Psychopathy, from psych (soul or mind) and pathy (suffering or disease), was coined by German psychiatrists in the 19th century and originally just meant what would today be called mental disorder, the study of which is still known as psychopathology. By the turn of the century 'psychopathic inferiority' referred to the type of mental disorder that might now be termed personality disorder, along with a wide variety of other conditions now otherwise classified. Through the early 20th century this and other terms such as 'constitutional (inborn) psychopaths' or 'psychopathic personalities', were used very broadly to cover anyone who violated legal or moral expectations or was considered inherently socially undesirable in some way.
The term sociopathy was popularized from 1929/30 by the American psychologist George E. Partridge and was originally intended as an alternative term to indicate that the defining feature was a pervasive failure to adhere to societal norms in a way that could harm others. The term psychopathy also gradually narrowed to the latter sense, based on interpretations of the work of a Scottish psychiatrist and especially checklists popularized by an American psychiatrist and later a Canadian psychologist. Psychopathy became defined in these quarters as a constellation of personality traits allegedly associated with immorality, criminality, or in some cases socioeconomic success.
Official psychiatric diagnostic manuals adopted a mixture of approaches, eventually going by the term antisocial or dissocial personality disorder. In the meantime concepts of psychopaths/sociopaths had become notorious among the general public and as characters in fiction.
Early literature Labels for personality and behavior patterns consistent with psychopathy exist in most cultures. In rural Nigeria, the term Aranakan, was used by the Yoruba people to describe an individual who "always goes his own way regardless of others, who is uncooperative, full of malice, and bullheaded." Similarly, the word Kunlangeta was used by the Inuit to describe "mind knows what to do but does not do it." The psychiatric anthropologist Jane M. Murphy writes that, in northwest Alaska, the term Kunlangeta might be applied to "a man who… repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting and, when the other men are out of the village, raping many women—someone who does not pay attention to reprimands and who is always brought to the elders for punishment."
Historical descriptions of people or characters are sometimes noted in discussions of psychopathy, with claims of superficial resemblance or retrospective diagnosisfor example, a vignette by Theophrastus in Ancient Greece concerning The Unscrupulous Man. On the other hand, the ancient Greek military statesman Alcibiades has been described as the best example of a probable psychopath – due to inconsistent failures despite his potential and confident speaking.Hervey Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity Figures of insanity (e.g. vagabonds, libertines, the "mad") have, at least since the 18th century, often represented an image of darkness and threat to society, as later would "the psychopath" – a mixture of concepts of dangerousness, evil and illness.
Early clinical concepts
Psychiatric concepts began to develop in the early 19th century which to some extent fed into the use of the term psychopathy from the late 19th century, when that term still had a different and far broader meaning than today. In 1801, French psychiatrist Philippe Pinel described without moral judgment patients who appeared mentally unimpaired but who nonetheless engaged in impulsive and self-defeating acts. He described this as insanity without confusion/delusion (manie sans délire), or rational insanity (la folie raisonnante), and his anecdotes generally described people carried away by instinctive fury (instincte fureur). American Benjamin Rush wrote in 1812 about individuals with an apparent "perversion of the moral faculties", which he saw as a sign of innate defective organization. He also saw such people as objects of compassion whose mental alienation could be helped, even if that was in prison or what he referred to as the "Christian system of criminal jurisprudence". In 1835 English psychiatrist James Cowles Prichard, based partly on Pinel's publications, developed a broad category of mental disorder he called moral insanity - a "madness" of emotional or social dispositions without significant delusions or hallucinations. Generally Prichard referred more to eccentric behaviour than, as had Pinel, out of control passions. Prichard's diagnosis came into widespread use in Europe for several decades. None of these concepts are comparable to current specific constructs of psychopathy, or even to the broader category of personality disorders. Moreover, "moral" did not necessarily refer at that time to morality but to the psychological or emotional faculties.
