we don't really know. I will say that Cleckley seemed to give "upstanding" families a pass when exploring nature vs. nurture's role. The fact that many psychopaths in his experience came from middle- to upper-class families with no backgrounds of criminal activity or mental illness seemed to argue against strong environmental and genetic factors. It seems like Cleckley couldn't see the forest for the trees since we know now that environment (especially in early childhood) and genes play a large part in the development of psychopathy, and he spent very little time exploring family background except as it differed from the psychopath's behavior. I think this is partly due to the author's disdain for Freudian and Jungian analytic interpretations. In his view, symbolism and analogy are unverifiable and therefore unscientific and offer no useful explanation or data regarding mental illness, including psychopathy. The story about the psychological symbolism of the toenail made me laugh out loud. I think Cleckley is mostly correct in this regard, although there does seem to be some sort of symbolism at work in psychopathic serial killers, such as Ted Bundy killing his girlfriend or Gary Ridgway killing his mother over and over again. I doubt that Cleckley would be surprised to find out that even though we know more today about how psychopathy arises, we still have no concrete answers about how to prevent it or treat it.
The book closes with a discussion about what to do with psychopaths. Cleckley argues throughout the book that psychopaths are just as unable to function as severe schizophrenics even though they appear "sane." Many mental hospitals didn't want them, because they were treatment-averse, took up space that could be better used by people who could actually be helped, and generally caused problems among staff and patients. Jail was no help either, because psychopaths usually can't be rehabilitated. Acknowledging both of these facts, Cleckley argued that the law should recognize psychopaths as people that society should be protected against. He advocated for legal recognition of psychopathy and mechanisms for either indefinite commitment or constant outpatient supervision. He favored the Durham rule (not guilty by reason of insanity due to mental disease or defect) over the M'Naghten rule (not guilty by reason of insanity due to not knowing the criminal act was wrong), though he acknowledged that this might give psychiatrists and psychologists too much power over a criminal's ultimate fate, and the Durham rule fell out of use in America for that very reason. We seem to be in exactly the same position today. It's not illegal to be a psychopath (nor should it be), but we can only watch and wait until a psychopath commits a criminal act, sometimes so breathtaking in scope and scale that society is changed forever due to the acts of a single person's selfish whims. Prison seems to be the only recourse because psychopaths know what they're doing is wrong and no therapy we have so far can consistently and effectively turn them from their antisocial path, but rehabilitation is unlikely. Cleckley tries to end on a hopeful note, but almost a century later, little has changed.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic. Cleckley's work is compelling. His clinical experience and case histories add depth to his already-meticulous research. Even when he draws the wrong conclusions based on what we know today (which is infrequent), his ideas are still on the right path. He also freely acknowledges his work as incomplete and at times paradoxical, because psychopathy is a problem of extraordinary reach and complexity. Occasionally the author appears to veer away from objectivity into self-righteous judgement, but he always tries to bring it back to science as it was understood at the time. There may be a temptation to just close the book and discount the author as a racist, homophobe, misogynist, whatever, but the discomfort or anger is worth not just the insights and groundwork on psychopathy but the historical perspective on mental illness and society in general.
The book begins with a very brief and broad overview of mental illness and ideas of sanity and insanity at the time (this book was originally published in 1941), then plunges headlong into case histories before beginning to delineate the characteristics of psychopaths. I found this to be a very interesting idea because it allows people to experience these patients' lives free from academic dogma. The author tries to keep these descriptions as factual as possible, but some editorializing does creep in, especially with the women. I've studied psychopathy a fair bit, but I think anyone reading this book would see the common thread that weaves through these peoples' profiles, and notice the traits and behaviors that cause these people problems that lead to jail and/or mental hospitals.
After a brief discussion of psychopathy in the medical literature, the next chapters differentiate psychopathy from various other mental illnesses, disorders, and personality types. Some of these differences seem obvious: psychosis, alcoholism, neurosis. Others seem out of place at first but make interesting points: genius, hedonism. Chapters about antisocial behavior in general are very helpful, because not all people who commit antisocial acts are psychopaths, and the differences between antisocial and psychopathic personalities can be very subtle. The chapter about sexual deviance stood out most to me among all these. It's important to remember that this book was written during the time that homosexuality was considered a mental disorder. The author spends most of the chapter discussing the difference between homosexuality and psychopathy, and very little on other sexual behavior, generally concluding that psychopaths engage in sex less for pleasure than pure impulse. What I found most interesting, and what I wish the author had spent more time elaborating, is the recognition of psychopathic sexual sadists as extraordinarily dangerous people. He also identifies two grandiose and manipulative behaviors commonly attributed to psychopathic serial killers: inserting oneself into the investigation and returning to the scene of the crime, especially as it's being investigated. To me, the fact that these behaviors are now widely known shows how much Cleckley got right.
