Читать книгу The Mask of Sanity - Hervey M. Cleckley - Страница 18

Some of the patients who have been presented give concrete and abundant evidence in their behavior of a serious maladjustment and one of long duration. The diagnosis of psychopathic personality can seldom if ever be made with confidence except on such a record. Many persons at some time in their lives steal, cheat, lie, forge checks, indulge in foolish or destructive conduct, behave regrettably while drinking, and engage in unfortunate or paradoxical sexual activity. It can hardly be denied that some of the most stable and admirable of people have, during the course of achieving maturity, done all these things and worse. One important point that distinguishes the psychopath is his failure to learn and adopt a better and more fulfilling pattern of life. Another and perhaps a more fundamental point, which will be elaborated subsequently, is that psychopaths give a strong impression of lacking the fundamental responses and emotional susceptibility which probably play a dominant part in helping other people avoid this type of maladjustment.

It is, perhaps, worthwhile for us to consider now a patient whose record so far may not establish him beyond question with our group of those clinically disabled, but whose inmost reactions, in so far as one can judge them, strongly indicate that his disorder is the same and that his subsequent career will unmistakably place him.

Not long ago his parents made an appointment for him by mail. They accompanied him from a thriving community in Northern Florida where for the last sixty years the members of this family had been sober and respected citizens. There was a good deal of pride in these people, not a vain or pretentious self-esteem but a modest dignity that seemed to be cherished more as a responsibility than as an ornament.

These parents were truly concerned about their son. A dozen or more letters and reports from school teachers, from the family physician, the rector of the church, the scoutmaster, a high school coach, etc., arrived before the patient. From this material came many facts and opinions. The patient’s remote antecedents had lived in or about Charleston, S. C., in colonial times. They had never been famous for wealth or political influence, but in the Revolutionary War, as well as in the War Between the States, they had played a part which rooted them deeply in sectional traditions of distinction. In Florida, where this branch of the family had moved almost twenty years before the present century, they had established a good name and a sound, unsnobbish sort of prominence. Unlike the fictional Southerners preoccupied with (frequently exaggerated) glories of the past, the———’s had continued to live primarily in the present and to live rather effectively.

One school teacher who had done graduate work in psychology gave a good deal of consideration to this boy’s name, which, as a fair equivalent, we shall give as Pierre. As she pointed out, an Englishman can be called Percival, Jasper, Evelyn or Vivian without much risk, but in the ordinary American community such a name might endanger a boy’s soul. This young man had been christened Pierre ————, probably not as an extravagant gesture toward the exotic or to past glories, but almost as a matter of course. Such given names had been customary among these descendants of early Charleston Huguenots, and the present generation felt nothing conspicuous in what to them was so familiar and commonplace. In these parents speculation probably never arose about how a French name might sound to the fellows who played football in the vacant lot by the gas-house and “rabbitted” sissies with brick-bats. In agreement with his thoughtful teacher’s final conclusion, I am inclined to believe that this name, despite its potential dangers, caused the patient little difficulty. Even before he began school he was always called Pete. And his family conformed to this custom.

After his parents had been interviewed separately and together, Pete came into the office. He stood about six feet tall, held himself well, and appeared more mature than would be expected of a boy still eighteen. He at once impressed me as being enviably at his ease. Though not extraordinary in its features, his face was pleasant, candid, and alert. As our conversation progressed, indications of excellent intelligence soon appeared, along with suggestions of a character forceful but not undesirably self-assertive or aggressive.

Pete expressed disappointment about having had to withdraw from college and seemed remarkably frank in discussing the causes of his predicament. His story was the same incomprehensible story already heard from his parents and corroborated by the several detailed reports.

A forged check had brought Pete before the dean. He did not deny his guilt but, in a straightforward way, seemed ready to meet the consequences like a gentleman. The dean was puzzled, not that a young man might forge a check, but that it should be this particular man with his fine record, his appearance of sincerity, and his brave way of handling a situation presumably painful and embarrassing.

