The Psychopath in a Mental Institution

This study attempts to elucidate two questions: What are the characteristics of those psychopaths who find their way to a mental institution? What is the clinical difference between the psychopaths with a normal brain wave pattern and those who have an abnormal electroencephalogram? The century-long nosological struggle with these troublesome people has left semantic scars on medical thinking (Bromberg9). Neither cake nor the whip produces any visible effect on their maladjustment (Bleuler6). Although essentially not different, they have just disharmony enough to be misfits in life.79We find among them Casanova and Don Juan, the morally insane22and the moral imbeciles,70the pathetically morbid16and the lucid melancholics,72the reasonable fools72and the reasoning phrenasthenics91of old writers. We find the criminaloid of Lombroso,68the constitutionally inferior of Adolph Meyer,86the psychopathic personality of Koch86and the creative psychopath