The second half of the book lays out Cleckley's model of psychopathy, beginning with a list of traits and behaviors. Hare created the modern-day Psychopathy Checklist which lists 20 of these. He was strongly influenced by Cleckley's list of 17, so it's no surprise that there's a great deal of overlap, but I was struck by the direction that the research and clinical experience was pointing, even nearly a hundred years ago. Hare's list contains several of Cleckley's original 17: superficial charm, irresponsibility, compulsive lying, lack of remorse, impulsivity, poor behavioral controls, failure to accept responsibility for one's actions, lack of realistic long-term goals, shallow emotions, sexual promiscuity, many short-term relationships. Although not part of the modern Psychopathy Checklist, some of Cleckley's traits are usually demonstrated by psychopaths: lack of nervousness or immunity to fear, egocentricity and narcissism, intelligence, and suicide rarely carried out.
Much of the rest of the book delves into the research of the time to attempt to answer important questions. What causes psychopathy? How can it be treated? How should society handle psychopaths? The answer to these questions, ultimately, is the same as it is today: we don't really know. I will say that Cleckley seemed to give "upstanding" families a pass when exploring nature vs. nurture's role. The fact that many psychopaths in his experience came from middle- to upper-class families with no backgrounds of criminal activity or mental illness seemed to argue against strong environmental and genetic factors. It seems like Cleckley couldn't see the forest for the trees since we know now that environment (especially in early childhood) and genes play a large part in the development of psychopathy, and he spent very little time exploring family background except as it differed from the psychopath's behavior. I think this is partly due to the author's disdain for Freudian and Jungian analytic interpretations. In his view, symbolism and analogy are unverifiable and therefore unscientific and offer no useful explanation or data regarding mental illness, including psychopathy. The story about the psychological symbolism of the toenail made me laugh out loud. I think Cleckley is mostly correct in this regard, although there does seem to be some sort of symbolism at work in psychopathic serial killers, such as Ted Bundy killing his girlfriend or Gary Ridgway killing his mother over and over again. I doubt that Cleckley would be surprised to find out that even though we know more today about how psychopathy arises, we still have no concrete answers about how to prevent it or treat it.
The book closes with a discussion about what to do with psychopaths. Cleckley argues throughout the book that psychopaths are just as unable to function as severe schizophrenics even though they appear "sane." Many mental hospitals didn't want them, because they were treatment-averse, took up space that could be better used by people who could actually be helped, and generally caused problems among staff and patients. Jail was no help either, because psychopaths usually can't be rehabilitated. Acknowledging both of these facts, Cleckley argued that the law should recognize psychopaths as people that society should be protected against. He advocated for legal recognition of psychopathy and mechanisms for either indefinite commitment or constant outpatient supervision. He favored the Durham rule (not guilty by reason of insanity due to mental disease or defect) over the M'Naghten rule (not guilty by reason of insanity due to not knowing the criminal act was wrong), though he acknowledged that this might give psychiatrists and psychologists too much power over a criminal's ultimate fate, and the Durham rule fell out of use in America for that very reason. We seem to be in exactly the same position today. It's not illegal to be a psychopath (nor should it be), but we can only watch and wait until a psychopath commits a criminal act, sometimes so breathtaking in scope and scale that society is changed forever due to the acts of a single person's selfish whims. Prison seems to be the only recourse because psychopaths know what they're doing is wrong and no therapy we have so far can consistently and effectively turn them from their antisocial path, but rehabilitation is unlikely. Cleckley tries to end on a hopeful note, but almost a century later, little has changed.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic. Cleckley's work is compelling. His clinical experience and case histories add depth to his already-meticulous research. Even when he draws the wrong conclusions based on what we know today (which is infrequent), his ideas are still on the right path. He also freely acknowledges his work as incomplete and at times paradoxical, because psychopathy is a problem of extraordinary reach and complexity. Occasionally the author appears to veer away from objectivity into self-righteous judgement, but he always tries to bring it back to science as it was understood at the time. There may be a temptation to just close the book and discount the author as a racist, homophobe, misogynist, whatever, but the discomfort or anger is worth not just the insights and groundwork on psychopathy but the historical perspective on mental illness and society in general.
January 6, 2018
This book is interesting, for the most part, from a historical perspective: we know more about psycopathy nowadays, so the book is of limited interest to those who want to learn about the topic. Still, Cleckey makes some interesting points, for instance regarding the ego-syntonic nature of the pathology (the psycopath is happy the way s/he is) and the way this pathology does not fit in with our notions of "insanity," as psycopaths suffer from no delusions and can be quite rational in some aspects of their lives.
The cases described in the book are, for me, the most interesting part. Cleckey definitely has an appealing writing style... although it sounds antiquated; or perhaps it is interesting because it is antiquated. The cases allow the reader to find behavioral patterns among the various psycopaths portrayed, and what I appreciated the most is that Cleckey concentrated on "everyday" psycopaths, not murderers or serious criminals. The pscycopaths in the book are usually cheerful, often apparently not malicious, but they are a challenge to those around them because of the disconnect between their words and their actions, their promises and their behavior.
All in all, this book is still worth a read.