Several points made the incident difficult to explain. The check had been cashed at a little tavern by the gates of the college, a place virtually integral with the campus where students were intimately known to the cashier and the waitresses. The owner of this place, a college-life character for generations, prided himself on calling the freshmen by name and on his closeness to the boys. It would have been easy for Pete to cash such a check at dozens of places where his chances of escaping detection would have been vastly better. He had, it would seem, picked the place where his misdeed could most easily be traced to him. Furthermore, he had not chosen as victim someone unlikely to find him out, but the father of a girl he had been dating regularly during the seven months he had been at college. In forging the name, he had taken no great care to disguise his handwriting or to make a good imitation of the real signature.

There was difficulty in conceiving of a possible motive. With the dean Pete seemed thoroughly at ease. In a manly, well-controlled manner he expressed his profound regret, his willingness to make restitution or to submit to any penalty. The check amounted to only $35.00 and could scarcely represent an urgent need or something deeply longed for. Pete’s allowance, while not injudiciously large, was a little more than the average among his fellows. Despite his apparent frankness he could give the dean no substantial reason for the self-damaging act by which he had neither gained nor hoped to gain anything of consequence. During a prolonged consideration of the affair Pete remained so calm, so free from ordinary signs of guile and excuse-making, that those in authority could not dismiss the possibility of some point that this boy might, through honor or chivalry, be concealing. No definite hypothesis of this sort could be devised but the dean, despite such plain indications for drastic action, decided to temporize. Meanwhile, another forged check, this time for $15.00, showed up. This was drawn on the account of a lady in his home town, an intimate friend of his mother’s. While judgment was pending, two more forged checks were discovered—one for $15.00, another for $23.00.

Even now the authorities found it difficult to regard this boy as an ordinary forger. He showed nothing in common with people who are placed in the category of the delinquent. Instead of being expelled, he was allowed to withdraw from college.

He had made a good record during his seven months as a freshman and was popular with the students. Letters were contributed in his behalf by the high school principal at home, by his minister, a former Sunday School teacher, a scoutmaster, and even by the mayor of his home town. All of these expressed confidence in Pete as “a splendid young man of high moral standards,” “a regular fellow,” “a fine Christian character,” “a well-behaved and clean-minded boy who deserves every consideration.”

During our numerous interviews Pete seemed to express himself freely. “I just don’t know why I did it,” he said at first. At other times he said he must have been impelled by desire for money. As the subject was returned to from day to day his explanation varied. “It seems there was some sort of an impulse I can’t account for,” he once suggested. A few days later it was, “I just didn’t think what I was doing.”

No one familiar with the whole material of these interviews would have difficulty in seeing plainly that none of these reasons were very pertinent. Pete admitted he had not even spent the money. He had no particular need and no special plans that might call for extra cash. His statement about some impulse is, of course, interesting; but the more Pete discussed this the more evident it became that he was not referring to anything like compulsive behavior in the ordinary psychiatric sense. Apparently he fell upon this remark as upon his other ever-varying explanations in a vague effort to fill out verbally a framework of cause and effect which as human beings we all tend to manufacture when we cannot find it in actuality. There was no specific breathtaking and unbearable drive to do this irrational act, and no vivid fulfillment in its accomplishment. He had done it as a lazy man might swat a fly. Pete was not discovering real motives in himself but reaching at random for plausible or possible reasons that might have influenced some hypothetical person to do what he had done. It was rationalization in the purest sense but not adequate enough to convince the patient himself.

Among dozens of other possible explanations he mentioned that shortly before one of his forgeries he had received a letter from one of his friends in Florida mentioning the friend’s plan for a weekend trip to Miami. Pete recalled a feeling of envy and suggested that he might, childishly, have felt that he, too, would like to have a sort of treat or adventure or break in the routine. By getting this extra money he would, in a vague way, be keeping up with his friend, having a little lark, or indulging himself in a sort of reward or bonus. Or he might think up some way to spend the money that would constitute an equivalent to his friend’s week end of pleasure. Under discussion this, too, broke down as a factor of much pertinence. The envious thought of his friend’s trip had been brief and trivial. It had not preoccupied him or exerted strong or persistent emotional pressure as sometimes such apparently illogical and inadequate factors do exert in human behavior. And he had neither executed nor continued to plan any adventure in which the money might be used or wasted.

