Trickery or deception, often in a political context
This expression alludes to the performances of stage conjurers who use actual smoke and mirrors to deceive the audience. The figurative use that is now more common refers to the obscuring or embellishing of the truth that is employed by spin doctors and the like in order to deceive the general public.
Misdirection
Over the centuries conjurors have devised many ways to enthrall their audiences, and, despite the sophistication of modern audiences, they are still doing so today.
technique beloved of magicians which fiction writers may use to their advantage: the Ancient Art of Misdirection. It’s of particular benefit to writers of mystery or suspense fiction, as it’s so useful for planning murders and planting clues; but all who must create plots or reveal information in a measured manner will find it an invaluable skill to acquire
By subtle misdirection the magician causes you to look in the wrong place while he is doing something-or-other in the right place. Misdirection comes in three flavors: time (the magician has the silk artfully placed in his hand before he begins the trick); place (your attention is drawn to the magician’s right hand, while the move is done by his left hand, or his foot, or his assistant); and intent (the magician leads you to the decision he wants in such a subtle manner that you will swear afterwards that you had a free choice).What is the value to the writer—or, better yet, the story — of these techniques? We writers can use these methods to smooth the pacing of a story, to slide information past the reader without waving it in her face, to change the direction of a story in mid-page, and to plant clues that will lie dormant until they’re ready to sprout.
we’re speaking of misdirection, not misinformation. The writer should never lie to the reader, but, if necessary, should allow the reader to lie to herself.
In fiction misdirection can be either external or internal. That is, the author can be using the story as a frame to misdirect the reader, or a character in the story may be misdirecting one or more of the other characters.
In many novels, particularly in the suspense or mystery genres, an element of misdirection is an important part of the plot. In Daphne du Maurier’s classic Rebecca it just about is the plot. Maxim de Winter’s second wife, the narrator of the story (we never learn her name), feels herself in an unwinnable competition with the ghost of Rebecca, Maxim’s first wife, who died in a boating accident some years before. Maxim speaks little of the departed Rebecca, but he seems to be brooding about her constantly. And the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, tells the new wife frequently how the beautiful, charming, talented, Rebecca was her superior in every way.Then, three-quarters of the way through the book, when the narrator sadly tells her husband that she knows he can never love her the way he loved Rebecca—and that’s okay as long as he can bring himself to love her a little— comes the shocking revelation that turns the story, the narrator, and the reader arse-over-teakettle, as the British so wonderfully describe it.
“You think I loved Rebecca?” de Winter cries, “I hated her!”
And suddenly all that came before must be seen in a different light
Turn the Plot Around with Misdirection
As in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, a story can seem to be headed in one direction and then, wham-snap!, change course and go somewhere else. It can be a very dramatic moment, but why would you want to do this? Perhaps, as in Rebecca, you want to create a mood and explore a character in adverse circumstances. Certainly the first three-quarters of Rebecca showed the narrator’s inner strength and depth of love for her husband in a way that would have been impossible if everything had been a perfect romantic dream for her from the beginning.
Conceal a Character’s True Persona With MisdirectionHere’s one the Gothic and Romance novelists have been using for decades. It’s a sort of reprise on Rebecca, with a few twists. A great example is the 1963 film Charade, which starred Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant and Walter Matthau. A quick synopsis:
Regina (Hepburn) returns to Paris to learn that her husband has been murdered and his fortune is missing. Several strange, scary men begin harassing her, convinced that she must know where the money is. Peter Joshua (Grant) defends her and offers his help. Mr. Bartholomew (Matthau), the CIA station chief, tells her that Joshua and the men are in cahoots, and that her husband stole the money from the U.S. Government. Events seem to prove Bartholomew right, as Joshua has been lying to her about everything, including his name. After many a merry chase we find that Bartholomew is actually the crook, and Joshua is the CIA agent, and romance ensues.
We have here a triple misdirection extravaganza; the husband turns out to be a crook, the crook turns out to be the good guy, and the CIA agent turns out to be really nasty. All handled deftly and all necessary to keep the plot moving. The trick here is the light, deft touch. We believe what has been presented to us, because it’s what we expect. If you present things to your reader according to formula, she’ll be lulled into belief. And then when you twist the characters and the plot, she’ll be surprised and pleased at the freshness and originality.
Submerge That Small Detail in a Pool of MisdirectionSo here’s the problem: there’s this little, unimportant fact that you need to insert in your story right here that will assume monstrous importance later in the story, but you don’t want your reader to notice it, not just yet. It’s a clue, so it has to be out there, but if its real meaning is understood too quickly it will give too much of the plot away. John Dickson Carr, a master of the mystery story form, said that you don’t have to hide clues, you can run them up a flagpole and set them to waving and the readers won’t notice. And he was right—the way he did it. They were out there waving and it was hard for the reader to miss them—but they looked (metaphorically) like flags, not clues.The way to do that is to take the clues out of context and present them as something else. Let’s say the clue is a half-drunk glass of milk on the bedside table
http://www.writingclasses.com/FacultyBios/facultyArticleByInstructor.php/ArticleID/42
technique beloved of magicians which fiction writers may use to their advantage: the Ancient Art of Misdirection. It’s of particular benefit to writers of mystery or suspense fiction, as it’s so useful for planning murders and planting clues; but all who must create plots or reveal information in a measured manner will find it an invaluable skill to acquire
By subtle misdirection the magician causes you to look in the wrong place while he is doing something-or-other in the right place. Misdirection comes in three flavors: time (the magician has the silk artfully placed in his hand before he begins the trick); place (your attention is drawn to the magician’s right hand, while the move is done by his left hand, or his foot, or his assistant); and intent (the magician leads you to the decision he wants in such a subtle manner that you will swear afterwards that you had a free choice).What is the value to the writer—or, better yet, the story — of these techniques? We writers can use these methods to smooth the pacing of a story, to slide information past the reader without waving it in her face, to change the direction of a story in mid-page, and to plant clues that will lie dormant until they’re ready to sprout.
we’re speaking of misdirection, not misinformation. The writer should never lie to the reader, but, if necessary, should allow the reader to lie to herself.
In fiction misdirection can be either external or internal. That is, the author can be using the story as a frame to misdirect the reader, or a character in the story may be misdirecting one or more of the other characters.
In many novels, particularly in the suspense or mystery genres, an element of misdirection is an important part of the plot. In Daphne du Maurier’s classic Rebecca it just about is the plot. Maxim de Winter’s second wife, the narrator of the story (we never learn her name), feels herself in an unwinnable competition with the ghost of Rebecca, Maxim’s first wife, who died in a boating accident some years before. Maxim speaks little of the departed Rebecca, but he seems to be brooding about her constantly. And the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, tells the new wife frequently how the beautiful, charming, talented, Rebecca was her superior in every way.Then, three-quarters of the way through the book, when the narrator sadly tells her husband that she knows he can never love her the way he loved Rebecca—and that’s okay as long as he can bring himself to love her a little— comes the shocking revelation that turns the story, the narrator, and the reader arse-over-teakettle, as the British so wonderfully describe it.
“You think I loved Rebecca?” de Winter cries, “I hated her!”
And suddenly all that came before must be seen in a different light
Turn the Plot Around with Misdirection
As in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, a story can seem to be headed in one direction and then, wham-snap!, change course and go somewhere else. It can be a very dramatic moment, but why would you want to do this? Perhaps, as in Rebecca, you want to create a mood and explore a character in adverse circumstances. Certainly the first three-quarters of Rebecca showed the narrator’s inner strength and depth of love for her husband in a way that would have been impossible if everything had been a perfect romantic dream for her from the beginning.
Conceal a Character’s True Persona With MisdirectionHere’s one the Gothic and Romance novelists have been using for decades. It’s a sort of reprise on Rebecca, with a few twists. A great example is the 1963 film Charade, which starred Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant and Walter Matthau. A quick synopsis:
Regina (Hepburn) returns to Paris to learn that her husband has been murdered and his fortune is missing. Several strange, scary men begin harassing her, convinced that she must know where the money is. Peter Joshua (Grant) defends her and offers his help. Mr. Bartholomew (Matthau), the CIA station chief, tells her that Joshua and the men are in cahoots, and that her husband stole the money from the U.S. Government. Events seem to prove Bartholomew right, as Joshua has been lying to her about everything, including his name. After many a merry chase we find that Bartholomew is actually the crook, and Joshua is the CIA agent, and romance ensues.
We have here a triple misdirection extravaganza; the husband turns out to be a crook, the crook turns out to be the good guy, and the CIA agent turns out to be really nasty. All handled deftly and all necessary to keep the plot moving. The trick here is the light, deft touch. We believe what has been presented to us, because it’s what we expect. If you present things to your reader according to formula, she’ll be lulled into belief. And then when you twist the characters and the plot, she’ll be surprised and pleased at the freshness and originality.
