ABSTRACT
In 1941, Hervey Cleckley described a subgroup of patients who appeared to be sane and yet lacked remorse and empathy, and were very impulsive, deceptive, and manipulative. He suggested that these individuals suffered from “emotional poverty,” and described in detail a number of symptoms, subsequently operationalized for research purposes in the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL; Hare, 1980). Many hundreds of studies using its successor, the Psychopathy Checklist– Revised (PCL–R; Hare, 1991, 2003), have established its position as the international standard for the assessment of psychopathy in research and in clinical and forensic practice (see, for example, Felthous & Sass, 2007; Gacono, 2000; Hare & Neumann, 2008, 2009; Hervé & Yuille, 2007, Patrick, 2005). The Buros Mental Measurements Yearbook described the PCL–R as “state of the art” (Fulero, 1995) and as “the gold standard for the assessment of psychopathy” (Acheson, 2005). In many jurisdictions, it is part of the “best practices” protocols (e.g., Khiroya, Weaver, & Maden, 2009).