The patient realized that all the impulses he mentioned were without strength to drive him into a dangerous or even a mildly unpleasant act. The more one talked with him the more plain it became that he had realized how readily such forgeries could be detected and laid at his feet and that he had, before and during the acts, been far from unaware (intellectually) that serious and undesirable consequences were likely to follow. There was no question of Pete’s having been, in the ordinary sense, merely thoughtless or impulsive. He was not negligent in reason and foresight, but somehow the obvious, and one would think inevitable, emotional response that would inhibit such an act did not play its part in his functioning. There had been no anxious brooding over consequences, no conscious struggle against temptation or overmastering impulse. The consequences occurred to him, but rather casually, and he did not worry about them even to the point of carefully estimating his chances of getting away with the forgeries undetected, or just what penalties he might face. He drifted along, responding to rather feeble impulses but without adequate consideration of consequences.

This boy, as he clearly pointed out, had no inclination to leave college. He had been remarkably free of homesickness and, in fact happier, he said, than ever before in his life. He had chosen the college himself, largely on the basis of renown and social prestige. Though very much smaller, it was regarded by many as more or less equivalent to Harvard or Yale. He had won a scholarship awarded by a civic group in the town where he lived, on the basis of character and all-around qualities rather than on mere superiority in grades. He had no difficulty in passing examinations and obtaining admission at the college of his choice.

In this discussion several points of interest emerged. Until his last year in high school he had planned to go to West Point. There had never been, he admitted, any real interest in military life, and he frankly stated he had never intended to remain in the army after graduation. The idea of wearing an impressive uniform and the most superficial aspects of being a West Pointer seem to have been almost his sole motive. In explaining his change of mind, he frankly spoke of his desire to be among wealthy and socially prominent people and pointed out the particular advantages of the place he had chosen. Such motives, of course, influence in a way most, if not all, people. But this young man seemed influenced to a degree truly remarkable. As the discussion progressed it began to appear as if such values alone affected him. In the ordinary climber or snob it is usual to find this sort of dominant attitude only under concealment that fools the subject if not the observer. With Pete there seemed to be no awareness that such aims should not be given primacy, and, indeed, exclusive sway, or that there was reason to pretend otherwise.

In further talk along this line his fundamental attitude began to shape up into something much less simple than that of the ordinary opportunist or the vulgar schemer. Something distinctly and almost terrifyingly naive emerged behind a readily volunteered and not very appealing life aim. It became clear that this was far from a truly dominant and persistent aim. Like momentary apparel, it had been donned, somewhat as revellers may try on for a moment paper masks or fancy costumes at a party, only after a moment to discard them. Pete was not a shrewd opportunist intently set on pursuing a policy of material success with little regard to ethics or esthetics. Gladly, and in a deep sense innocently and sincerely, he accepted such a scheme and such evaluations. And these motivations probably influenced his conduct more often than any other conscious motivation. But even here there was no persistence of aim, no goal regularly beckoning, no substantial emotional force driving, even in a poor or perverse channel, toward fulfillment. Such values prompted Pete, but their influence was more that of transient recurrent whims than of human-sized connation.