In the latter half of the 19th century the (pseudo) scientific study of individuals thought to lack a conscience flourished. Notably the Italian physician Cesare Lombroso rejected the view that criminality could occur in anyone and sought to identify particular "born criminals" who he thought showed certain physical signs, such as proportionately long arms or a low and narrow forehead. By the beginning of the 20th century the English psychiatrist Henry Maudsley was writing about not just "moral insanity" but the "moral imbecile" and "criminal psychosis", conditions he believed were genetic in origin and impervious to punishment or correction, and which he applied to the lower class of chronic offenders by comparison to "the higher industrial classes".Toch, H. Chapter 9: Psychopathy or Antisocial Personality in Forensic Settings. In T. Millon & E. Simonsen (Eds.) (2002) Psychopathy: Antisocial, criminal, and violent behavior New York, NY, US: Guildford Press The pathology of mind (1895) by Henry Maudsley, Chapter 3, p. 77
First uses of term
Initially physicians who specialised in mental disorders might be referred to as psychopaths (e.g. the American Journal of the Medical Sciences in 1864) and their hospitals as psychopathic institutions (compare to the etymologically similar use of the term homeopathic). Treatments of physical conditions by psychological or spiritualist methods might be referred to as psychopathic.Mental Medicine WF Evans. Originally published 1872
Up until the 1840s, the term psychopathy was also used in a way consistent with its etymology to refer to any illness of the mind. German psychiatrist von Feuchtersleben's (1845) The Principles of Medical Psychology, which was translated into English, used it in this sense, as well as the roughly equivalent new term psychosis, now traced back to Karl Friedrich Canstatt's Handbuch der Medicinischen Klinik (1841).The Catholic Encyclopedia (1909) William Griesinger (1868) and Krafft-Ebing (1886) also notably employed the term in distinct ways.
The use of the term in a criminological context was popularised by a high-profile legal case in Russia between 1883 and 1885, concerning the murder of a girl who had previously lived in Britain for some time, Sarah Becker (Sarra Bekker). The owner of the pawnbroker shop in which she worked and where her body was found, a retired military man Mr Mironovich, was eventually convicted on circumstantial evidence and imprisoned. In the meantime, however, a Ms Semenova had handed herself in saying she had killed Becker while trying to steal jewellery with her lover Bezak, a married policeman, though she soon recanted and changed her confession. Semenova was found not guilty following testimony from eminent Russian psychiatrist Prof Ivan M. Balinsky, who described her as a psychopath, still then a very general term. Dictionaries to this day note this as the first use of the noun, via British or American articles which had suggested a known murderer had been released and in some cases that psychopaths should be immediately hanged.Oxford English Dictionary 2011: Psychopath: 1885 Pall Mall G. 21 Jan. Psychopathy...We give M. Balinsky's explanation of the new malady. ‘The psychopath‥is a type which has only recently come under the notice of medical science.‥ Beside his own person and his own interests, nothing is sacred to the psychopath’. Article archive text via MLLE. SEMENOVA'S ACQUITTAL 1885 NY Times from Pall Mall Gazette. Online Etymology Dictionary: Psychopath cites instead a reference to the british Daily Telegraph's coverage of the case. Retrieved August 26th 2013Murder Most Russian: True Crime and Punishment in Late Imperial Russia Louise McReynolds, Cornell University Press, 18 Dec 2012 (spells as Sarra Bekker).
In 1888 Julius Ludwig August Koch first published on his concept of "psychopathic inferiority" (psychopathische Minderwertigkeiten), which would become influential domestically and internationally. He used it to refer to various kinds of dysfunction or strange conduct noted in patients in the absence of obvious mental illness or retardation. Koch was a Christian and also influenced by the degeneration theory popular in Europe at the time, though he referred to both congenital and acquired types. Habitual criminality was only a small part of his concept but the German public soon used the shortened version "inferiors" to refer to anyone supposedly suffering from an inherent ('constitutional') disposition toward crime.
Early 20th century Some writers would still use psychopathy in the general sense of mental illness, such as Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud in Psychopathic Characters on Stage. From H. Cleckley to DSM-IV-TR: the evolution of the concept of psychopathy toward the medicalization of delinquency by RP Henriques, 2009, Rev. latinoam. psicopatol. fundam. vol.12 no.2. (Translation option on right) By contrast influential German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, who had previously included a section on moral insanity in his psychiatric classification scheme, was by 1904 referring to specific psychopathic subtypes all involving antisocial, criminal or dissocial behaviour, including: born criminals (inborn delinquents), liars and swindlers, querulous persons, and driven persons (including vagabonds, spendthrifts, and dipsomaniacs). The influential Adolf Meyer (psychiatrist) spread the concept of constitutional psychopathy when he emigrated to the US, though unlike Koch he separated out cases of what was termed psychoneurosis.
After World War I German psychiatrists dropped the term inferiors/defectives (Minderwertigkeiten) and used psychopathic (psychopathisch) and its derivatives instead, at that time a more neutral term covering a wide range of conditions. Emil Kraepelin, Kurt Schneider and Karl Birnbaum developed categorisation schemes under the heading 'psychopathic personality', only some subtypes of which were thought to have particular links to antisocial behaviour. Schneider in particular advanced the term and tried to formulate it in less judgemental terms than Kraepelin, though infamously defining it as ‘those abnormal personalities who suffer from their abnormality or from whose abnormality society suffers.’Hitler's Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany Nikolaus Wachsmann, Yale University Press, 2004. Page 47 In a similar vein, Birnbaum, a biological psychiatrist, suggested from 1909 a concept similar to sociopathy, implying the social environment could determine whether dispositions became criminal or not.