Submerge That Small Detail in a Pool of MisdirectionSo here’s the problem: there’s this little, unimportant fact that you need to insert in your story right here that will assume monstrous importance later in the story, but you don’t want your reader to notice it, not just yet. It’s a clue, so it has to be out there, but if its real meaning is understood too quickly it will give too much of the plot away. John Dickson Carr, a master of the mystery story form, said that you don’t have to hide clues, you can run them up a flagpole and set them to waving and the readers won’t notice. And he was right—the way he did it. They were out there waving and it was hard for the reader to miss them—but they looked (metaphorically) like flags, not clues.The way to do that is to take the clues out of context and present them as something else. Let’s say the clue is a half-drunk glass of milk on the bedside table
http://www.writingclasses.com/FacultyBios/facultyArticleByInstructor.php/ArticleID/42
Misdirection
Misdirection is a form of deception in which the attention of an audience is focused on one thing in order to distract its attention from another.
Misdirection takes advantage of the limits of the human mind in order to give the wrong picture and memory. The mind can concentrate on only one thing at a time. The magician uses this, and the "victim's" idea of how the world is supposed to be, to his or her advantage
Attention can be controlled in various ways as well. A magician will first grab attention with a coin, or other small, shiny object-a shiny object captures more attention and seems less likely to disappear or be manipulated- and then direct attention away from the object (hence, "misdirection") through a combination often including comedy, sleight of hand, or an unimportant object of focus to provide just enough time for the magician to do whatever he wishes with the original object, whether it vanishes, transforms, or teleports.
One of the most important things to remember when thinking about misdirection and magic is this: A larger movement conceals a smaller movement.
Misdirection takes advantage of the limits of the human mind in order to give the wrong picture and memory. The mind can concentrate on only one thing at a time. The magician uses this, and the "victim's" idea of how the world is supposed to be, to his or her advantage
Attention can be controlled in various ways as well. A magician will first grab attention with a coin, or other small, shiny object-a shiny object captures more attention and seems less likely to disappear or be manipulated- and then direct attention away from the object (hence, "misdirection") through a combination often including comedy, sleight of hand, or an unimportant object of focus to provide just enough time for the magician to do whatever he wishes with the original object, whether it vanishes, transforms, or teleports.
One of the most important things to remember when thinking about misdirection and magic is this: A larger movement conceals a smaller movement.
Misdirection
Misdirection is a form of deception in which the attention of an audience is focused on one thing in order to distract its attention from another
[edit] Misdirection in literature
Misdirection is also a literary device most commonly employed in detective fiction, where the attention of the reader is deliberately focused on a red herring in order to conceal the identity of the murderer. The means for this form of misdirection may include false clues, false motives or more purely literary methods such as exposition, dialogue, and interior monologue. In a whodunit, misdirection can take place on two separate levels: within the narrative the criminal may attempt to implicate a third party in order to elude the detective; or the author may implicate an innocent party in order to distract the reader. If the watch on a victim's wrist has apparently stopped at 3:00 p.m., this may be because the killer has broken the watch and reset it in order to create a false time of death, but it may equally be the writer's intention to plant that false suspicion in the reader's mind.
For example, in their novel Dance of Death, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child use misdirection to suggest several possible causes for the falling of lumber and the occurrence of loud snapping sounds that Margo Green hears as she walks through museum exhibits in the wee hours of the morning. First she thinks that the sounds are made by boards that have chanced to fall over after construction crew workers have left them precariously balanced upon quitting the work of the day. Next, she supposes that the sounds are made by a night guard tripping over a loose board. Then, she wonders whether the sounds are made by someone playing a practical joke on her. None of these possibilities turns out to be the actual cause of the sounds.
When you possess sensitive information that others desire, you might become the target of a variety of techniques of varying ethical value. Understanding those techniques, and preparing to resist them, helps protect your information, your career, and perhaps even your life.
The more sensitive the information,the more likely we are to encounterpersistent and skillful seekersof that informationSome seekers have extensive resources that are out of view of the target. They use these resources to wring value out of even the most unlikely bits of data. Here are some examples of resource-based methods
Holography
This technique involves integrating partial information from multiple targets to make a useful whole. It's effective when the targets feel that they're safe in revealing a minimal bit of data, not realizing that other targets might reveal other pieces. Indicators of this method are questions about details, such as what make of car someone owns. "Just curious" is rarely a reasonable justification for questions of this kindRead more:
Non-chance chance meeting
If you have a routine, such as often going to the same place for lunch, you might "accidentally" meet the seeker, who strikes up a friendship that appears to be unrelated to your job. Disclosing information to someone you met seemingly by chance can be risky.
False flag
Seekers might represent themselves as law enforcement, reporters, biographers, insurance investigators or similar information gatherers. They might display legitimate-looking credentials or other insignia. Unless you have the expertise required to validate credentials, remain skeptical.
Trust-building
By disclosing something that seems personal or sensitive, seekers can gain the trust of the target. They might offer information that disparages or even harms political foes. When you sense that someone trusts you too easily, consider the possibility that you're the target of a trust-building seeker of sensitive information
Flirtation, flattery and romance
When deftly used, flirtation, flattery and romance are especially effective with those who are vulnerable or naïve. Between socially incompatible types, and when initiated by the more adept of the pair, these tactics could be indicators of information-seeking.
Bait
By saying something that's wrong or incomplete, or by setting up the target to demonstrate superior knowledge, the seeker might induce the target to disclose sensitive information. Because many high achievers dislike being corrected or being shown to have inferior skill, accepting correction with little comment and no resistance could be an indicator of this tactic.
Disinterest
Feigning disinterest, either by interruption or by appearing to be distracted, the seeker presents a cue to the target that what was just said was unimportant. Alternatively, the seeker might focus on an unimportant detail of the conversation to mislead the target about what the real point of interest is.
Relationship-building
Cultivating friendship over a relatively long period of time, especially when accompanied by a flow of useful information from the seeker to the target, could be an indicator of this tactic. Those most vulnerable have few friends and might even be isolated by internal politics. Managers who allow isolated individuals to remain so are creating a vulnerability to this tactic.
Conspiracy
By drawing the target into a secret relationship, the seeker forms a tight bond with the target. One famous example of this technique is Connie Chung's 1995 interview of Newt Gingrich's mother, in which she said, "Why don't you just whisper it to me, just between you and me?" When a seeker suggests confidentiality or secrecy, and revealing the information could be harmful to the target, the seeker could be using this technique.
Shaking the tree
Shaking an orange tree. Photo courtesy US Department of Agriculture.By creating in the target a state of emotional upset, seekers hope to generate out-of-control behavior just to see what falls out. Emotional states that are especially fruitful are anger, fear and romantic rejection.
Good cop, bad cop
In this method, two seekers pursue the target. One uses pressure and fear, while the other uses a kinder and gentler approach. This method still works, despite its being a well known (and overused) plot device in fiction, film and television.
Gift-wrapping
Some questions come gift-wrapped: "Let me ask you...," or "Can I get some information about...," or "I'd like to learn about...," or "Let me pick your brain about...," or "You're an expert on X, can you tell me about..." The wrapping is intended to trigger a desire to cooperate. By interfering withour ability to thinkcritically, seekers ofinformation cansometimes getwhat they want
Immersion
When we're in contact with someone over a long period of time, as on an extended business trip, we tend to become less guarded. Be alert to probing questions that seem unrelated to the tasks at hand. Limit conversation when you're fatigued or stressed.
Authority or command
Sometimes used by those with organizational power, these methods are also available to certification, legal and enforcement authorities. An example of the latter, from The Firm, by John Grisham
Blackmail, bribery and extortion
Targets of blackmail, bribery or extortion can experience feelings of extreme helplessness. These methods are favorites of the Firm's enforcer, "Bill DeVasher," played by Wilford Brimley in the film.
Substances and wining-and-dining
Seekers might use alcohol, food or other substances in what seems to be a social context. In The Firm, "Avery Tolar" (played by Gene Hackman in the film), uses these methods to make "Mitch McDeere" (played by Tom Cruise) vulnerable to the setup involving the prostitute on the beachRead more: http://www.chacocanyon.com/pointlookout/060412.shtml#ixzz0PCbVnmTg
[edit] Misdirection in literature
Misdirection is also a literary device most commonly employed in detective fiction, where the attention of the reader is deliberately focused on a red herring in order to conceal the identity of the murderer. The means for this form of misdirection may include false clues, false motives or more purely literary methods such as exposition, dialogue, and interior monologue. In a whodunit, misdirection can take place on two separate levels: within the narrative the criminal may attempt to implicate a third party in order to elude the detective; or the author may implicate an innocent party in order to distract the reader. If the watch on a victim's wrist has apparently stopped at 3:00 p.m., this may be because the killer has broken the watch and reset it in order to create a false time of death, but it may equally be the writer's intention to plant that false suspicion in the reader's mind.