This bright and pleasant young man volunteered information about numerous acts in the past which had not been detected. He had occasionally stolen, usually articles of little value, from friends and from stores. No evidence of any distinct motive or any strong thrill of adventure could be brought out in connection with the petty thefts. He had also, with gracious and “between us as gentlemen” approaches, put pressure on a number of his father’s friends to “lend” him small sums which he never thought of repaying. During the previous summer he had, by complicated and ingenious schemes, secured sugar for a Negro man who made whiskey illegally. In this way he obtained several hundred dollars, nearly all of which he squandered aimlessly and unexcitingly while on houseparties with a group he liked to impress. Though he worried little about getting caught, he had proceeded with some caution and cunning. Even his closest acquaintances had not suspected him. Earlier, when rationing was in effect, he devised a method of stealing gasoline from an uncle who managed a business considered important in the war effort. Through this connection he gained access to relatively large quantities of gasoline and, by careful planning and clever execution, made off with a few gallons at a time until he accumulated enough to bring substantial sums on the black market. Though a member of the Honor Council in high school, he had never hesitated to cheat on examinations. He not only did this when he felt he might otherwise make a bad mark, but also routinely somewhat in the manner of a gentleman paying respect to the conventions, This practice had not been officially detected or become widely known among his classmates.

Pete did not bring out these facts painfully and with reluctance. It was not as though he were taking advantage at last of an opportunity to unburden himself by confession. Apparently he had never been burdened. Nor did he show that boastful relish sometimes seen in people who seem proud and defiant about the delinquent acts they confess. In a gentlemanly way he seemed to be discussing ordinary matters of a conventional life.

He had repeatedly spoken of his remorse about the forgeries at college and spoken convincingly of his resolution never to make such mistakes in the future. In telling of his earlier delinquencies, which had never been discovered, he did not spontaneously bring out an opinion that this sort of behavior also should be avoided, When reasons for this were suggested, he readily agreed. There seemed, however, to be little shame or real regret and no effective intention that would last much beyond the moment of its utterance.

Though a considerable number of delinquencies and examples of very badly adapted conduct emerged as this patient was seen over a period of time,{***} it is not these in themselves that so strongly suggest he shows the disorder called psychopathic personality. What is most suggestive of this disorder is very difficult to convey, for it came out in attitudes disclosed as he talked about his emotional relations, his principles, his ambitions, and his ideals. By citing concrete acts or failures to act it is easier to demonstrate such things than by commenting on what has been merely spoken, and what from this and the accompanying expressions, tones, etc., has been sensed or surmised. It may be worthwhile, however, to attempt a few points.

PETE’S LOVE LIFE

This attractive and fine looking young man had been going out with girls for several years. Apparently they found his attentions welcome. Though he sometimes spent the evening alone with a girl, he still preferred double-dating or getting together with several couples. He had almost entirely escaped the shyness and unpleasant self-consciousness that trouble so many boys in their teens. He had never attempted sexual relations and seemed to have less than ordinary conscious inclination in this direction. No overt homosexual inclinations could be brought out in ordinary interviews or with the patient under Amytal or hypnosis.

For over a year Pete had been going regularly with the daughter of a millionaire who had recently moved to Florida from the Middle West. Jane was only sixteen years old. Though not an only child, she had been born very late in her parents’ lives, and after her sister and two brothers were almost adults. The siblings had long ago married, leaving her to grow up as the center of her ageing parents’ concern and attention. This situation may account for the early overprotection and domination Jane experienced and for her tendency toward social withdrawal and her deep and painful insecurity.

Her parents, by now quite old, set in their ways, and out of touch with Jane’s world, sensed something wrong and set out on the disastrous course of pushing her, managing her, and trying by an irresistible tour de force to make her precipitately into a reigning belle.

A few years earlier her mother had nagged her day and night about overexerting herself, had insisted that she have breakfast in bed and not arise until 10:30 A.M. She had also insisted that she take tomato juice between meals (for vitamins) and milk (for calories). There had also been arguments about taking a nap every afternoon, swallowing numerous vitamin pills or unneeded laxatives, and carrying out all sorts of quackish health rituals which had attracted the mother. Now this frustrated, frightened, and unprepared girl was pushed suddenly into equitation instructions, tennis every other afternoon, private lessons in Italian, elaborate parties with imported champagne. The mother took her to New York and arranged some rather artificial frolics at the Stork Club and El Morocco. There were also yachting parties during which this sensitive girl tried valiantly to make conversation and carry out the motions of gaiety from Daytona to Miami. Jane seemed like a gun-shy yearling pointer and promptly developed nocturnal enuresis.{†††}

The more difficulty she showed in handling herself, the more vigorously her mother pushed her, and the more she suffered and showed her terror. Most of the young men herded by the mother’s almost ferocious efforts and by all sorts of indirect bribery to these overdone parties made almost open fun of Jane. Her uneasiness and dutiful but brittle efforts to carry out a false role led them to speak of her as a “drip.”

