The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality – by: Hervey Cleckley (1941)

This is the book that historically established the “psychopath” as an American fixture. At the time it was written the term “psychopath” was scarcely used and had no clear definition (like the term “witch” before the Malleus Maleficarum was written). The Mask of Sanity didn’t so much define the term as much as it identified the so-called phenomenon. It did this by using numerous case studies as examples, rather than any kind of concise, or even clear, scientific definitions. In fact, Cleckley’s methods of establishing the existence of psychopaths are a remarkable reflection of the reasoning used in the Malleus Maleficarum itself.

Needless to say, I was not impressed. And I’m even less impressed by the fact that so-called “experts on psychopathy” often refer to this book with religious tones, and unashamedly refer to Cleckley as the “founding father [of psychopathology]”. I list it here because it is a book I read after I started writing for this blog (while in Riverside County Jail, back in 2010), and because anyone interested in the rise of the psychopath myth should read it; because it is after all the primary source of the myth itself.