The Mask of Sanity, An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality.

Octavo, navy blue cloth (hardcover), silver letters and illustration to upper cover, 596 pp. Near Fine, with darkened endpapers. From Preface: Since the last edition of this book was prepared, many additional psychopaths have been observed pursuing their vivd patterns of maladjustment. A few encouraging reports of successful therapeutic measures have emerged. The number of patients concerned is, however, too small to furnish substantial evidence that a regularly effective means of dealing with the psychopath's disorder has been discovered. It is my increasingly strong belief that the immediate and practical goal of all concerned with this problem should be to promote a general understanding that these people have a social disability that is real and extremely serious. Adequate means must be provided to control legally these severely disordered patients like those long ago provided, and available today, for far less incompetent patients of other types. Even if a truly curative therapy is never devised, perhaps half the damage, crime, waste, useless disorder, and sorrow caused now by psychopaths could be eliminated by a reasonably wise use of such legal measures for control. Psychology, Psychiatry, Mood Disorders, Personality Disorders bxsli.…