The Mask of Sanity

by Hervey Cleckley

  Recently I saw a 19-year-old boy who had served time at several youth detention centers and later at a typical penal institution. He had been convicted again of a major offense and there was every reason to believe that he was due to go back to the prison. Blandly and confidently, he expressed the conviction that he should instead be paroled and allowed to go back to college and get a degree. When the question of his being sent back to prison was raised he scornfully dismissed the idea in these words:

  “Why that wouldn’t do any good. I’ve already been there and you see what happened later. Anybody ought to realize that’s not the place for me. It wouldn’t help a bit.”

  I am not likely soon to forget the all but sublime insouciance with which this young man bypassed all considerations of personal responsibility for having continued in crime after serving time in prison. The only fault that he seemed to feel really deserved critical appraisal was that the institution had failed to keep him from carrying out his own deliberate felonies after he was released from its control. Though he did not actually suggest that legal action be taken against the penal institution or the court that had sent him to it, he seemed to feel vindicated in a strange way, to feel that the blame or shortcoming had all been satisfactorily allocated to other people or to institutions that had unreasonably interfered with his natural rights.

  This 19-year-old boy seen such a short time ago seemed to echo Gregory, himself, perfectly in this respect, to reflect Gregory’s precise attitude and the attitude of other psychopaths who have impressed me as showing this astonishing and specific lack of insight.

  Gregory, according to my last news of him, has continued in the old familiar patterns. Perhaps the repeated evasion of ordinary penalties through commitment to psychiatric hospitals or through intervention by his family contributed to the assumption in Gregory, and in so many others like him, that he deserves an immunity or a relative immunity from the law. I think, however, that the roots of this attitude lie deeper, probably in the core of the psychopath’s essential abnormality—perhaps in a lack of emotional components essential to real understanding.

  In my report to the psychiatrist through whom the court referred Gregory to me I find these conclusions:

  It would be impossible to describe adequately this young man’s career without writing hundreds of pages. His repeated antisocial acts and the triviality of his apparent motivation as well as his inability to learn by experience to make a better adjustment and avoid serious trouble that can be readily foreseen, all make me feel that he is a classic example of psychopathic personality. I think it very likely that he will continue to behave as he has behaved in the past, and I do not know of any psychiatric treatment that is likely to influence this behavior appreciably or to help him make a better adjustment.

  Gregory, like all psychopaths whom I have seen, apparently knows in a verbal sense the distinctions between right and wrong, and he can express convincingly good intention for the future and formulate excellent plans for a wise, happy, and socially acceptable life. I do not, however, believe that this indicates at all that he will follow such plans and alter his past pattern of maladjustment.

  As you know, I am very much interested in patients of this sort and feel that they are the least understood of all psychiatric patients. I also feet that unlike other psychiatric patients there is no specific provision made by society for handling them adequately or dealing logically with the problems they create.

  I appreciate so very much your letting me see him and am sorry I cannot be more hopeful about his prognosis.

  19. Stanley

  During the summer of 1972 a small item of news appeared in many of our daily newspapers over the country. It was an item that immediately engaged my attention. Over the two short columns was printed this arresting headline:

  YOUNG MAN INDUCES FIVE TEEN-AGE GIRLS TO SHAVE THEIR HEADS

  The report, as I remember it, did not go into much detail about this unusual event or give an adequate account of the young man’s methods of persuasion, of his motives, or of just what impulses might have prompted the five girls to take such an unusual and, one might even say, such an unnatural step. Among my first thoughts on this accomplishment was that Stanley must surely have been the man who brought it about. Who in the entire world but Stanley would have thought up such an exploit? Who else would have had the inclination to carry it out? Though the news report did not actually identify Stanley as the man involved, it brought back many memories of him over the immediately preceding period of several years when I was trying to deal with him and some of the complicated and unusual problems his behavior kept creating for those concerned with him, and for himself.

  Like a number of other patients presented in this book, he repeatedly showed evidence of superior abilities and demonstrated over and over that he could succeed in studies, in business, in impressing and attracting other people, and in virtually anything he might choose to undertake. And, similarly, he lost, or seemed to throw away, with no sign of adequate motivation, everything he gained, and especially the things that he claimed meant most of all to him. Unlike some of the other patients discussed, Stanley had not yet, when I last had news of him, served long terms in prison for felonies. Aside from his more spectacular illegal activities, he would probably have spent a considerable time in confinement because of his persistence in writing bad checks had it not been for the intervention and the heavy financial sacrifices of his parents. He did not hesitate to write a check, whether or not there were funds to cover it, whenever he felt he would like to have additional money to squander on some caprice. Even when he was active at work and making far more than enough money for his needs, he blithely continued in this practice. It had been necessary also for his family to shield him from the usual consequences of many and various other types of illegal and irresponsible behavior that would otherwise have led to imprisonment. These statements appear in a letter from his mother:

  We don’t have the money to pay these bills off. And we don’t have the money to keep paying big hospital bills, but something has got to be done with him … So, I don’t know what we’re going to do … We are willing to go the last mile to do what we can for him financially and with your help … If he would just stop charging he would not have to worry about finances … He is arrogant and mean to me, his mother … hateful to his little sister, and fussy to everyone with whom he comes in contact … Please help us … Get him straightened out … We do love him with all our hearts and we both cry and don’t sleep over his problems. We will do whatever you advise … We love this boy with all our hearts and it is just killing us … All the things he does.

