The American Psychological Association defines psychology as: “the study of the mind and behavior. The discipline embraces all aspects of the human experience — from the functions of the brain to the actions of nations, from child development to care for the aged.” Psychology, or at least the study of the mind and behavior, has been around since Antiquity, with some of the earliest instances tracing back to almost 3,000 years ago in Egypt and Greece. It has gone from ideas of the human soul and practices of trepanation to mental hospitals like Bedlam and the school of phrenology; the science of psychology has had a dynamic evolution through human history, seeing explosive growth in the past 150 years. One of psychology’s oldest interests
…show more content…
Cleckley was an American psychiatrist best known for writing The Mask Of Sanity, a collection of 13 case studies expressing the various traits of psychopathy, however, it was written as if it were a novel, rather than a strictly scientific essay. The book’s introduction starts by introducing sanity as a flexible concept, and asks, “Do we not, as a matter of fact have to admit that all of us behave at times with something short of complete rationality and good judgment?” (Cleckley, 1941). It continues on to say that although we sometimes exhibit psychopathic traits, we are capable of leading “normal” lives, due to a lack of psychosis. One of the strongest vignettes about psychopathy sees a man who tells fraudulent tales, but can easily pass them off as plausible events without delusion, and when caught in a lie, can play it off as a joke with little effort. Another study follows a man who was hospitalized in a mental ward. This subject caused so much trouble, that the ward then turned toward the police and had him incarcerated; he created such an uproar while locked up that the police looked to have him admitted to a hospital. Cleckley admits that psychopaths would have been included in Pinel’s “mania without insanity” and Prichard’s “moral insanity,” however rejected the idea of faculties, claiming that things such as intelligence and
Cleckley was an American psychiatrist best known for writing The Mask Of Sanity, a collection of 13 case studies expressing the various traits of psychopathy, however, it was written as if it were a novel, rather than a strictly scientific essay. The book’s introduction starts by introducing sanity as a flexible concept, and asks, “Do we not, as a matter of fact have to admit that all of us behave at times with something short of complete rationality and good judgment?” (Cleckley, 1941). It continues on to say that although we sometimes exhibit psychopathic traits, we are capable of leading “normal” lives, due to a lack of psychosis. One of the strongest vignettes about psychopathy sees a man who tells fraudulent tales, but can easily pass them off as plausible events without delusion, and when caught in a lie, can play it off as a joke with little effort. Another study follows a man who was hospitalized in a mental ward. This subject caused so much trouble, that the ward then turned toward the police and had him incarcerated; he created such an uproar while locked up that the police looked to have him admitted to a hospital. Cleckley admits that psychopaths would have been included in Pinel’s “mania without insanity” and Prichard’s “moral insanity,” however rejected the idea of faculties, claiming that things such as intelligence and