For example, in their novel Dance of Death, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child use misdirection to suggest several possible causes for the falling of lumber and the occurrence of loud snapping sounds that Margo Green hears as she walks through museum exhibits in the wee hours of the morning. First she thinks that the sounds are made by boards that have chanced to fall over after construction crew workers have left them precariously balanced upon quitting the work of the day. Next, she supposes that the sounds are made by a night guard tripping over a loose board. Then, she wonders whether the sounds are made by someone playing a practical joke on her. None of these possibilities turns out to be the actual cause of the sounds.
When you possess sensitive information that others desire, you might become the target of a variety of techniques of varying ethical value. Understanding those techniques, and preparing to resist them, helps protect your information, your career, and perhaps even your life.
The more sensitive the information,the more likely we are to encounterpersistent and skillful seekersof that informationSome seekers have extensive resources that are out of view of the target. They use these resources to wring value out of even the most unlikely bits of data. Here are some examples of resource-based methods
Holography
This technique involves integrating partial information from multiple targets to make a useful whole. It's effective when the targets feel that they're safe in revealing a minimal bit of data, not realizing that other targets might reveal other pieces. Indicators of this method are questions about details, such as what make of car someone owns. "Just curious" is rarely a reasonable justification for questions of this kindRead more:
Non-chance chance meeting
If you have a routine, such as often going to the same place for lunch, you might "accidentally" meet the seeker, who strikes up a friendship that appears to be unrelated to your job. Disclosing information to someone you met seemingly by chance can be risky.
False flag
Seekers might represent themselves as law enforcement, reporters, biographers, insurance investigators or similar information gatherers. They might display legitimate-looking credentials or other insignia. Unless you have the expertise required to validate credentials, remain skeptical.
Trust-building
By disclosing something that seems personal or sensitive, seekers can gain the trust of the target. They might offer information that disparages or even harms political foes. When you sense that someone trusts you too easily, consider the possibility that you're the target of a trust-building seeker of sensitive information
Flirtation, flattery and romance
When deftly used, flirtation, flattery and romance are especially effective with those who are vulnerable or naïve. Between socially incompatible types, and when initiated by the more adept of the pair, these tactics could be indicators of information-seeking.
Bait
By saying something that's wrong or incomplete, or by setting up the target to demonstrate superior knowledge, the seeker might induce the target to disclose sensitive information. Because many high achievers dislike being corrected or being shown to have inferior skill, accepting correction with little comment and no resistance could be an indicator of this tactic.
Disinterest
Feigning disinterest, either by interruption or by appearing to be distracted, the seeker presents a cue to the target that what was just said was unimportant. Alternatively, the seeker might focus on an unimportant detail of the conversation to mislead the target about what the real point of interest is.
Relationship-building
Cultivating friendship over a relatively long period of time, especially when accompanied by a flow of useful information from the seeker to the target, could be an indicator of this tactic. Those most vulnerable have few friends and might even be isolated by internal politics. Managers who allow isolated individuals to remain so are creating a vulnerability to this tactic.
Conspiracy
By drawing the target into a secret relationship, the seeker forms a tight bond with the target. One famous example of this technique is Connie Chung's 1995 interview of Newt Gingrich's mother, in which she said, "Why don't you just whisper it to me, just between you and me?" When a seeker suggests confidentiality or secrecy, and revealing the information could be harmful to the target, the seeker could be using this technique.
Shaking the tree
Shaking an orange tree. Photo courtesy US Department of Agriculture.By creating in the target a state of emotional upset, seekers hope to generate out-of-control behavior just to see what falls out. Emotional states that are especially fruitful are anger, fear and romantic rejection.
Good cop, bad cop
In this method, two seekers pursue the target. One uses pressure and fear, while the other uses a kinder and gentler approach. This method still works, despite its being a well known (and overused) plot device in fiction, film and television.
Gift-wrapping
Some questions come gift-wrapped: "Let me ask you...," or "Can I get some information about...," or "I'd like to learn about...," or "Let me pick your brain about...," or "You're an expert on X, can you tell me about..." The wrapping is intended to trigger a desire to cooperate. By interfering withour ability to thinkcritically, seekers ofinformation cansometimes getwhat they want
Immersion
When we're in contact with someone over a long period of time, as on an extended business trip, we tend to become less guarded. Be alert to probing questions that seem unrelated to the tasks at hand. Limit conversation when you're fatigued or stressed.
Authority or command
Sometimes used by those with organizational power, these methods are also available to certification, legal and enforcement authorities. An example of the latter, from The Firm, by John Grisham
Blackmail, bribery and extortion
Targets of blackmail, bribery or extortion can experience feelings of extreme helplessness. These methods are favorites of the Firm's enforcer, "Bill DeVasher," played by Wilford Brimley in the film.
Substances and wining-and-dining
Seekers might use alcohol, food or other substances in what seems to be a social context. In The Firm, "Avery Tolar" (played by Gene Hackman in the film), uses these methods to make "Mitch McDeere" (played by Tom Cruise) vulnerable to the setup involving the prostitute on the beachRead more: http://www.chacocanyon.com/pointlookout/060412.shtml#ixzz0PCbVnmTg
'Golden Age of Detective Stories'
'Locked-Room' Mysteries and Other Impossible Crimes
Introduction
A popular sub-genre in mystery fiction, especially during the Golden Age of the 1920s and 1930s, is the so-called locked-room murder, which can be defined as any crime committed in such a way that it seems to be impossible to determine how it was done. John Dickson Carr was the master of this class of detective story
This is the detective story in its most ‘intellectual’ form (along with the unbreakable alibi and the least likely suspect), a challenge by the author to the reader, and is therefore a matter of taste, especially for readers who prefer suspense or fast action or literary critics who insist that character traits are more important than ratiocination. That should not imply that the locked-room murder, if well done, lacks these elements.
Many readers prefer their locked-room murders in short-story format as it is difficult to sustain momentum in a novel when the puzzle is the main point. There is also a much larger selection among short stories. Carr was exceptional in his ability to combine a good impossible crime with a compelling plot and interesting characters, but it will surprise many readers to know that few of his many detective novels are actually locked-room murders (most of his plots involved misdirection of another sort); he far more excercised this allo in the short-story form. However, short stories are beyond the range of this brief essay, as there are so many of them. Mystery aficionados should look to the specialist collections, such as Robert Adey and Douglas Greene’s Death Locked In (1987), The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Murders and Impossible Crimes (2000), and others. There is also Hans Stefan Santesson’s Locked Room Reader (1968), long out of print but one of the first and best of its type. See also Adey’s definitive bibliography Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes (1979) – if you can find it and afford it
The Types
Rooms locked from the inside (or under constant observation)
Earliest is Poe's classic Murders in the Rue Morgue; there is also a locked-room murder in LeFanu's Uncle Silas where he reused material from earlier stories); both solutions involve hocussing of windows. This sort of thing is now seen as rather primitive, but JDC used it successfully in The Cavalier's Cup, Till Death Do Us Part, and in a few other cases. Fiddling with bolts or locks from outside the door with keys left inside is also rather dated, but that doesn't mean Carr never used that trick convincingly (e.g., The Dead Man's Knock). A couple of ingenious key-manipulation locked-room mysteries are Ellery Queen's Chinese Orange Mystery and Edgar Wallace's Clue of the New Pin. An unusual variation is the classic 'locked-chest' murder: Smallbone Deceased, by Michael Gilbert, or see also Edmund Crispin's Holy Disorders, which is a 'locked-cathedral' murder. Israel Zangwill's Big Bow Mystery (1895) is one of the first locked-room novels that really 'works' and used the 'impossibility' as a critical plot element, not just a diversion.
Carr's own favorite impossible crime story was Leroux's Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908). The plot is ingenious, but in fact the book is pretty awful (the detective Rouletabille is absurd) and falls under the generally French category of Grand Guignol. The impossibility involves witnesses observing the only doorway the murderer could have used, and of course no one was seen entering; Carr used this device in It Walks by Night and (a variation of the theme, where the murderer is seen entering the room but vanishes from it) in The Three Coffins, to cite just two examples.
Secret Passages and Hidden Traps
Secret entrances or other hidden accesses (usually considered cheating in this category) were rarely used by Carr, but when he did (The Judas Window), he surpassed himself. (But not very successfully in Death-Watch.) Booby-trap stories are mostly unconvincing because too much of the success of the device depends on pure luck (most writers who used these ploys never considered Murphy's Law that if anything can go wrong it will). The classic original was Wilkie Collins's "Tale of a Terribly Strange Bed." Carr tried some, but succeeded reasonably only with a couple of them: The Reader Is Warned and Fatal Descent (collaboration with John Rhode); it is very unconvincing in a book like The Man Who Could Not Shudder, involving a flying gun. Edmund Crispin's Swan Song, like Fatal Descent, varies from the tradition sealed room by being set in an elevator; in both cases, one shudders to think what could have gone wrong and sent the kil straight to jail without passing Go. (My all-time favorite absurdity is Van Dine's Scarab Murder Case, where the murderer tilts up an Egyptian statue on top of a library shelf with a pencil stub knowing that his victim's compulsive tidiness will lead him to try to straighten it, with the result that it will fall on his head.)