This good and essentially normal girl, in the midst of constant mockery which she, unlike her mother, often detected, found herself attended by Pete. He was without mockery. Nor did he, like some of the condescending youths drawn by parental largess, attempt lovelessly to feel her breasts and to initiate her into the intimacies of a soul kiss. Pete behaved “like a gentleman.” He was cordial, polite, and he treated her mother and father with a respect that seemed properly deferential in contrast with many in that brash, immature gang who came for the handout and the opportunity for mockery.

He was more acceptable also that the snide older men inclined to show her attention. Among these she encountered a few partial and cynical homosexuals who apparently enjoyed any travesty on what ought to be a normal coming together of girl and boy. Jane did not know which ones were the homosexuals, scarcely even that there was such a thing as homosexuality, but she sensed under their superficial politeness what seemed like subtle attitudes of defeatism, condescension, and only formality where it is natural to seek warmth. They gently mocked her taste in reading and in music and were politely supercilious about her clothes and about how she rode a horse.

After them is was almost a joy to be with Pete. Her parents, too, found him respectful and a lad of fine, manly qualities. He was obviously intelligent and lightly and unpretentiously he expressed principles of the highest, truest order.

Too much a child still and too backward to seek a mature heterosexual role, too inexperienced to recognize or even to imagine what a genuine lover might offer or seek, Jane found Pete the most acceptable companion available. Unacquainted with the feelings and attitudes of young men in normal love, or even with milder but real interests of this sort, she had no frame of reference in which to evaluate her chief suitor’s monumental inadequacy. She had, in fact, little means even of perceiving it.

Pete himself discussed his girl without the slightest awareness that he lacked any requisite of a romantic lover or of a satisfactory husband. Both of Jane’s parents encouraged his attentions. An impressive mahogany speedboat and a new Cadillac convertible were virtually put at his disposal. He found himself not quite the possessor of these and of many other luxuries but conspicuously in the center of them. It would not be difficult to imagine such a situation turning an ordinary boy’s head, confusing him with grandiose fancies, and, perhaps, initiating a career of delinquency.

Perhaps such an explanation is correct, but I am not convinced. Pete was not dazzled and swept off his feet. He was not, it would seem, particularly excited. He expressed a liking for Jane and her family, and showed evidence of being attracted by the outer appearance of things in this rather glittering world. There was no indication that wild passions for wealth had been aroused and a steady young man lured off toward false goals. Nothing seemed capable of arousing any real drive or passion in Pete, much less a wild one. The pseudo-ideals about wealth and prestige, and the half-hearted impulses of which he spoke had existed long before he knew Jane. They were, however, at best tepid and unsteady aspirations, not strong or really purposeful drives, not constantly beckoning temptations deflecting natural aims. Pete might let himself drift toward a fortune, and even, when caprice stimulated him, paddle a bit toward this goal or effigy of a goal, but he was not the sort of man to swim with frantic vigor toward either positive or negative shores. Fortune hunting might come nearer to arousing him than another aim, but even this did not challenge him to life and human purpose or bring to birth a long-range plan of action. Even in this direction he found nothing to which he could commit himself in actual emotion.