  Typical of his behavior in high school is an incident that occurred while he was making excellent grades and holding positions of leadership. With no notice or indirect indication of restlessness, Stanley suddenly vanished from the scene. He failed one day to appear at classes and did not show up at home that night. After he had been gone for over two weeks, a period of great anxiety for his parents who had no way of knowing whether he was living or dead, the police finally discovered him working successfully in a large department store in Knoxville, Tennessee, approximately a hundred and fifty miles away. He seemed quite unconcerned with the ordeal to which he had subjected his parents. At college, and also during recent years, he has often run up long-distance telephone bills, sometimes charging calls amounting to hundreds of dollars to his parents. He has also run up similar bills charging to various other telephones, some listed in the names of friends of the family, others in the names of strangers who were truly astonished to find themselves heavily billed for numerous calls to distant cities.

  During his first year at the university he was accused by a girl he had recently met of getting her pregnant after solemn promises of matrimony.

  Before this trouble was settled by his family, at considerable expense, a similar accusation was made by another girl in a different state. Later that year, during the summer vacation he took a sudden notion t
o return for a brief visit to the university. To set out without delay on the trip of approximately a hundred miles he casually stole a truck that happened to be at hand. It was heavily loaded with dairy products. State police pursued him, and in the chase he turned over the truck wrecking it and injuring a companion he had persuaded to go along with him. The damages, including hospital bills, cost his family several thousand dollars.

  Despite his many antisocial and irresponsible acts in the past Stanley seemed at times to settle down. On a number of these occasions his parents thought that he had at last attained maturity and decided finally to use his abilities consistently in a constructive pattern of living. In his mother’s record we find this item:

  Was for many months in high school active and well behaved in boy scouts … For a while during last trimester of second year at college took major role in organizing and leading group to promote Christian Life on the Campus … Planned big programs, made fine speeches, led in all the various activities.

  While still in college, he showed his excellent persuasive abilities during one summer vacation selling Bibles down in the Cajun country near the Gulf of Mexico. During this time he was living with his first wife who eventually had to leave him because of his tyrannical demands and his predilection for beating her up severely at the slightest provocation. It is difficult to imagine conduct of this sort in one who ordinarily gives the impression of a well-bred and considerate gentleman. The evidence is strong, however, to support his first wife’s claims. There is also evidence that indicates he would lock the doors and force her to stay when she sought to escape violence by returning to the protection of her parents. Sometimes officers of the law had to be called by neighbors to obtain her release from his extreme abuse.

  In discussing the first wife’s accusations of such conduct as this, Stanley usually brushed them aside as a typically feminine and somewhat ridiculous exaggeration of some minor disagreement. When confronted with undeniable evidence to the contrary, he admitted having taken mild physical measures to influence her, saying that he “just couldn’t stand her screaming and bawling,” This habit of hers, he said, made him lose his temper. When it was emphasized to him that her weeping and outcries did not precede the beatings but occurred only after the beatings began, he showed very little response. Apparently he felt that this crucial point was not sufficiently important to argue about and seemed to dismiss it without further thought as something virtually irrelevant, or at most a trifle.

  Chiefly because of this physical maltreatment, the first wife left him on many occasions. When with her and when separated, he easily obtained employment, usually as a salesman. While he worked, his income was ample for any ordinary needs. During one period of prosperity he was very successful selling small computers for household use. He later added as a sideline the enthusiastic promotion and sale of waterbeds, shortly after these were introduced and hailed as a stimulating erotic innovation. His profits from these enterprises were for a while spectacular until he lost both jobs through a combination of neglect and irresponsible conduct. On many other occasions he worked with what seemed to be real enthusiasm for periods of varying lengths. Then, without any particular reason, he would give up an excellent job at which he was distinguishing himself. On other occasions he would have to leave the valuable position to flee from prosecution for some legal offense.

  Even while his first wife was living with him and his income ample, he usually ran up heavy debts. When his mistreatment would force his wife to leave him or when he would capriciously stop work, he often celebrated the occasion by a special splurge of unnecessary expenditures. Sometimes he would go out merrily and buy on credit several expensive suits and ample supplies of new shoes, shirts, and neckties. On one such occasion he impulsively bought a motorcycle which he never got around to using. Despite the fact that his parents have been faithful and active in succoring him and have often been hard pressed in making restitution in his behalf, it remains difficult to see how he has been able to continue for so long on so heedless and hazardous a course. Notes made by his mother concerning one such episode follow:

  Charged clothes for $650 one store in Atlanta.

  Charged clothes for $400 one store in Greenville.

  Charged clothes for $350 one store in Charlotte.