Magician's Tricks
In many cases (especially with Clayton Rawson's Great Merlini stories and Joseph Commings tales about Senator Brooks Banner), the impossible crime situation is created by use of professional magic -- mirrors, misdirection, and the like. One trouble with this approach is that it is rarely convincing (as are explanations about floating ladies, etc. -- the trick works but you still wonder how you could be fooled); also, these stories do not stand up well to re-reading, since everything depends on the gimmick and other aspects of plotting such as characterization and motivation tend to be overlooked. Opportunity is all. There is not much to be said about this form of locked-room murder, as there are very few examples. But once again, The Three Coffins has to be mentioned
'No Footprints in the Snow'
Another type of impossible crime is the 'killer left no footprints' situation -- where the victim is found stabbed or strangled in a place where access by the murderer had to have left traces: a field of snow, a beach of wet sand, a stretch of mud, etc. Carr used this a lot (Witch of the Low Tide, White Priory Murders, Problem of the Wire Cage, and so on). Another book in this category, which Carr described as a classic but which apart from its ingenuity and spooky north-woods setting is not that good (because the characters, such as they are, behave irrationally and inconsistently), is Hake Talbot's Rim of the Pit. It has risible scenes involving something like pole-vaulting and the near frightening to death of somebody by having him flee from a wendigo by attaching a halloween kite to his back! All in all, however, the no-footprints puzzle provides one of the best impossible crime situations
The Impossible Suspect
You (and the detective) know or suspect who the murderer is, but all indications are that he couldn't have done it anyway, or he has an apparently unassailable alibi. Carr handled this well in To Wake the Dead or Hag's Nook, for example. Rex Stout's League of Frightened Men is a classic of this sort. The hidden serial killer (a pillar of the community) is a subset of this category (Carter Dickson's My Late Wives, Night at the Mocking Widow, etc.). One of the best multiple-murder mysteries is Ellery Queen's Cat of Many Tails; Agatha Christie did a several good ones as well (esp. The Pale Horse, And Then There Were None, and The ABC Murders). S. S. Van Dine (always a good example of how to overdo it) had the Greene and Bishop Murder Cases; the killer is easy to spot because he/she is practically the only person left in the cast by the time the book nears the end (the Tontine approach to detection). A major aspect of this sort of plot is misdirection of the sort G. K. Chesterton specialized in -- that is, natural assumptions based on the reader's preconeptions, and abetted by the author's narrative slant, lead one to ignore what seems obvious in retrospect
The Extravaganza
The final category to be mentioned here is the Grand Rigmarole, where the impossible situations, bizarre events, and wild characters are piled one on top of the other, and the story never stops moving, twisting, and turning. Try The Arabian Nights Murder or The Blind Barber, among Carr's works, or Dickson's Punch and Judy Murders. The Devil in Velvet, one of Carr's historical fantasies, has most of everything you could ever want in it, including impossibilities and even Satan himself; masterpiece! Fire, Burn! and The Burning Court also weave in the supernatural/science fiction very successfully. Michael Innes did some fine ones (not really 'impossible crimes'), such as Hamlet, Revenge!, What Happened at Hazelwood, and Appleby on Ararat (unreal!). Phantasmagorical classics include: several Ellery Queens (e.g., And on the Eighth Day, House of Brass); JDC's Lost Gallows; McCabe's Face on the Cutting-Room Floor; Crispin's The Moving Toyshop; Innes's Lament for a Maker. This requires a lot of imagination, even when the writing is terrible as with McCabe, and the works of Harry Steven Keeler. ----
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Introduction
A popular sub-genre in mystery fiction, especially during the Golden Age of the 1920s and 1930s, is the so-called locked-room murder, which can be defined as any crime committed in such a way that it seems to be impossible to determine how it was done. John Dickson Carr was the master of this class of detective story
This is the detective story in its most ‘intellectual’ form (along with the unbreakable alibi and the least likely suspect), a challenge by the author to the reader, and is therefore a matter of taste, especially for readers who prefer suspense or fast action or literary critics who insist that character traits are more important than ratiocination. That should not imply that the locked-room murder, if well done, lacks these elements.
Many readers prefer their locked-room murders in short-story format as it is difficult to sustain momentum in a novel when the puzzle is the main point. There is also a much larger selection among short stories. Carr was exceptional in his ability to combine a good impossible crime with a compelling plot and interesting characters, but it will surprise many readers to know that few of his many detective novels are actually locked-room murders (most of his plots involved misdirection of another sort); he far more excercised this allo in the short-story form. However, short stories are beyond the range of this brief essay, as there are so many of them. Mystery aficionados should look to the specialist collections, such as Robert Adey and Douglas Greene’s Death Locked In (1987), The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Murders and Impossible Crimes (2000), and others. There is also Hans Stefan Santesson’s Locked Room Reader (1968), long out of print but one of the first and best of its type. See also Adey’s definitive bibliography Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes (1979) – if you can find it and afford it
The Types
Rooms locked from the inside (or under constant observation)
Earliest is Poe's classic Murders in the Rue Morgue; there is also a locked-room murder in LeFanu's Uncle Silas where he reused material from earlier stories); both solutions involve hocussing of windows. This sort of thing is now seen as rather primitive, but JDC used it successfully in The Cavalier's Cup, Till Death Do Us Part, and in a few other cases. Fiddling with bolts or locks from outside the door with keys left inside is also rather dated, but that doesn't mean Carr never used that trick convincingly (e.g., The Dead Man's Knock). A couple of ingenious key-manipulation locked-room mysteries are Ellery Queen's Chinese Orange Mystery and Edgar Wallace's Clue of the New Pin. An unusual variation is the classic 'locked-chest' murder: Smallbone Deceased, by Michael Gilbert, or see also Edmund Crispin's Holy Disorders, which is a 'locked-cathedral' murder. Israel Zangwill's Big Bow Mystery (1895) is one of the first locked-room novels that really 'works' and used the 'impossibility' as a critical plot element, not just a diversion.
Carr's own favorite impossible crime story was Leroux's Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908). The plot is ingenious, but in fact the book is pretty awful (the detective Rouletabille is absurd) and falls under the generally French category of Grand Guignol. The impossibility involves witnesses observing the only doorway the murderer could have used, and of course no one was seen entering; Carr used this device in It Walks by Night and (a variation of the theme, where the murderer is seen entering the room but vanishes from it) in The Three Coffins, to cite just two examples.
Secret Passages and Hidden Traps
Secret entrances or other hidden accesses (usually considered cheating in this category) were rarely used by Carr, but when he did (The Judas Window), he surpassed himself. (But not very successfully in Death-Watch.) Booby-trap stories are mostly unconvincing because too much of the success of the device depends on pure luck (most writers who used these ploys never considered Murphy's Law that if anything can go wrong it will). The classic original was Wilkie Collins's "Tale of a Terribly Strange Bed." Carr tried some, but succeeded reasonably only with a couple of them: The Reader Is Warned and Fatal Descent (collaboration with John Rhode); it is very unconvincing in a book like The Man Who Could Not Shudder, involving a flying gun. Edmund Crispin's Swan Song, like Fatal Descent, varies from the tradition sealed room by being set in an elevator; in both cases, one shudders to think what could have gone wrong and sent the kil straight to jail without passing Go. (My all-time favorite absurdity is Van Dine's Scarab Murder Case, where the murderer tilts up an Egyptian statue on top of a library shelf with a pencil stub knowing that his victim's compulsive tidiness will lead him to try to straighten it, with the result that it will fall on his head.)
