The Mask of Sanity

by Hervey Cleckley

  During the next day some pull themselves together and depart, others remain drinking and cursing through the morning and afternoon. Consciousness and power to speak or sit erect come and go through the hours. During these more lucid intervals some find what they take as exceeding delight in sitting, naked and unsteady, on the edge of an untidy bed, staring at a companion, smiling inanely, and, in slurred, mushy tones, repeating for thirty minutes or more: “You old son of a bitch. You old son of a bitch, Jack. You old son of a bitch, you.”

  After such exploits the subject of our discussion returns home feeling pretty ill but apparently refreshed spiritually for his other kind of life. At times his sprees will take the classic form already described, which consists in having a Negro boy drive him out into the woods where he drinks to semiconsciousness and, after lying out for a satisfactory period, allows the boy to drive him home.

  Usually these extravaganzas take place without attracting general attention, but occasionally exuberance carries the play beyond its early secluded setting and the public is treated to puzzling displays. Returning from several days of ordinary lying out and still boisterous and maudlin by turns, this executive, disappointed in his wife’s failure to greet him with proper enthusiasm, took a few more pulls from the bottle. Feeling suddenly much misused and sorry for himself, he rushed out on the lawn and began to bewail in thunderous tones the general injustice of his situation.

  Since the time was high noon on Independence Day, he soon drew a fair-sized audience. Stimulated by this, he rushed to the dog’s kennel and fumbled with the brass-studded collar of his big Doberman Pinscher, who, patient-eyed, watched his frantic master. Gaining possession of the collar, he placed it around his own neck and, with the leash flying behind, set off at a lively pace through the neighborhood. Attempting to bark like a dog as he went and shaking his collar, he succeeded in conveying his conviction to the public. Not only was he, so to speak, “in the dog house” (in his wife’s disfavor), but in vigorous canine outcries he registered his protest.

  Trotting over the well-kept lawns and about the gardens, he was observed by many acquaintances who lived near him in this fashionable section of the city. Occasionally, in bursts of zeal, he practiced or mimicked the dog’s well-known ritual in which eliminative and gregarious impulses blend. By the time he drew near the outskirts of town, he had a retinue of small boys in his wake. Realizing now that it was Independence Day, he led them to a small store where fireworks were sold and, roaring with wordy generosity, bought for them dozens of Roman candles, firecrackers, and skyrockets.

  For a while his irrelevant shouts merged with the hissing and popping of fireworks but, becoming always more aggressive and purposeless, his efforts to direct his companions began to vex them. With the well-known callousness of small boys where mischief is concerned, they hit upon the idea that it would be more fun to direct their Roman candle barrages at or close about this comical stranger and to chase him.

  As the skyrockets began to whiz by his wobbling head and the fiery balls from Roman candles began to play about his vicinity, he blundered into flight. With the shouting, joyous band behind, he made a zigzag progress which finally led him to the house of a friend.

  This man has never been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. He has often spent a few days in general hospitals while sobering up and occasionally a week or more in retreats which advertise their success in curing the liquor habit.

  For perhaps 80 or 90 percent of his existence he has been a prosperous and respected member of his community and outwardly is not unlike other men of the same position.

  22. The Psychopath as Man of the World

  The psychopath as man of the world comes from excellent stock and his educational background includes four years at a celebrated preparatory school and three at a well-known university. During his student days he took no interest whatsoever in any of his studies. His shrewdness, his skill at utilizing the work of his friends, from whose papers he usually patched together his own themes and essays, and his reliance on cheating in examinations enabled him to stay in the University through his junior year. His real interests during this period consisted in decking himself with fine clothes in which to saunter about, in presiding at social gatherings, and in flimsy but pretentious lovemaking with a large number of prominent young ladies. In the eyes of these and of their mothers he passed as a dashing beau, almost as an arbiter elegantiarum.

  Among his fraternity brothers he was regarded with mixed feelings. Though better supplied with funds than most of his associates, he did not pay his dues and seldom his board at the fraternity house where he occupied the choice quarters. These shortcomings, however, were tolerated, it not entirely overlooked, because of the urbanity he lent to house parties, his impassioned speeches on the sacred mysteries of brotherhood, his eloquence and skill in inducing desirable freshmen to join his group, and the general air of jeunesse dorée which encompassed him. Some of his contemporaries, vexed at finding their dinner clothes or their favorite shoes always on this peacock at the very time they were most needed by the rightful owner and pressed to pay dues and other expenses which were higher for others because of his delinquencies, occasionally grumbled and cynically wondered if this glittering brother did not have special grounds for his fraternal zeal. His consecration in whipping up fraternity spirit in less ardent members was notable.

  Space forbids a detailed survey of his career. It has been remarkably consistent. At nearly 50 years of age he finds no difficulty in having always at his beck and call several women who rush to comfort him and who work incessantly to find new positions for him each time he loses the last one. For long periods of his life he has been almost entirely supported by wealthy ladies who entertained him for weeks at fashionable house parties in summer and at winter resorts and who “lent” large sums of money to him time after time when he moaned his inability to make a fresh start in life.

