PSYCHOPATHIC PERSONALITIES. — These are to be understood as those abnormal personalities who suffer and cause others to suffer (K. Schneider). In the last century, one often spoke of moral insanity (Pinel), of which Carpenter and Maudsley were prominent supporters; of manie raisonnante (Pinel), of folie lucide (Trélat), and of folie morale (Falret). Much emphasis was placed (Magnan) on the nosographic autonomy of such syndromes. Morel’s doctrine, which placed moral insanity within the framework of degeneration, directly influenced Lombroso’s early views (1872–85) on constitutional immorality: the born criminal, as a representative of true mental degeneration, with anthropological stigmata of somatic decline, a visible framework of ethical degradation. After 1885, Lombroso attempted to assimilate congenital delinquency into a variety of epilepsy, thus asserting an increasingly marked pathologism.
The first to systematically address the psychopathology and nosographic classification of psychopaths was J. L. A. Koch, who in 1893 published a thorough study entitled *Die psychopathischen Minderwertigkeiten*; for this author, abnormality equated to a deficiency, a lesser endowment: *minus habens*, abnormal, psychopath were equivalent terms. Jaspers, in 1913, sharply demonstrated the untenability of the position that, until then, had considered the concept of disease as a value concept, both in general medicine and in psychiatry: the value concept of what is pathological thus resolved into a concept of Being, free from value (*wertfreier Seinsbegriff*). In 1922, Gruhle, in his *Psychology of the Abnormal*, affirmed a clear separation between evaluation (*Bewertung*) and knowledge (*Erkennen*). For him, psychopath equated to abnormal, without any consideration of the value of the abnormal; thus, in this sense, the genius and the delinquent would be equivalent. In 1923, Kurt Schneider framed his conception on a far more practical level, seeking to group those abnormals with whom the physician deals. His definition, cited above, rests on no value judgment, as it admits the possibility that individuals *plus habentes*, abnormal precisely because of their value, may neither suffer nor cause others to suffer, and thus may not be psychopaths. In terms of Aristotelian epistemology, the abnormal is a more generic and extensive concept, while the psychopath is a more specific and comprehensive one. The concept of “norm” (cf. BIOMETRY; NORMOTYPE) encompasses important philosophical and psychological questions, whether as an ideal norm (what ought to be normal), a real norm (what is normal), an average norm (a general, biological-natural, rational concept, free from contradiction but formal and empty), or a norm of value (an individual, psychological-human concept, rich in content); however, all these concepts are relative: e.g., the concept of an average norm may be useful only in biological and natural science questions, while the concept of “norm as value” applies only to psychological and spiritual science questions. K. Schneider attempts to overcome the relativism of the norm concept with his idea of a “real average norm, free from value judgment”; yet in doing so, the individual is considered not in their comprehensible individuality, but in their incomprehensible externality—that is, as the average man, not as an individual.
Almost all authors today agree (Müller-Suur) in holding that abnormal personalities are more pronounced quantitative divergences (not qualitative) than those considered variations of a personality within the framework of the real average norm. The transition between normal and abnormal personalities occurs gradually, without clear boundaries, imperceptibly (at the extremes of a Gaussian curve).
Psychopathic personalities do not constitute anything “pathological,” if by “pathological” one means those psychic disturbances (qualitative abnormalities) conditioned by organic processes, their functional consequences, and their outcomes; that is to say, the somatic correlate of psychopathic personalities is not a disease or malformation. One might at most consider it a quantitative abnormality of structure or function. Classical psychiatry sharply and fundamentally separates psychopathic personalities (psychopaths) from psychoses, cyclothymia, and schizophrenia, which are rightly posited as “pathologies.” Even some English-speaking authors appear to return to this distinction today (Karpman). There are no transitional stages between psychopathic personalities and psychoses, even if a certain constitutional predisposition to the latter cannot be denied (e.g., schizoidism). Psychopathic personalities are congenital variations arising from a generic disposition, not necessarily hereditary; they are largely influenced by the development and fluctuations of their un-lived substrate (*underlebend*) and by the impact of emotionally charged events (*Erlebnisse*).
CLASSIFICATION. — Individual human traits can be systematically arranged, at least to some extent, and the various psychopathic types can be derived from their various exaggerations. The classification most widely followed today is that of Schneider, which is systematic because he considers the existence of a purely systematic patho-characterology impossible. Schneider describes a series of types, not directly comparable to one another, while admitting the possibility of numerous and varied combinations among them. A thorough knowledge of the descriptive features of psychopathic personalities is especially important for differential diagnosis with psychoses and thus for prognostic assessment. At times, differentiation can be extremely difficult, as often occurs, for example, in relation to the “defect” of schizophrenia.
Schneider distinguishes the following types:
1) **Hypertimic psychopaths**, simple and “compensated” (the latter do not seem to fall under true psychopathy but only under abnormalities): impulsive, lively, active subjects, yet negligent, superficial, full of good intentions that will never be carried out.
2) **Depressed psychopaths**, with a melancholic variant and a disposition to ill humor; these are cold, suspicious, grumbling, harsh, irritable, dysphoric, sometimes malicious and spiteful.