Magician's Tricks
In many cases (especially with Clayton Rawson's Great Merlini stories and Joseph Commings tales about Senator Brooks Banner), the impossible crime situation is created by use of professional magic -- mirrors, misdirection, and the like. One trouble with this approach is that it is rarely convincing (as are explanations about floating ladies, etc. -- the trick works but you still wonder how you could be fooled); also, these stories do not stand up well to re-reading, since everything depends on the gimmick and other aspects of plotting such as characterization and motivation tend to be overlooked. Opportunity is all. There is not much to be said about this form of locked-room murder, as there are very few examples. But once again, The Three Coffins has to be mentioned
'No Footprints in the Snow'
Another type of impossible crime is the 'killer left no footprints' situation -- where the victim is found stabbed or strangled in a place where access by the murderer had to have left traces: a field of snow, a beach of wet sand, a stretch of mud, etc. Carr used this a lot (Witch of the Low Tide, White Priory Murders, Problem of the Wire Cage, and so on). Another book in this category, which Carr described as a classic but which apart from its ingenuity and spooky north-woods setting is not that good (because the characters, such as they are, behave irrationally and inconsistently), is Hake Talbot's Rim of the Pit. It has risible scenes involving something like pole-vaulting and the near frightening to death of somebody by having him flee from a wendigo by attaching a halloween kite to his back! All in all, however, the no-footprints puzzle provides one of the best impossible crime situations
The Impossible Suspect
You (and the detective) know or suspect who the murderer is, but all indications are that he couldn't have done it anyway, or he has an apparently unassailable alibi. Carr handled this well in To Wake the Dead or Hag's Nook, for example. Rex Stout's League of Frightened Men is a classic of this sort. The hidden serial killer (a pillar of the community) is a subset of this category (Carter Dickson's My Late Wives, Night at the Mocking Widow, etc.). One of the best multiple-murder mysteries is Ellery Queen's Cat of Many Tails; Agatha Christie did a several good ones as well (esp. The Pale Horse, And Then There Were None, and The ABC Murders). S. S. Van Dine (always a good example of how to overdo it) had the Greene and Bishop Murder Cases; the killer is easy to spot because he/she is practically the only person left in the cast by the time the book nears the end (the Tontine approach to detection). A major aspect of this sort of plot is misdirection of the sort G. K. Chesterton specialized in -- that is, natural assumptions based on the reader's preconeptions, and abetted by the author's narrative slant, lead one to ignore what seems obvious in retrospect
The Extravaganza
The final category to be mentioned here is the Grand Rigmarole, where the impossible situations, bizarre events, and wild characters are piled one on top of the other, and the story never stops moving, twisting, and turning. Try The Arabian Nights Murder or The Blind Barber, among Carr's works, or Dickson's Punch and Judy Murders. The Devil in Velvet, one of Carr's historical fantasies, has most of everything you could ever want in it, including impossibilities and even Satan himself; masterpiece! Fire, Burn! and The Burning Court also weave in the supernatural/science fiction very successfully. Michael Innes did some fine ones (not really 'impossible crimes'), such as Hamlet, Revenge!, What Happened at Hazelwood, and Appleby on Ararat (unreal!). Phantasmagorical classics include: several Ellery Queens (e.g., And on the Eighth Day, House of Brass); JDC's Lost Gallows; McCabe's Face on the Cutting-Room Floor; Crispin's The Moving Toyshop; Innes's Lament for a Maker. This requires a lot of imagination, even when the writing is terrible as with McCabe, and the works of Harry Steven Keeler. ----
http://www.mysterylist.com/newindex.htm
The Hollow Man (1935 novel)
The Hollow Man is a famous locked room mystery novel by the American writer John Dickson Carr (1906-1977), published in 1935. It was published in the USA under the title The Three Coffins, and in 1981 was selected as the best locked-room mystery of all time by a panel of 17 mystery authors and reviewers
Plot summary
One wintry night in London, two murders are committed in quick succession. In both cases, the murderer has seemingly vanished into thin air.
In the first case, he has disappeared from Professor Grimaud's study after shooting the professor -- without leaving a trace, with the only door to the room locked from the inside, and with people present in the hall outside the room. Both the ground below the window and the roof above it are covered with unbroken snow.
In the second case, a man walking in the middle of a deserted cul-de-sac at about the same time is evidently shot at close range, with the same revolver that killed Grimaud and only minutes afterward, but there is no one else near the man; this is witnessed from some distance by three passersby -- two tourists and a police constable -- who happen to be walking on the pavement. It takes Dr Gideon Fell, scholar and "a pompous pain in the neck," who keeps hinting at the solution without giving it away,
One wintry night in London, two murders are committed in quick succession. In both cases, the murderer has seemingly vanished into thin air.
In the first case, he has disappeared from Professor Grimaud's study after shooting the professor -- without leaving a trace, with the only door to the room locked from the inside, and with people present in the hall outside the room. Both the ground below the window and the roof above it are covered with unbroken snow.
In the second case, a man walking in the middle of a deserted cul-de-sac at about the same time is evidently shot at close range, with the same revolver that killed Grimaud and only minutes afterward, but there is no one else near the man; this is witnessed from some distance by three passersby -- two tourists and a police constable -- who happen to be walking on the pavement. It takes Dr Gideon Fell, scholar and "a pompous pain in the neck," who keeps hinting at the solution without giving it away,
Perfect murder (fiction)
The perfect murder is a murder which benefits the murderer, but also has no negative consequences for him or her; usually, this simply means that the murderer is never caught. Several factors might contribute to the perfect murder:
The murderer has an impeccably trustworthy witness who provides an alibi, which no other witness contradicts.
The murderer had no apparent motive to commit the crime, and thus is not suspected by investigators.
The murderer does not retain incriminating items or leave physical evidence of his presence at the crime scene.
The murderer cannot be convicted for the crime owing to a legal loophole that the murder knew would make a conviction unattainable.
At no stage in planning, committing or covering up the crime does the murderer take another person into confidence on any suspicious or illegal matter.
The murderer has an impeccably trustworthy witness who provides an alibi, which no other witness contradicts.
The murderer had no apparent motive to commit the crime, and thus is not suspected by investigators.
The murderer does not retain incriminating items or leave physical evidence of his presence at the crime scene.
The murderer cannot be convicted for the crime owing to a legal loophole that the murder knew would make a conviction unattainable.
At no stage in planning, committing or covering up the crime does the murderer take another person into confidence on any suspicious or illegal matter.
The concept of the perfect murder is closely connected with detective fiction and often crops up in the whodunit and the locked room mystery. In the latter case, the murderer usually tries to make their crime 'perfect' by creating the illusion that there is no physically possible way they could commit the crime. For example, the victim is found dead in an empty room with its only door locked from the inside. The murderer, of course, has used some clever method to lock the door after departure, and a verdict of suicide means that foul play is not suspected.
The idea of a "motiveless" perfect murder is explored in the novel Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, famously adapted into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock. The scheme is for two strangers who both want someone dead to meet randomly and "trade murders," each doing the other's dirty work so they each have no discernible motive for their respective crimes.
A perfect murder could involve making it appear that the person one kills is oneself. The film The Whole Nine Yards features a perfect murder in which a hitman kills someone and blows up his body, making facial identification impossible. Knowing the police would check the body's dental records, the killer has a dentist insert dental implants to modify the victim's teeth to match his own.
A perfect murder could also be made to appear as an accidental or natural death.
The idea of a "motiveless" perfect murder is explored in the novel Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, famously adapted into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock. The scheme is for two strangers who both want someone dead to meet randomly and "trade murders," each doing the other's dirty work so they each have no discernible motive for their respective crimes.
A perfect murder could involve making it appear that the person one kills is oneself. The film The Whole Nine Yards features a perfect murder in which a hitman kills someone and blows up his body, making facial identification impossible. Knowing the police would check the body's dental records, the killer has a dentist insert dental implants to modify the victim's teeth to match his own.
A perfect murder could also be made to appear as an accidental or natural death.
The Eve CLub
the Eve Club, which for more than three decades created a stylish combination of sexual and political intrigue that today's nightclubs can only dream about. This is a place where Frank Sinatra and Errol Flynn came to relax when in town, where a rising young Conservative MP called John Profumo held his stag night and where the then Bishop of Southwell courted, and later married, one of its hostesses. A judge once described it as "a sub-division of the Foreign Office".
And presiding over this heady mix, sitting at Table One, as it was known, there would be the eagle-eyed, blonde-haired, diminutive figure of Helen O'Brien, a black, gold-tipped Balkan Sobranie often in her hand. O'Brien owned the Eve Club with her husband, Jimmy. Their reign ran from its grand opening in 1953 to its eventual closure in 1992, by which time it had become an almost forgotten anachronism.
Helen O'Brien's real name was Elena Constaninescu and she was born in 1925 to a well-off family of Romanian landowners. In 1947, as the Communists tightened their grip on post-war eastern Europe, she fled to London, where she eventually found work as a dancer and cigarette girl at a cabaret club, Murray's, in Beak Street. Its general manager was Jimmy O'Brien; they began a relationship and married in 1955.
By this time, they were already a professional partnership. Mr O'Brien had been keen for some time to open his own club, catering for a London which had now finally begun to recover from the doldrums of the postwar years. The couple found premises in Regent Street and opened on Valentine's Night in 1953; the illuminated floor was the first of its kind. The club would offer fine dining in the European tradition and, more importantly, sex and glamour.
Helen O'Brien recruited what were reputed to be the most beautiful showgirls in London to work in routines modelled on those of the Folies Bergère and the clubs of Pigalle in Paris. Under the strict rules of the day, full nudity was not allowed and movement on stage, at least in the early days, was severely restricted. Additionally, there were equally attractive "hostesses" employed to keep the lonely businessmen, diplomats and MPs company, while encouraging them to spend freely at the bar.
