ABSTRACT
The psychopathic personality, for example – whose condition is notably one of deviance without defect of judgement – is one which, while deserving different treatment from the ordinary wrongdoer, is not by dint of that to be judged to have an excuse. The puzzling category of psychopathic personality has long troubled thoughtful students of psychiatric nosology, and it is one which bears close parallels to the sadistic personality. Other conditions – masochism, for instance, or fetishism -share with psychopathic personality and sadism this feature of being characterized merely in terms of aberrant desires, attitudes and pleasures. However, psychopathic personality and sadism stand out in the peculiarly amoral quality of the relationship that their sufferers adopt to others. The conditions known as psychopathic personality and sexual sadism deserve further attention. This is partly because they are prominent among conditions whose status as psychiatric problems is questioned, but it is more than that.