Though his plans were not definite, Pete admitted he felt he would like eventually to marry Jane. He had not weighed his chances to do so very carefully but he felt they were good, “Oh, yes indeed!” he replied, when asked if he were in love with her. As his feelings about her were discussed, it remained impossible to detect any sort of affective content to which those words might refer. The more one investigated Pete’s attitude the more strictly verbal his statement appeared. His reply was a reflex response, the carrying out of a superficially polite routine, a purely formal nod doing justice to vague conventions more or less to the effect that of course one loved a girl if he were seriously considering her for a wife. Pete approved of such conventions. Rather proudly, he denied any outstanding physical passion for her or any specific attraction of this sort. He sometimes held her hand and he kissed her goodnight. These contacts, one would judge, were little more stimulating to him than such doings between brother and sister. The ideas of kissing her as a lover would have seemed to him vaguely repellent, perhaps “common.” He was more neutral, however, than negative toward this as a possibility, and seemed pleased that he could say he had never given such things much thought. He was consecrated to higher and more practical aims.

As the discussion of his attitudes toward his girl developed, it became increasingly apparent that he neither liked nor disliked her. He had not questioned his heart particularly along these lines or so formulated it to himself, but it was plain that she was little more than something incidental in the eventualities toward which he felt himself drifting and was willing to drift. When this was suggested to him he agreed that it was correct, with no shame or sense of having been detected in anything to regret or explain.

“Many people put too much emphasis on love, it seems to me,” Pete said, not argumentatively or even with strong conviction, but somewhat gropingly, as if he were feeling his way toward some position on which he could base his comments. It was not hard to believe he might just as readily have drifted into the opposite position.

“I don’t feel the way so many other people do about love,” he continued. “Other things, it seems to me, are a lot more serious and important.” On being urged to make this point more concrete, he added: “Well, for instance, if a boy and a girl decide to marry and unite two families so they can own a good insurance business or a big pulp-wood mill.”

There was nothing that suggested active cynicism in this young man. He was shaping up something that might pass in his awareness as a sort of goal. In a sense his attitude was idealistic. It was at least the shadow or verbal form of what might be called an idealistic or “higher” type of impulse, but the shadow was, I believe, without substance. Even here one felt an affective hollowness, a lack of the energy that goes into purposive human functioning, and to such a degree as to convince one that this verbal evaluation could never muster sufficient strength, could never matter enough to him, to become a real goal or to make him work toward it consistently or with enthusiasm.

*****

His other activities, convictions, and relations, gave indications of a similar deficit in his functioning. In response to leading questions he mentioned numerous “ambitions.” He was not at all evasive and he seemed entirely unaware that his inmost self might contain anything incomplete, pathologic, or deviate. In fact, one felt that nothing could really embarrass this bright, agreeable, and poised young man.

“Another thing I’d like when I get older is to be a vestryman in the church,” he said, with what looked a bit like enthusiasm. I believe, however, that enthusiasm is a misleading word. His tone of voice, his facial expression, and the myriad other sub threshold details not clearly perceived, in which we feel out our evaluation of a person’s reactions, all suggested affect. But this affect did not, it seems, extend deeply enough into him to constitute enthusiasm or anything else that could move a person very much. Nor do I believe that what affect might have been present will be capable of directing him toward any consistent aim. A well-made cardboard box care-fully gilded could scarcely be distinguished by visual perception from a cubic yard of gold.

I do not think his expressed wish to become a vestryman can be accounted for by a desire on his part to impress people that he was penitent about the forgeries and meant to compensate for them in the future. I think this wish was as real as anything could be real for this person. It had been a feature in his plans over some years.

In discussing his motives he said, “I don’t exactly know why it seems such a good idea to be a vestryman. It just seems to me sort of pleasant and I think I’d like it. It might strike you as a little odd, too,” he continued thoughtfully, “because I’m really not very much interested in religion. Now Jack ——— and Frank ——— are terribly interested in religion. They’re all the time talking about it and bothering themselves. I’m not like that a bit. I can’t see any point in making such a commotion about something of that sort.”