The cases described in the book are, for me, the most interesting part. Cleckey definitely has an appealing writing style... although it sounds antiquated; or perhaps it is interesting because it is antiquated. The cases allow the reader to find behavioral patterns among the various psycopaths portrayed, and what I appreciated the most is that Cleckey concentrated on "everyday" psycopaths, not murderers or serious criminals. The pscycopaths in the book are usually cheerful, often apparently not malicious, but they are a challenge to those around them because of the disconnect between their words and their actions, their promises and their behavior.
All in all, this book is still worth a read.
October 6, 2013
Gives a good idea of the field of psychiatry as pertaining to the diagnosis of "psychopath" in the 1940s era and has really fascinating case studies & attempts to analyze famous & fictional people. This being the 1940s, the author does come with his own set of era-appropriate prejudices, though he seems to be on the progressive end for a white man for that era (i.e. he noted that homosexuals, for their deviations, seem to do very well, and possibly better than some heterosexuals, given the social pressures they have to deal with. He also wryly noted how the media seemed intent to portray all women as these shallow, 2-D creatures). A surprisingly easy read -- I was expecting something much denser and indecipherable so it was VERY pleasant surprise. The case studies also served as a fascinating example of how much a well-connected, well-off Caucasian male can get away with WITHOUT ending up destitute and homeless in that era.
January 7, 2018
The most entertaining books open with a bang.
"A millionaire notable for his eccentricity had an older and better balanced brother
who, on numerous fitting occasions, exercised strong persuasion to bring him under
psychiatric care. On receiving word that this wiser brother had been deserted
immediately after the nuptial night by a famous lady of the theatre (on whom he had
just settled a large fortune) and that the bride, furthermore, had, during the brief
pseudoconnubial episode, remained stubbornly encased in tights, the younger hastened
to dispatch this succinct and unanswerable telegram:
WHO'S LOONEY NOW?"
While the case studies and theory in the back half may be a little dry (excepting the individual who blew his mother up on an airplane "just because"), this is a wildly entertaining book, and an interesting peak into psychiatry before everything was all regimented and sanitized.
"A millionaire notable for his eccentricity had an older and better balanced brother
who, on numerous fitting occasions, exercised strong persuasion to bring him under
psychiatric care. On receiving word that this wiser brother had been deserted
immediately after the nuptial night by a famous lady of the theatre (on whom he had
just settled a large fortune) and that the bride, furthermore, had, during the brief
pseudoconnubial episode, remained stubbornly encased in tights, the younger hastened
to dispatch this succinct and unanswerable telegram:
WHO'S LOONEY NOW?"
While the case studies and theory in the back half may be a little dry (excepting the individual who blew his mother up on an airplane "just because"), this is a wildly entertaining book, and an interesting peak into psychiatry before everything was all regimented and sanitized.
May 11, 2015
The book has a very heavy language (not the kind of too much terminology, but of too much words and over-complex sentences).
It's a good description of the "psychopathic personality disorder", called this by the author, otherwise (as he explains) it falls somewhere under "antisocial personality disorder". It's split in four parts - intro, an overview of the patients he studied (about 20 cases), a comparison with other disorders and diseases and a description of the elements of the disorder, and a discussion on some of the unanswered questions (treatment, legal status, etc).
This is the basis for a lot of the following research (like the one of Robert B. Hare) on the topic of psychopaths, their behavior and their danger to society.
It's a good description of the "psychopathic personality disorder", called this by the author, otherwise (as he explains) it falls somewhere under "antisocial personality disorder". It's split in four parts - intro, an overview of the patients he studied (about 20 cases), a comparison with other disorders and diseases and a description of the elements of the disorder, and a discussion on some of the unanswered questions (treatment, legal status, etc).
This is the basis for a lot of the following research (like the one of Robert B. Hare) on the topic of psychopaths, their behavior and their danger to society.
April 19, 2017
I first heard about this book in a Kurt Vonnegut autobiography. I bought it because he recommended it for some reason I don't remember, it was some time ago. I read the whole thing just for fun, but it turned out to be more educational than fun. There were moments in the book that were a bit entertaining, or even close to what I would call "Short stories," or, the personal stories of patients/study subjects of Dr. Cleckley. My wife just read the book for that one section. This was supposed to be a birthday present to her, but I enjoyed it more. I don't remember everything from the book, but I'm certain to this day that I can still properly correct your mainstream definition of the term "Psychopath"
August 25, 2013
I disagree with plenty of the conclusions the author arrives at, and more than a few of the insights, explanations, an descriptions presented. That being said this work has informed a great deal of my own thinking on the complex subject of antisocial/psychopathic/sociopathic behavior, and despite its dry, academic nature I really enjoyed it.
Coincidentally, a saw a quote (I'm not sure of its source) just this morning that struck me forcefully:
"My mask of sanity is about to slip."
That is an absolutely chilling, terrifying quote.
Coincidentally, a saw a quote (I'm not sure of its source) just this morning that struck me forcefully:
"My mask of sanity is about to slip."
That is an absolutely chilling, terrifying quote.
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