The convention was that men would buy drinks for the girls and perhaps offer a tip - £5 or £10 - tucked discreetly into a handbag or packet of cigarettes. But unlike some similar premises, there was no ban on the girls mingling with the customers afterwards. Mrs O'Brien told an interviewer last year: "Of course there was sex, but not on the premises. We were not a whorehouse. If a girl and a client wanted to begin a relationship beyond the club, we knew nothing about it." A 1962 brochure, describing one of the club's star performers, said: "Her attractions are stunning, her talent is extraordinary and her telephone number, sir, is none of your business."
Many of the girls, it was said, made "good" marriages to men they met in the club. And Mrs O'Brien could certainly spot the dangerous ones. Christine Keeler, whose relationship with John Profumo ended his career as War Minister and became one of the defining scandals of the Sixties, was rejected. "She wasn't suitable. I felt she was an easily led girl," recalled Mrs O'Brien.
Ditto Norma Levy, the call girl whose relationship with Lord Lambton, then RAF Minister, led to his resignation in 1973 and whose tenure at the club lasted only a couple of days. "Hard and mercenary," recorded Mrs O'Brien at the time.
she had been working for both the Security Service and MI6 for many years. The approach had come from MI5 towards the end of the 1950s after it became apparent that the Eve Club had become a haunt not only for British politicians and civil servants but also for an increasing number of diplomats from Communist countries, who found London's nightlife simply too hard to resist.
Mrs O'Brien, whose exile from her home country had made her a fervent anti-Communist, was anxious to help and in the intoxicating atmosphere of the Eve Club, the Eastern Bloc diplomats found themselves passing over more than just fivers to the hostesses, closely observed by MI5 agents and, it was rumoured, those of the KGB as well
But it was not all spies, sleaze and intrigue. The Eve Club was a venue for the glamorous celebrities of the day, who were confident that journalists and photographers would not be admitted and that there would be no paparazzi waiting for them outside. Shirley Bassey performed there and Errol Flynn took his 12-year-old son Sean to see the dancing girls. Judy Garland, Barbara Cartland and the King of Nepal were all members.
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/soho-in-the-sixties-all-about-eve-507835.html
And presiding over this heady mix, sitting at Table One, as it was known, there would be the eagle-eyed, blonde-haired, diminutive figure of Helen O'Brien, a black, gold-tipped Balkan Sobranie often in her hand. O'Brien owned the Eve Club with her husband, Jimmy. Their reign ran from its grand opening in 1953 to its eventual closure in 1992, by which time it had become an almost forgotten anachronism.
Helen O'Brien's real name was Elena Constaninescu and she was born in 1925 to a well-off family of Romanian landowners. In 1947, as the Communists tightened their grip on post-war eastern Europe, she fled to London, where she eventually found work as a dancer and cigarette girl at a cabaret club, Murray's, in Beak Street. Its general manager was Jimmy O'Brien; they began a relationship and married in 1955.
By this time, they were already a professional partnership. Mr O'Brien had been keen for some time to open his own club, catering for a London which had now finally begun to recover from the doldrums of the postwar years. The couple found premises in Regent Street and opened on Valentine's Night in 1953; the illuminated floor was the first of its kind. The club would offer fine dining in the European tradition and, more importantly, sex and glamour.
Helen O'Brien recruited what were reputed to be the most beautiful showgirls in London to work in routines modelled on those of the Folies Bergère and the clubs of Pigalle in Paris. Under the strict rules of the day, full nudity was not allowed and movement on stage, at least in the early days, was severely restricted. Additionally, there were equally attractive "hostesses" employed to keep the lonely businessmen, diplomats and MPs company, while encouraging them to spend freely at the bar.
The convention was that men would buy drinks for the girls and perhaps offer a tip - £5 or £10 - tucked discreetly into a handbag or packet of cigarettes. But unlike some similar premises, there was no ban on the girls mingling with the customers afterwards. Mrs O'Brien told an interviewer last year: "Of course there was sex, but not on the premises. We were not a whorehouse. If a girl and a client wanted to begin a relationship beyond the club, we knew nothing about it." A 1962 brochure, describing one of the club's star performers, said: "Her attractions are stunning, her talent is extraordinary and her telephone number, sir, is none of your business."
Many of the girls, it was said, made "good" marriages to men they met in the club. And Mrs O'Brien could certainly spot the dangerous ones. Christine Keeler, whose relationship with John Profumo ended his career as War Minister and became one of the defining scandals of the Sixties, was rejected. "She wasn't suitable. I felt she was an easily led girl," recalled Mrs O'Brien.
Ditto Norma Levy, the call girl whose relationship with Lord Lambton, then RAF Minister, led to his resignation in 1973 and whose tenure at the club lasted only a couple of days. "Hard and mercenary," recorded Mrs O'Brien at the time.
she had been working for both the Security Service and MI6 for many years. The approach had come from MI5 towards the end of the 1950s after it became apparent that the Eve Club had become a haunt not only for British politicians and civil servants but also for an increasing number of diplomats from Communist countries, who found London's nightlife simply too hard to resist.
Mrs O'Brien, whose exile from her home country had made her a fervent anti-Communist, was anxious to help and in the intoxicating atmosphere of the Eve Club, the Eastern Bloc diplomats found themselves passing over more than just fivers to the hostesses, closely observed by MI5 agents and, it was rumoured, those of the KGB as well
But it was not all spies, sleaze and intrigue. The Eve Club was a venue for the glamorous celebrities of the day, who were confident that journalists and photographers would not be admitted and that there would be no paparazzi waiting for them outside. Shirley Bassey performed there and Errol Flynn took his 12-year-old son Sean to see the dancing girls. Judy Garland, Barbara Cartland and the King of Nepal were all members.
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/soho-in-the-sixties-all-about-eve-507835.html
Gateways Club
In a book originally put together by Hunter Davies in the late sixties called The London Spy - A Discrete Guide To The City’s Pleasures, there are two chapters written specifically for gay and lesbian visitors to London. The first, entitled ‘Men For Men’, notes around twenty venues where men could meet ’soul or bed-mates and/or escape the attentions of the fat girls with whom you flew over on your chartered 747′, one of which, under ‘non-dancing clubs’ was called Gigolo at 328 King’s Road (now a carpet shop) and was described by the book as an “Aptly named, hot, incredibly packed coffee bar. A frotteur’s delight. Lots of Spanish waiters and terrified Americans. The Rolls-Royce outside could be the one to whisk you away from it all.” However in the ‘Women for Women’ chapter, written by the novelist Maureen Duffy, there is mention of just one venue - the famous Gateways Club.
The Gateways had been in existence at 239 Kings Road on the corner of Bramerton Street in Chelsea, since the thirties. It became more or less exclusively lesbian during the war when the anonymity and proximity provided by the khaki or blue uniformed women who came to work in London suddenly meant that a far greater number of women, of a certain persuasion, needed somewhere to go they could call their own.
A man called Ted Ware took over the club during the war, purportedly winning it in a poker game (”I raise you my lesbian members-only club…”). Ten years later he married an actress called Gina Cerrato in 1953 and she soon took over the running of the club. She was joined after a few years by a butch American woman called Smithy who originally came to England as a member of the American Airforce, but after an arranged marriage in the early sixties, she stayed in England for the rest of her life.
The membership fee during the sixties was just ten shillings (50p) and no guests were admitted after ten o’clock to discourage people who had spent their money elsewhere. Maureen Duffy explained that ‘rowdies or troublemakers’ were often banned immediately. This, at the time, was more than just embarrassing, it was unbelievably inconvenient - the nearest alternative lesbian club would have been in Brighton, travelling to which would have made a social life far too expensive to afford.
Dining out with a girlfriend, even in the sixties, would have also cost too much for most women (who would have usually been earning far less than men for even comparable jobs in those days). It’s easy to forget that women wearing trousers were often still banned from most restaurants at the time, while pubs were still risky places for women unaccompanied by men. For a lot of women, the Gateways Club was the only relaxing and affordable place they had to go.
Dining out with a girlfriend, even in the sixties, would have also cost too much for most women (who would have usually been earning far less than men for even comparable jobs in those days). It’s easy to forget that women wearing trousers were often still banned from most restaurants at the time, while pubs were still risky places for women unaccompanied by men. For a lot of women, the Gateways Club was the only relaxing and affordable place they had to go.
After entering a dull green door on Bramerton Street, there was a steep set of steps leading down to the cloakroom (looked after usually by Gina) and the entrance to the club. The smokey windowless cellar-like room was but 35ft long and featured a bar at one end which was usually ‘manned’ by Smithy. Entertainment was a fruit-machine by a pillar in the centre and a jukebox opposite the bar. It was never known whether Gina and Smithy were a couple (Ted eventually died in 1979) but many suspected they were
.
.During the eighties the club became quieter probably because other lesbian and gay venues were opening in London, and eventually Gateways only opened at weekends. The local neighbourhood in Chelsea was also becoming more and more upmarket and the club lost its late-licence in 1985 due to complaints about loud music. Not long afterwards the famous green door was subsequently closed for ever.
