What Is a Psychopath?

A definition of probably the most widely misunderstood disorder in the whole of psychiatry by Dr. Whiteley, who is medical director of the Henderson Hospital, Surrey, where he runs a therapeutic community for the treatment of people that the public have been conditioned to fear The term 'psychopath' has been incorporated into our vocabulary almost as a word of abuse. It is certainly an emotive word and conjures up pictures of a vicious, violent, and possibly sexually per-verted, criminal. The newspaper accounts of sensational murders, true-life stories such as Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and the film Bonnie and Clyde foster this image. Certainly some psychopaths do commit murder, but twice as many murderers have no psychiatric disability whatever. Certainly some psychopaths