  He sometimes slept with the wives of his friends but, when a careful study is made of his life, it appears that he sought a mother-surrogate rather than a mistress or a real mate. Invariably the relation was one in which the woman served as protectress and support. His most effective means of winning the favor of these ladies consisted chiefly in becoming maudlin drunk, weeping like a baby, begging his companion to give him lethal drugs so that he could destroy himself, and quite generally indulging in theatrics familiar in spoiled children.

  In his work as insurance agent, cotton broker, automobile dealer, advertising specialist, and so on he showed consistent and remarkable capacities for rest and casual disregard of primary responsibilities. It is true that he made valuable business associations at the country club, where he played golf or loitered a good part of each day. These associations often enabled him to make a good living for brief periods, but no matter how easy the work or how favorable the prospects, he had no serious difficulty in failing. Nor had he any more difficulty in arousing fresh enthusiasm in some tender-minded lady, or ladies, to raise money for a new venture or to find some easy position for him in the business of her friends or relatives.

  He usually preferred women older than himself, becoming, in fact, a veritable lion among dowagers in his community. Young women also have sought to mother him. The large number of women who appear in his life story have this in common: they have consistently been of sober temperament and inclined toward domesticity rather than toward flirtatious, erotically passionate, or promiscuous behavior. This is true of the younger as well as of his older benefactresses.

  Prominent in his plan of life are frequent sprees of drinking which he inaugurates by a few highballs in pleasant company but continues alone in his own quarters, in a hotel room, or perhaps in some bawdy house. These episodes sometimes occur without any objective precipitating cause but often follow some disappointment or reverse. He seldom fails to get word to the lady who is mothering him at the moment, giving dramatic utterance to his woe. Strenuous efforts are made to save him. Doctors are called, friends are
sent to reason with him, and the ladies themselves plead. Despite all this attention, which he appears to relish keenly, he continues to drink, usually not incapacitating himself but taking enough to keep his protectors active. The spree often lasts for several days with our hero chiding and complaining, bursting into tears, and heaping his own self-pity upon the floods of pity which beat about him.

  Frequently it has been necessary to send him to general hospitals and occasionally to psychiatric hospitals, where he finally settles down amidst all sorts of dramatics.

  About ten years ago, before the period of these observations, no doubt perceiving his own advancing years, he married an extremely intelligent widow some years his elder who had for a decade tried to rehabilitate him and who was generally regarded as wealthy. Though casually unfaithful to her, he kept up a better front for the two years during which she lived. She spent money lavishly on him. In addition to this, her fortune was drastically reduced in a depression, and she died leaving him only enough for a few months of extravagance. The night after her funeral he spent in a cheap brothel, drinking and weeping and moaning, apparently for himself.

  His ability to alarm and to draw out protective impulses in women is remarkable. Superficially he gives the impression when with them of a dashing and somewhat predatory male. He is not entirely without ambition as a lover and actually seduces some of his protectresses. His approach in seduction is, however, nearly always through pity.

  On one of his recent sprees he called a young widow twenty years his junior and dramatically bemoaned his plight, insisting that only her influence kept him from blowing out his brains. Despite her earnest activities to cheer him up he continued to drink, calling her up from time to time to tell more of his sad state and how much worse he had become. That evening he came to her house and begged her to give him drugs with which to dispatch himself, then rushed off crying dramatically that he was en route to a notorious brothel. In the company of a male relative she followed him there and exhorted him to go home and sober up. As her pity and distress increased, his firmness in remaining hardened, and no doubt his pleasure also waxed sweeter.

  This case well portrays the astonishing power that nearly all psychopaths and part-psychopaths have to win and to bind forever the devotion of woman. Because of this they are often regarded as vigorous or romantic lovers, as men of peculiar virility. I believe, however, that they are seldom as well endowed in this way as the average man. Nor do they appear to be as much interested in really erotic aims as most men.

  Such things are of course impossible to prove or to demonstrate, but the more intimately a large number of such people are studied, the stronger becomes the impression that it is chiefly woman’s impulse to mother that they arouse. Feminine intuition senses that here, concealed beneath an appearance of maturity, is a baby or something very much like a helpless, crying little baby. Her deep instincts to nurse and to protect this winsome little darling are unconsciously called out. The superficial relationship of woman to her lover conceals this fundamental urge. She longs to take this defenseless creature, hold him to her breast, guard him, shape him, and let him grow up under her protection. Her feminine intuition, which so accurately divines the presence of the spiritual baby, fails, alas, to understand that it is a baby who will never grow up.

  23. The Psychopath as Gentleman

  This man, whom for convenience we may call W. R. L., first came to my attention professionally when seen strapped down during hydrotherapy in a continuous tub. There, surrounded by dozens of the most complete madmen an imaginative layman could conceive, he strained, cursed, bellowed, and hurled defiant imprecations at all about him.