Between the 9th and 16th of June in 1968 The Gateways club became internationally famous when it appeared as a backdrop to many scenes filmed for The Killing Of Sister George, a movie starring Beryl Reid, Coral Browne and Susannah York. In 1960, York, a starlet at the beginning of her acting career and newly married, lived in a house at World’s End in Chelsea just a few hundred yards from the club but it’s reasonably safe to say that, even if she knew it existed, York wasn’t a regular at the Gateways.
Between the 9th and 16th of June in 1968 The Gateways club became internationally famous when it appeared as a backdrop to many scenes filmed for The Killing Of Sister George, a movie starring Beryl Reid, Coral Browne and Susannah York. In 1960, York, a starlet at the beginning of her acting career and newly married, lived in a house at World’s End in Chelsea just a few hundred yards from the club but it’s reasonably safe to say that, even if she knew it existed, York wasn’t a regular at the Gateways.
Robert Aldrich, the director, whose previous film was the slightly more macho The Dirty Dozen, decided to include actual customers rather than extras when they filmed scenes in the club. Gina, Smithy and the regulars performed stiffly and uncomfortably in front of the camera but when the film was released, for a lot of people, this was the first glimpse of a hidden lesbian sub-culture they had ever seen.
Soho Cafe bar
In 1953 the Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida opened the Moka coffee bar at 29 Frith Street in Soho which provided London with its first Gaggia expresso coffee machine. Some have argued that the simple opening of this West End coffee bar was the early morning double-expresso that London needed to kick-start its way out of the grey post-war depression, setting itself up to become the world’s trendiest city in only a decade’s time.
Quickly other coffee bars sprung up around Soho, often providing live music, these included the Top Ten in Berwick Street and the Heaven and Hell bar in Old Compton Street, but the most famous of all, and next door to the Heaven and Hell, was the 2 i’s at number 59.
Almost over night young people, who now for the first time were starting to be known as ‘teen-agers’ had somewhere to go they could call their own. The coffee shops were unlicensed and there was nothing to stop teenagers coming to Soho to listen to music, live, or on the jukebox. If you were young, Soho was suddenly the place to be.
Quickly other coffee bars sprung up around Soho, often providing live music, these included the Top Ten in Berwick Street and the Heaven and Hell bar in Old Compton Street, but the most famous of all, and next door to the Heaven and Hell, was the 2 i’s at number 59.
Almost over night young people, who now for the first time were starting to be known as ‘teen-agers’ had somewhere to go they could call their own. The coffee shops were unlicensed and there was nothing to stop teenagers coming to Soho to listen to music, live, or on the jukebox. If you were young, Soho was suddenly the place to be.
The King Of Soho Paul Raymond
To some Paul Raymond was at the vanguard of the newly liberated post-war Britain but to others he was just a man who became filthy rich peddling filth. He was eventually known as ‘The King Of Soho’ and it was exactly fifty years ago when Raymond’s Revuebar opened on April 14 1958 in the former Doric Ballroom in Soho’s Walker’s Court. It was London’s first legal nude show with dancers who could actually dance. Before this date, especially at the notorious Windmill Theatre down the road no exposed flesh was allowed to jiggle, wiggle or shudder but Paul Raymond had the simple idea of making his Revuebar a member’s only club and charged a mere guinea for life membership. It became the first location in Britain with a sign legally offering STRIPTEASE, thus it became an infamous Soho landmark.
Within two years The Revuebar, according to The Spectator, included amongst his members “ten M.P.s, eight millionaires, more than 60 knights, 35 peers, and enough businessmen and captains of industry to drain dry the Stock Exchange and the Savoy Grill.”
Not long after opening the Revuebar in Soho, it was profitable enough to provide the money to start producing sex magazines and he eventually published Men Only, Escort, Club International and Razzle. By 1970 Raymond completely dominated the market, saying “There will always be sex - always, always, always.” There was always property as well, and because at the time Soho was run down and seedy, the land was relatively cheap, and Raymond was astute enough to start buying up freeholds in the area. By the time he finished he was said to own an estimated 100 acres of prime real estate in central London with an estimated value of between £600 million to £2 billion. He is said to be the only person to have built a significant private London estate in the 20th century.
As Paul Raymond’s porn, and subsequently his property, empires helped the money pour in, Raymond grew his hair, sported heavy gold jewellery and wore a fur coat, seemingly whatever the weather. His affairs became more public especially his relationship with the former swimmer and soft-porn actress Fiona Richmond. Fed up with the public aspect of the affair, Jean, after an acrimonious and bitterly-fought case, divorced him in 1973. Richmond at the time was appearing in Raymond’s magazines and films such as Hardcore and Let’s Get Laid but also starring at the Whitehall Theatre (which Raymond now owned) in farces such as Yes, We H
ave No Pyjamas.
ave No Pyjamas.
Soho
That there was corruption in Soho in the late sixties and early seventies was an open secret amongst journalists, lawyers and the police themselves; although not many vaguely knew the extent of it.
While the Soho porn industry was steadily proliferating, seemingly untouched, there was an extraordinary ferocious police assault against, what they thought as, politically subversive ‘obscenity’ and apologists for the ‘alternative society’.
While the Soho porn industry was steadily proliferating, seemingly untouched, there was an extraordinary ferocious police assault against, what they thought as, politically subversive ‘obscenity’ and apologists for the ‘alternative society’.
The Conservative Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, asked Detective Chief Inspector George Fenwick, at the time in charge of the Obscene Publications Squad, exactly why the porn barons in Soho seemed to be operating with somewhere close to impunity. Fenwick explained to Maudling;
“It is an unfortunate fact of life that pornography has existed for centuries and it is unlikely that it can ever be stamped out.”
Maudling was shocked with this explanation, or what was rather a lame excuse, and he quickly initiated a major corruption inquiry. The Government and the judiciary were slowly coming to the conclusion that there was more than the odd bad apple in the Metropolitan police.
“It is an unfortunate fact of life that pornography has existed for centuries and it is unlikely that it can ever be stamped out.”
Maudling was shocked with this explanation, or what was rather a lame excuse, and he quickly initiated a major corruption inquiry. The Government and the judiciary were slowly coming to the conclusion that there was more than the odd bad apple in the Metropolitan police.
In 1972 Maudling appointed Robert Mark to be the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan police. To the old guard he was a provincial outsider. Mark had the reputation as a ‘Mr Clean’ 
and had nicknames such as ‘The Manchester Martinet’ and ‘The Lone Ranger from Leicester’.
and had nicknames such as ‘The Manchester Martinet’ and ‘The Lone Ranger from Leicester’.In Soho at the time it was impossible not to notice the porn shops, they had proliferated greatly in the last few years, and unusually for stores at the time they were open seven days a week. The windows were filled with garish displays of soft-core magazines and books but with notices implying, often correctly, that there was a wider range of harder material to be found inside.
In the same year as Mark’s appointment the Sunday People exposed a connection between James Humphreys (who openly ran two strip clubs and was one of the biggest operators of pornographic bookshops in Soho) and Commander Kenneth Drury. They had both enjoyed a luxurious two week holiday in Cyprus accompanied by their wives, all paid for, of course, by the Soho pornographer. Drury was hopelessly compromised and with concocted a story that he was in Cyprus looking for the train robber Ronnie Biggs.
Humphreys quickly realised the danger of appearing as a police informant and announced that Drury had set up the whole thing. After a police raid at his house a diary of Humphrey’s was found in a wall safe and it unbelievably detailed payments to seventeen different policemen. The policeman included senior policemen such as Bill Moody - Head of the Obscene Publications Squad but also, incredibly, his superior Commander ‘Wally’ Virgo - a man who had overall control of nine squads including the Flying, Drugs and the Porn Squad.
It was estimated that James Humphreys and his fellow porn barons were paying an extraordinary £100,000 a year to corrupt policemen to enable them to continue selling porn unimpeded. Indeed it came to light that Humphreys had been so worried that Drury’s expensive lifestyle would give everything away, he had supplied him with expensive slimming drugs and a rowing machine to keep his weight down.
It was estimated that James Humphreys and his fellow porn barons were paying an extraordinary £100,000 a year to corrupt policemen to enable them to continue selling porn unimpeded. Indeed it came to light that Humphreys had been so worried that Drury’s expensive lifestyle would give everything away, he had supplied him with expensive slimming drugs and a rowing machine to keep his weight down.
The delicately balanced house of cards the corrupt policemen had built, soon came tumbling down. Initially there were just the usual discrete early retirements and resignations but eventually there were two major corruption trials and George Fenwick, Bill Moody, Wally Virgo and Kenneth Drury were all given between ten and fourteen years in prison in 1977. Mr Justice Mars Jones after Fenwick’s trial said:
“Thank goodness the Obscene Publications Squad had gone. I fear the damage you have done may be with us for a long time.”
