Psychopathy  

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 This page Psychopathy is part of Psychopathy and psychopathology series. Illustrated by the head of Elagabalus, one of the five "mad emperors" of ancient Rome
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This page Psychopathy is part of Psychopathy and psychopathology series.
Illustrated by the head of Elagabalus, one of the five "mad emperors" of ancient Rome

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Psychopathy and psychopathology, are terms in contemporary criminology, psychiatry, psychology and the media used for a severe form of antisocial personality disorder. A focus of this wiki are fictional portrayals of psychopaths. A good introduction to the subject is The Mask of Sanity.

Contents

Psychopathology

Psychopathology is a term which refers to either the study of mental illness or mental distress, or the manifestation of behaviors and experiences which may be indicative of mental illness or psychological impairment.

See also

Psychopathy

Though in widespread use as a psychiatric term, psychopathy has no precise equivalent in either the DSM-IV-TR, where it is most strongly correlated with antisocial personality disorder, or the ICD-10, where it is correlated with dissocial personality disorder. --Jahsonic, Nov 2006

History

The current concept of psychopathy has been thematically linked to writings by Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle in Ancient Greece, whose description of The Unscrupulous Man is said to embody the characteristics of psychopathy:

"The Unscrupulous Man will go and borrow more money from a creditor he has never paid ... When marketing he reminds the butcher of some service he has rendered him and, standing near the scales, throws in some meat, if he can, and a soup-bone. If he succeeds, so much the better; if not, he will snatch a piece of tripe and go off laughing."

In 1801, Philippe Pinel described patients who were mentally unimpaired but nonetheless engaged in impulsive and self-defeating acts. He saw them as la folie raisonnante ("insane without delirium") meaning they fully understood the irrationality of their behavior but continued with it anyway.

The scientific study of individuals thought to lack a conscience flourished in the latter half of the 19th century. Notably, Cesare Lombroso rejected the view that criminality could occur in anyone and instead sought to identify particular "born criminals" whom he thought showed certain physical defects.

By the turn of the 20th century, Henry Maudsley had begun writing about the "moral imbecile", and was arguing such individuals could not be rehabilitated by the correctional system. Maudsley included the psychopath's immunity to the reformational effects of punishment, owing to their refusal to anticipate further failure, and punishment. In 1904, Emil Kraepelin described four types of personalities similar to antisocial personality disorder. By 1915 he had identified them as defective in either affect or volition, dividing the types further into different categories, only some of which correspond to the current descriptions of antisocial personality disorder.

In 1909, Birnbaum introduced the term "sociopathic", intended to emphasize the social causes of antisocial behavior.

The Mask of Sanity by Hervey M. Cleckley, M.D., first published in 1941, is considered a seminal work which provided a vivid series of case studies of individuals (mostly prisoners) described by Cleckley as psychopathic. Cleckley proposed 16 characteristics of psychopathy. The title refers to the "mask" of normality that Cleckley thought concealed the disorganization or mental disorder of what he saw as the psychopathic person.

A 1977 study, however, found little relationship with the characteristics commonly attributed to psychopaths and concluded that the concept was being used too widely and loosely.

The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders incorporated various concepts of psychopathy/sociopathy/antisocial personality in early versions but, starting with the DSM-III in 1980, used instead a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. This was based on some of the criteria put forward by Cleckley but operationalized in behavioral terms and more specifically related to conduct and criminality. The World Health Organization's ICD incorporates a similar diagnosis of Dissocial Personality Disorder. Both the DSM and the ICD state that psychopathy (or sociopathy) are synonyms of their diagnosis.

However, there remained no international agreement on the diagnosis of psychopathy. One author referred to it in 1987 as an "infinitely elastic, catch-all category". In 1988, Blackburn wrote in the British Journal of Psychiatry that the concept as commonly used in psychiatry is little more than a moral judgement masquerading as a clinical diagnosis, and argued that it should be scrapped.

Robert Hare developed a Psychopathy Checklist in 1980 based on the psychopath construct advanced by Cleckley, and later revised it in the 1990s (including the removal of two items). While the official diagnostic manuals had moved away from the concept as being too vague and difficult to reliably assess, Hare's questionnaire would be increasingly used in research studies on psychopathy mainly in forensic (criminal) settings.


Psychopathy is currently defined in psychiatry and clinical psychology as a condition characterized by lack of empathy or conscience, and poor impulse control or manipulative behaviors. It is a term derived from the Greek psyche (soul, breath hence mind) and pathos (to suffer), and was once used to denote any form of mental illness, often being confused with psychosis.

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Psychopathy" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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