  Charged clothes for $135 one store in Spartanburg.

  Charged a ring in a jewelry store for $110.

  Charged more clothes.

  Charged two waterbeds for $225.

  Gave about twenty-five bad checks, some of which his father made good. The others are here and there and the law has some of them.

  Stanley has proved himself a master over the years at misrepresentation in situations where the truth would cause him difficulty or put him in a bad light. He has also been scarcely less active and ingenious in the fabrication of elaborate lies that seem to have had little or no chance of helping him gain any material objective. Though his mother is living and has been active in trying to deliver Stanley from the various troubles into which he plunges, he convinced his first wife that she had died during his second year in high school. He often discussed with his wife during the first years of their marriage his emotional reactions to this alleged loss and sometimes dwelt at length on complex but purely imaginary problems that it brought into his life. He succeeded in making her believe also that his father’s present wife (his actual mother) was not only his stepmother, but also the identical twin sister of the mother who gave him birth. On at least one occasion he told a psychiatrist that when he was about 10 years old his mother frequently had adulterous relations in his presence with various men. When the plausibility of this claim was questioned, Stanley explained, or seemed to feel that he explained, by saying, “It was because she knew she could trust me with anything.”

  While separated from his wife for a period of several months, he went for a short time with a divorcee not long out of her teens, who will here be designated as Marilyn. During this brief courtship he convinced her that though he had once been married, his wife and also his 2-year-old son had died. Actually they were at the time living in another state with the wife’s parents. Though not working at the time and in very heavy debt, he picked out and ordered for Marilyn a diamond engagement ring. His mother in her notes makes this comment:

  He went to a jewelry store and had the man order a $6,000 ring, a diamond for a girl—he is still married to Margaret—this was for a Marilyn. His father and I had never heard of her. It just happened that I went into the jewelry store to return something for him and I was told about the diamond. I cancelled it, of course.

  At their first encounter, or soon after, he convinced Marilyn that he was deeply in love with her and had every intention of marrying her. She had no way of knowing that these intentions, if they ever existed, had greatly changed (or that Stanley’s wife was still living) until he came to her with what must have been one of the strangest, most surprising and most inappropriate proposals ever made by man to woman.

  He requested and persistently urged Marilyn to write a letter to his wife and in it explain to her that Stanley’s love for her (the wife) was strong and genuine and to implore her to accept and welcome him back without further delay. I have inexpressible respect for this young man’s powers of persuasion and have often marveled at his accomplishments in getting people, sometimes the most unlikely people, enlisted in working with him to bring about his various and sometimes incompatible or absurd aims. Despite these extraordinary powers, Marilyn could not be induced to take the role that he tried to press upon her, Though extremely shrewd in many ways, Stanley, in discussing this matter, seemed to show some peculiar limitation of awareness, some defect in sensibility, of a nature I cannot describe or clearly imagine. This often led him into gross errors of judgment that even very stupid people would readily see and easily avoid.

  The reactions Marilyn must have had to the unusual role he proposed and urged upon her invite many questions. Putting further speculation about t
hese reactions aside for the moment, I asked Stanley if he did not think it might have seriously damaged the cause he sought to further if Marilyn had written the letter to intercede for him. Surely, I thought, it would occur to Stanley that such a letter from the other woman would point out and emphasize his sexual infidelity during the separation.

  “Oh, no,” said Stanley, in tones of strong and almost indignant conviction. “My wife knows I’d never be unfaithful to her.”

  He then went into some detail about her unassailable confidence in his sexual loyalty. “Why,” he said as if in real pride, “I promised her that if I ever did that with another woman, I’d let her know about it right away.”

  I then brought up the point that he had given me plainly to understand that he and Marilyn had been indulging in sexual relations freely and regularly up to the time when he made his request for her intercession. Stanley seemed in no way dismayed. “But my wife,” he said confidently, “She doesn’t know about that.”

  In this discussion, I thought at moments I sensed some points about Stanley’s inner being that I could never formulate adequately, even to myself. I did not, of course, find it remarkable that such a man as he would be unfaithful to his wife, or that he made and broke promises of the sort just mentioned. Something in his attitude seemed to give fleeting and very imperfect hints of a difference far within that distinguished him in a very special way from the usual or ordinary human being who is unscrupulous and unconcerned about veracity or honor. When Stanley said, “My wife knows I’d never be unfaithful,” there was in his tone what seemed to be the very essence of truth and sincerity. There was pride in his voice that seemed rooted in this essence. Could it be that for the moment he lost awareness that he was lying? Perhaps even awareness of what truth is? If so, I think this oversight might have occurred because to him it mattered so little. Whether his sworn fidelity was real or not was apparently no more than an academic question empty of substance. The only tangible issue was whether or not it contributed toward gaining his ends. Whether the fidelity existed or his oath had been honored was, for Stanley, a matter that could interest only a sophist who concerned himself not with actualities, but with mere verbalistic capers. With Stanley’s attention focused on the real and important issue, this bit of irrelevant sophistry may not have edged its way clearly into his awareness.