ABSTRACT
As early as Cleckley’s (1941/1976) original formulation of the modern understanding of psychopathy, women were included among those manifesting the disorder. Indeed, Cleckley provided clinical descriptions of two such women, emphasizing the maladaptive personality traits, such as callousness and remorselessness, that have come to be accepted as the defining features of psychopathy. Despite their prominence in early conceptualizations of the disorder, women have only been studied in the psychopathy research literature for a short time.