3) **Insecure psychopaths**, a variety not very distant from the previous one and largely reducible to Kretschmer’s “sensitive” types. This involves an inner insecurity, with little self-confidence, accompanied by shyness; often, though not always, the feeling of inadequacy concerns ethical conduct, with a marked sense of self-blame.
From this type of personality there frequently derive:
4) **Anancastic psychopaths**, the phobic, the obsessive (v. PSICOSI OSSESSIVA): through thoughts, representations, feelings, impulses, and compulsive actions, the fundamental psychopathological character of “compulsion” stands out—i.e., a content of consciousness from which the subject cannot free himself, even while judging it at the same time as absurd in its content or at least as rigidly dominant without any reason.
5) **Fanatical psychopaths**, markedly active, expansive personalities; the personal fanatic (querulous) fights for his alleged right, the ideological fanatic for his program. There are also, however, calm and taciturn fanatics, detached from reality, eccentric, fantastic, like some sectarian “matte Fanatiker” of Schneider’s; in jealous individuals—personalities not simply expansive but more complex (Kretschmer)—as well as in querulous individuals, “paranoid developments” may occur.
6) **Psychopaths in need of esteem** (*Geltungsbedürftige*): personalities who want to appear more than they really are. This need for esteem is displayed in an eccentric manner to attract attention, or through fabricated tales or outright lies—i.e., what was once called “fantastic psychology,” better described by the term *Renommieren*; these individuals, who might be called confidence tricksters, play a veritable theatrical role that real life denies them.
7) **Mood-labile psychopaths**: excessive reactivity in a depressive direction upon a foundation that, in itself, is not reactively determined; such ill humor, such dysphoria, almost always underlie excesses in drinking, vagrancy (*poriomania*), and prostitution. Here the ill humor is always primary; sometimes such mood-labile individuals are labeled “epileptoid,” but without justification and indeed incorrectly.
8) **Explosive psychopaths**: excitable, irritable, choleric personalities with primitive reactions (Kretschmer).
9) **Athymic psychopaths** (*Gemütlose*): personalities with little or no sense of compassion, shame, remorse, or honor; often cold, rigid, brutal, cruel, instinctive. One cannot speak here of a “weakness of moral sense” in the frenasthenic sense, since these subjects do not have congenital intellectual deficits; they are practically inaccessible to any attempt at correction, improvement, or education. It must not be forgotten that alongside criminal athymics (especially sexual offenders) there are also social athymics—iron-willed natures who “walk over corpses”; here intelligence is often excellent.
10) **Abulic psychopaths** (*Willenlose*): easily influenced, malleable, and thus partially reducible; their social face is marked by a lack of firmness.
11) **Asthenic psychopaths**, not in the physical but only in the characterological sense; subjects who complain of poor concentration and performance, impaired memory efficiency, and sometimes of *Erlebnisse* of depersonalization (the world of perceptions, one’s own feelings, and actions appear distant, unreal, faded).
Such classifications and typological subdivisions have often been criticized, and often with good reason. Psychopathic types are spoken of as if they were a diagnosis; yet these are merely frameworks that highlight only certain particular traits. The individual possesses countless other traits—indeed, innumerable and often very important ones, e.g., ethical ones—which, since they do not interfere with the diagnostic label, remain unclassified and in the dark. On the other hand, the typological designation of psychopaths often leads one to believe that a “total” or near-total understanding of the individual is possible, whereas classification is always incomplete and partial, based on characteristics situated at different psychic depths. Using J. H. Schultz’s concepts, one might say that there are psychopaths of the core (*Kernpsychopathen*) and psychopaths of the periphery or frame (*Randpsychopathen*).
A very important conceptual and methodological difference between psychopaths and psychoses lies in the fact that in the latter one tends to disregard content, theme, and individual imprint in order to penetrate the structural, the “formal”; whereas in psychopaths what is essential is the content, the *quid*. It is precisely this that makes descriptive classification of psychopathic types difficult; moreover, some characterological traits exclude one another, while others often coincide: a compensated hypertimic cannot be insecure, a fanatic cannot be abulic, even though the two opposites do not logically exclude one another; thus, hypertimics are not rarely explosive, and depressives are often asthenic. It is evident that “the immeasurable territory of the psychic being, even in its abnormal variants, cannot be abstractly dominated by any kind of clinical diagnosis or pattern of pathological nomenclature” (Schneider).
Nor should it be thought that the typological designation of a psychopath necessarily indicates something enduring: anyone may be insecure or in need of esteem in youth, and later lose these traits or almost completely compensate for them; this often happens in the case of asthenics.
Few authors have considered which personality traits can be weakened, strengthened, developed, or even formed by *Erlebnisse* and which cannot; in weaker dispositions (*Anlage*), the factor of malleability is very pronounced, e.g., in the insecure, the depressed, and the asthenic.
Kahn has clearly spoken of “psychopathic episodes,” whether endogenous or reactive; psychotherapy is effective on the latter because it too is an *Erlebnis*.
Nevertheless, keeping these clinical reservations in mind, typology (as Schneider explicitly acknowledges) can still be usefully employed today, despite its limited cognitive value.