To the next question he replied: “Oh I don’t mean that I don’t absolutely and completely believe every word of the Bible. And I believe everything the church teaches. Of course I believe things like that.” I hardly think he was trying to deceive me or, as this is ordinarily understood, trying to deceive himself. A person to whom rigid theological beliefs give comfort might deceive himself in order to overlook implausibility in what he would like to assume is true and might, I am sure all will agree, do so without being quite aware of it. This boy did not seem to have any such need. It seemed, with due respect to the difficulties of putting such matters into words, rather a case of there being nowhere within him any valid contrast between believing and not believing or even between a thing of this sort being so or not so.

“Probably why I want to be a vestryman,” he went on, “is because people seem to think a lot of them, consider them important, and sort of look up to them,” There was no sign of irony, playful or otherwise, toward the social group or toward himself. Sincerity is a word which for most people implies positive emotional reactions. Not merely in this boy’s superficial attitude, but in an important sense, one could say there was a striking lack of ordinary insincerity.

In discussing his relations with others he admitted a decline in his affection for his father. He expressed no negative feelings and said he felt, perhaps, he loved his father about as much as, and probably more than, one might expect of the average boy of his age. “But, being perfectly frank, I can’t say I love him the way I do my mother. I am crazy about mother. She and I are very close to each other.” By leading questions it was brought out that he estimated his love for his mother as deep and genuine. He rated it as a feeling not less strong than the maximum that an ordinary person can experience, though he was not boastful or extravagant in phrasing his replies. A few minutes later he mentioned, among other people, the mother of a male friend.

“Oh, Mrs, Blank is a wonderful person. She and I get on perfectly. She understands me. I love Mrs. Blank better than anyone.” “Do you love her better than your mother?”

“Yes,” he replied without hesitation, “I love Mrs. Blank a great deal more than I do Mother. I couldn’t love anybody as much as I do Mrs. Blank!”

He had been frequently thrown with this lady, but apparently his relations with her were superficial and there was no evidence of particular or uncommon affection on her part toward him. She had no idea that he would express himself about her in such a fashion.

A little later he said that his ideal of what a woman should be, and of the sort of wife he would like, was embodied in the fictional Scarlett O’Hara. It was pointed out that this character was thought by some to be portrayed as amazingly selfish, frigid, dishonorable, ruthless, faithless, and petty and that, furthermore, she was scarcely the sort of woman to make a husband happy. He did not deny any of this. Mrs. Blank, who in his own appraisal and in reality, was honest, faithful, gentle, and, in nearly all important respects, the opposite of Scarlett O’Hara, was now recalled to him and he was asked how he could choose both these incompatible figures as a single ideal. He then said that maybe he was mistaken about Scarlett. He had read the novel and remembered it in detail.

There was no indication in him of a reaction such as awakening to an error, or even of surprise accompanying his verbal withdrawal from his fictional heroine. He did not seem to feel any need to revise his attitude as the ordinary man does on finding himself in error. The fact that he had been, as admitted by himself, on the wrong track seemed in no way to stimulate him toward getting on another track. He impressed me as being this way about the most serious and practical matters, and no less so than in this small theoretical question. It was not hard to get the feeling that he had never been on any track at all, that he had not really been committed to his first proposition and so he had nothing to withdraw.

This young man’s parents, in his absence, spoke of his having been an unusually loving and demonstrative child until he was about fourteen years old. “We worried,” his mother said, “because he was too considerate and affectionate. He never did anything wrong. He would do so many sweet, attentive little things to show us how he felt. He used to stay at home and seem to want to be with us so much that I thought it might not be good for him.”

After fourteen a difference became discernible and finally striking. He gradually changed from being over attentive until, in recent years, he seemed cool and showed little convincing evidence of affection to his parents. He seemed to want to be out all the time. Though the parents felt uneasy about these changes, they reassured themselves. He did not drink and had the reputation of being very moral, “pure-minded” and proper. He was liked by his friends, did well but not brilliantly in school, and usually took the lead in superficial activities at clubs and social gatherings.