  Having seen him in the past occasionally at balls or garden parties in a southern city famous for the amenities of life, I was astonished at the spectacle he now presented. He literally raved as he twisted and spat, damning his wife especially but sparing no one. Though quieter and less dramatic when he believed himself unobserved, he gave at this moment as good a superficial impression of honest madness as any of the psychotic patients among whom he writhed.

  After a few minutes he quieted down enough to speak with some relevance and made it plain in vigorous terms that he held his wife entirely responsible for his plight. He admitted drinking; this was his wife’s fault. He had, to be sure, derided and fought with the policemen. This would never have happened had his wife not called them to him for no good reason.

  This man, 43 years of age, had been through several dozen such episodes during the last ten years. Belonging to a family widely known for its wealth since colonial times, his direct paternal ancestors included a general in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and two governors of a proud Southern state. His maternal background included a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a Confederate brigadier celebrated for his dashing and urbane personal qualities no less than for his valor at Antietam and Gettysburg.

  W. R. L., when glimpsed at a garden party or when hailed in the street, seemed a proper and impressive scion of two such splendid strains, uniting in his person, it might be said, the rarest culture of two states. His courtesy was not only warm but distinguished, his manners so cordial that one felt better after greeting him. His general bearing combined the utmost dignity with perfect spontaneity, giving a deep conviction of one sophisticated, mellow, and commanding. But there were times when this impressive mask dropped and our gallant gentleman took on quite another color.

  One of these incidents immediately preceded his admission to the hospital. After having eschewed strong drink utterly for a year and maintained, on the whole, his fine superficial front, he suddenly and for no discernible reason got pretty generously full. A bit wobbly but fired with energy, he burst into the house, roundly cursed his wife, smashed a few vases, threatened to give her a thorough mauling, and departed for a road house. Here he reveled for a few hours with more belligerence and buffoonery than gaiety or eroticism, then swept back in a passion to his house. He shook his wife out of bed, accused her of ruining his life and of unfairly taking possession of money which he had earned through shrewd speculation, and demanded a check for thousands.

  Actually he had for many years been sustained financially by his wife’s father, a high official in banking circles who not only kept his son-in-law employed in a respectable position at a local bank which he controlled but also furnished from time to time relatively stupendous sums to cover rash and disastrous losses at gambling and in speculation.

  The patient’s wife had a fairly large estate held in trust. The income from this was, however, not enough to cover the wants of the husband. W. R. L., at the time he married, was by no means dependent on his in-laws. His father had built up a stockbroker’s business that fluctuated in value between one and several millions. W. brought his bride to a great Georgian mansion surrounded by takes and gardens where a dozen servants often maintained scores of guests in spectacular comfort. Even before the death of the father, himself a rash but remarkably intuitive market plunger, the son had made heavy inroads into the family fortune. Afterward the other beneficiaries drew out their interests and stood aside while he doubled, halved, tripled, and finally lost outright his entire holdings. While gaining and while losing, he spent money with equal lavishness, chartering airplanes to fly to mistresses halfway across the continent, casually sending emeralds to chorus girls, or buying a yacht to cruise off the Florida keys.

  Penniless, he resented bitterly the unwillingness of his father-in-law to let him throw his wife’s fortune also into speculation. Stormy wrangles had been almost constant during the early years of this marriage. W., at intervals of a few weeks or a couple of months, went on hard sprees during which he sometimes tore off his wife’s clothes or burst in on his father-in-law to threaten and to arraign him as the cause of his own financial decline and the common marital strife. The father-in-law, a man of much dignity and spirit, urged his daughter to leave W. and even threatened at times to cut off the ample income which he chief
ly furnished them. After particularly outrageous episodes, the wife often agreed to quit, but W., once sober and aware of what he stood to lose, had no difficulty in appearing so earnest and penitent that he won her back. For a considerable time, pride kept the wife, the father-in-law, and others concerned from calling in policemen to quell the tempestuous and clamorous tumults that W. raised. Finally this step was taken, and it has now in fact become habitual.

  On the occasion under discussion, Mrs. L. succeeded, after a struggle with her husband, in reaching headquarters by telephone. When the police arrived, they found her locked for protection in a downstairs room. W., boasting that he could not be taken alive, had knocked the wooden sup. ports from the banister railings and piled these, with chairs, coffee tables, and other furniture, into a barricade on the stairway.

  Half naked above in the bathroom behind additional defenses, he challenged the law with magniloquent mock heroics to take him. For a while he waved a revolver as he hurled his obscene threats. Seeing that the policemen, who knew him well, came on despite his gestures, he laid this aside. Though making no serious attempt to injure his besiegers sufficiently to provoke painful retaliation, he wrestled with them, clawed with a fine show of violence, and was taken off cursing, grunting, and kicking.

  Since short sojourns at the barracks in the past had done so little good, the family arranged to have him sent that very night as an emergency case to the psychiatric hospital. They probably had vague hopes that some remediable illness might be found as a cause for his conduct, but the stronger motive was hope that finding himself in what he regarded as the lunatic asylum might give him food for thought and possibly a taste for mending his ways.