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Concept information

Preferred term

psychopaths  

Definition(s)

  • The term psychopath was introduced by J.L.A. Koch in his 1891 monograph, Die Psychopathischen Minderwertigkeiten, in his description of “psychopathic inferiorities.” In 1939, Henderson described psychopaths in his book Psychopathic States as those afflicted with an illness: The term psychopathic state is the name we apply to those individuals who conform to a certain intellectual standard, sometimes high, sometimes approaching the realm of defect but yet not amounting to it, who throughout their lives, or from a comparatively early age, have exhibited disorders of conduct of an antisocial or asocial nature, usually of a recurrent or episodic type, who, in many instances, have proved difficult to influence by methods of social, penal, and medical care and treatment and for whom we have no adequate provision of a preventive or curative nature. The inadequacy or deviation or failure to adjust to ordinary social life is not a mere willfulness or badness which can be threatened or thrashed out of the individual so involved, but constitutes a true illness for which we have no specific explanation. [Source: Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime; Psychopaths]

Belongs to group

URI

http://data.loterre.fr/ark:/67375/N9J-QHCK87L3-T

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