Occasionally incidents arose that briefly alarmed the parents. The boy, when he wanted to have his way about small matters, sometimes seemed utterly unable to see the other side of a question. Once when his mother was physically indisposed and needed to get a number of articles downtown, he refused to help her, saying that he was going to the movies with another boy. His indifference struck her as extreme, and she not only suffered considerable inconvenience and discomfort but also sharp hurt. That night when, as usual, he wanted the family automobile, his father refused him, pointing out that he had not behaved toward his mother in a way to deserve this favor. He reacted, according to his parents, as if an arbitrary and vicious injustice had been done him, showing what looked like a quiet indignation, politely controlled in its grosser aspects but consistent with what one might feel who is for no fault provoked and deeply wronged. Both parents felt that they had often given in to him too much.

On another occasion when he had shown unwillingness to put himself out in even the smallest degree for the comfort of his mother, who was then recovering from a serious attack of illness, his father had pointed out to him that his mother might have died and still was in danger. “Well,” he said, “suppose she did. Everybody has to die sometime. I don’t see why you make so much of it.” He seemed honestly surprised at his father’s reaction. In discussing this with me he still seemed to feel that the most important point in the matter was the factual correctness of his statement about mortality.

Unlike most psychopaths, this case as yet shows relatively little obvious disturbance in his social situation. There is no trail behind him now of a hundred thefts and forgeries, repeated time after time in clear knowledge of the consequences. He has, in general, avoided outraging his friends and acquaintances by vividly antisocial acts or distasteful and spectacular folly. Many of his contemporaries smoke, swap bawdy jokes with gusto, sometimes get a little drunk, and not a few indulge in illicit sexual intercourse. Not doing these things, by which “goodness” or “badness” in people of his age is often judged by the community, he has acquired a considerable reputation for virtue. He goes to church regularly. All this tends to offset what negative qualities he has shown and makes it hard for his friends to realize things about him they might otherwise grasp. Though far from being truthful, his frank manner and his ability to look one in the eye without shame have so far concealed most of his serious shortcomings, not only from his parents but also from a fair percentage of his acquaintances.

Many of Pete’s contemporaries do not, as a matter of fact, regard him as the excellent character and promising young man he appears in the eyes of his elders. He has no really close friends. Bound by no substantial attachments, he has, one might say, the whole of his time and energy for superficial relations and is able to cultivate many acquaintances with whom he is, in a sense, popular. He does not get close enough to anyone in true personal relations to be recognized well in his limitations or to be well understood. What little warmth he possesses is all on the surface and available to one and all. What he offers to the most casual acquaintance is all he could offer to friend, parent, or wife. In general he is accepted as a person representing virtue and manifesting affability. Having no serious interests or aims, he is free to devote more attention than others to social clubs and to young people’s organizations sponsored by school or church for moral purposes. It is easy for him to say the right things and go through the proper motions, for he has no earnest convictions or strong conflicting drives to cause confusion.

Behind an excellent facade of superficial reactions that mimic a normal and socially-approved way of living one can feel in this young man an inner deviation, an emotional emptiness, comparable in degree with what seems to lie at the core of schizophrenia. He lacks, however, all the characteristics by which a diagnosis of schizophrenia is made. Not only are the gross and demonstrable symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations, absent, but there is no oddness, no peculiar inwardness and constraint, no abstruse stiffness of manner, or any of the other subtle, sometimes inexpressible, qualities and shadings that one can feel in the case of simple schizophrenia or in those called schizoid personality. He is, on the contrary, glibly sociable, utterly at his ease. He mixes readily and tends to lead in his group. There is nothing guarded and shy on the surface of his personality and probably nowhere within the range of his consciousness.

Whether or not the formal diagnosis of psychopath is established in this case is a question I am willing to leave open. There is much in his conduct that would indicate such a disorder. It is not what he has done that points so strongly in this direction but how he feels and inwardly responds. When one deals with him directly he offers, more than the previous patients, an opportunity to sense at close range some of the attitudes one can often only surmise at a greater depth beneath the unaccountable conduct and the verbally and logically perfect front of the psychopath.