After the second trial Mars-Jones said it revealed:
“corruption on a scale which beggars description
“Thank goodness the Obscene Publications Squad had gone. I fear the damage you have done may be with us for a long time.”
After the second trial Mars-Jones said it revealed:
“corruption on a scale which beggars description
Don Juan
What kind of man is this Don Juan Tenorio?", asks Leo Weinstein in his monograph on the Don Juan legend[1], "Why does he bend all his efforts to deceive women?. . . To the modern, Freud-oriented reader, Tirso's hero is likely to remain enigmatic. . . ." Rather than permit the thought that the enigma is due to the lack of psychological depth and subtlety in the creation of a 17th century priest, I intend to demonstrate that the opposite is the case, and that nowhere earlier in literature is a description of the psychopath found more sharply delineated than in this brilliant play of a Spanish friar named Gabriel Téllez, who wrote El Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de Piedra, under the pseudonym Tirso de Molina in the first part of the seventeenth century.
While it was not until the nineteenth century that physicians began to elucidate the nature of that disturbing category of human beings that we now call psychopaths, history and literature show that they have always been with us. Although psychopathic behavior was displayed by literary characters as early as Ulysses of The Iliad, (that same psychopathic Ulysses was later revisited by Dante in Inferno Canto 26), this Burlador (trickster), Don Juan Tenorio, has come to occupy a place in western literature alongside the other great legends of Don Quixote, Faust, and Hamlet. Later, under the successive ministrations of Molière, Hoffmann, Mozart, Da Ponte (Mozart's librettist), and Byron, the character of Don Juan lost much of the vicious edge given him by his creator, and was gradually transmuted into the character we identify with the name of Don Juan today: the profligate lover and often, a romantic seeker for ideal womanhood
Throughout the play, even unto his final end, Don Juan expresses no feelings of guilt or remorse (asking for confession at the end only indicates his acknowledgement of infractions against God's laws, not remorse). Quite the contrary, he glories in his exploits and takes pride in his reputation as El Burlador. There is no plan to change, as he continually reminds Catalinón. Making insincere promises to obtain the objects of his seduction, he never will carry through on any of them
Don Juan lacks insight as to the significance of his behavior for himself and other people
Don Juan's affairs are loveless and shallow. Nothing deeper than gozar (to enjoy) is intended by Don Juan. They are driven by his impulses. He is obsessed with the idea that he must "enjoy" his particular conquest of the moment "por Tisbea estoy muriendo" and "[[exclamdown]]Esta noche he de gozalla!". A lasting relationship is definitely unwanted
"The psychopath's insight is always directed toward his internal needs. These needs are not what they appear to be. He is not predominantly hedonistic, although some of his behavior, particularly sexual, might lead one to think so. Instead, he is motivated primarily by the need to dominate and humiliate either the person he is 'taking' or, very often, someone connected to a person with whom he is involved. He may, for instance, seduce a friend's girlfriend."
While it was not until the nineteenth century that physicians began to elucidate the nature of that disturbing category of human beings that we now call psychopaths, history and literature show that they have always been with us. Although psychopathic behavior was displayed by literary characters as early as Ulysses of The Iliad, (that same psychopathic Ulysses was later revisited by Dante in Inferno Canto 26), this Burlador (trickster), Don Juan Tenorio, has come to occupy a place in western literature alongside the other great legends of Don Quixote, Faust, and Hamlet. Later, under the successive ministrations of Molière, Hoffmann, Mozart, Da Ponte (Mozart's librettist), and Byron, the character of Don Juan lost much of the vicious edge given him by his creator, and was gradually transmuted into the character we identify with the name of Don Juan today: the profligate lover and often, a romantic seeker for ideal womanhood
Throughout the play, even unto his final end, Don Juan expresses no feelings of guilt or remorse (asking for confession at the end only indicates his acknowledgement of infractions against God's laws, not remorse). Quite the contrary, he glories in his exploits and takes pride in his reputation as El Burlador. There is no plan to change, as he continually reminds Catalinón. Making insincere promises to obtain the objects of his seduction, he never will carry through on any of them
Don Juan lacks insight as to the significance of his behavior for himself and other people
Don Juan's affairs are loveless and shallow. Nothing deeper than gozar (to enjoy) is intended by Don Juan. They are driven by his impulses. He is obsessed with the idea that he must "enjoy" his particular conquest of the moment "por Tisbea estoy muriendo" and "[[exclamdown]]Esta noche he de gozalla!". A lasting relationship is definitely unwanted
"The psychopath's insight is always directed toward his internal needs. These needs are not what they appear to be. He is not predominantly hedonistic, although some of his behavior, particularly sexual, might lead one to think so. Instead, he is motivated primarily by the need to dominate and humiliate either the person he is 'taking' or, very often, someone connected to a person with whom he is involved. He may, for instance, seduce a friend's girlfriend."
Two Basic Types of Aggression
There are two basic types of aggression: overt-aggression and covert-aggression. When you're determined to have something and you're open, direct and obvious in your manner of fighting, your behavior is best labeled overtly aggressive. When you're out to "win," dominate or control, but are subtle, underhanded or deceptive enough to hide your true intentions, your behavior is most appropriately labeled covertly aggressive. Now, avoiding any overt display of aggression while simultaneously intimidating others into giving you what you want is a powerfully manipulative maneuver. That's why covert-aggression is most often the vehicle for interpersonal manipulation.
Personality can be defined by the way a person habitually perceives, relates to and interacts with others and the world at large.
The tactics of deceit, manipulation and control are a steady diet for covert-aggressive personality. It's the way they prefer to deal with others and to get the things they want in life.
Personality can be defined by the way a person habitually perceives, relates to and interacts with others and the world at large.
The tactics of deceit, manipulation and control are a steady diet for covert-aggressive personality. It's the way they prefer to deal with others and to get the things they want in life.
How Psychopaths View Their World
Some are also able to feign concern about the lower classes and profess that they are on the side of the underdog, the poor, and so forth. A psychopath may claim, for instance (if he's from a low socio-economic class), that he dislikes rich people intensely, but at the same time, he will inwardly yearn and envy what they have. He is like the narcissist, desiring to reflect a false image of himself through his possessions. Among his possessions are included human beings: girlfriends, wives, and children. Some psychopaths can even very fond of animals (contrary to the common viewpoint), but still view them as objects in relation to themselves.
The psychopath is filled with greed inside, relating to the world through power, even though, as I said, on the outside he can claim to be on the side of the disenfranchised or the downtrodden. I knew one who liked to repeat phrases such as "they have to stop keeping my brothers down" but he didn't mean a word of it. He was actually a racist. The psychopath can also often identify himself as a revolutionary.
On the flip side, the psychopath also often paints a picture of himself as the downcast anti-hero (his "own worst enemy type") and some like to see themselves as lone-wolves. The psychopath may even claim he is sensitive and profound, but inside he is nothing but emptiness and greed. Whether or not the psychopath is aware of his behaviour is something that is often debated. I do believe that psychopaths usually know exactly what they are doing, although others suggest that psychopaths are "born, not made."
psychopaths often claim to settle for second best (being their own worst enemy) and then think they deserve better. This may be manifested in the way they seek power -- either through money (i.e. material goods), manipulation and/or treating people as objects. By enacting such behaviours, the psychopath is also trying to "get back" at society and the world, in order to gain retribution. They will spend their entire lives doing this, whether they are rich or poor, or whatever their social background may be, although studies have shown that they often come from an impoverished or lower socio- economic background and/or social status.
psychopaths can still exist in any social class. Do not be misled). I also wanted to point out that I will be using "he" and "him" for the term psychopath throughout this website; let it not be forgotten, yes, female psychopaths exist as well; however, according to the Sixth Edition of Abnormal Behavior, printed in 2000 by three male professors, David, Derald, and Stanley Sue, the rates do differ by gender. Included in their excellent text is a report by the The American Psychiatric Association that the general estimate is 3% for men, and less than 1% in women [Personality Disorders and Impulse Control Disorders, 238].
The psychopath is filled with greed inside, relating to the world through power, even though, as I said, on the outside he can claim to be on the side of the disenfranchised or the downtrodden. I knew one who liked to repeat phrases such as "they have to stop keeping my brothers down" but he didn't mean a word of it. He was actually a racist. The psychopath can also often identify himself as a revolutionary.
On the flip side, the psychopath also often paints a picture of himself as the downcast anti-hero (his "own worst enemy type") and some like to see themselves as lone-wolves. The psychopath may even claim he is sensitive and profound, but inside he is nothing but emptiness and greed. Whether or not the psychopath is aware of his behaviour is something that is often debated. I do believe that psychopaths usually know exactly what they are doing, although others suggest that psychopaths are "born, not made."
psychopaths often claim to settle for second best (being their own worst enemy) and then think they deserve better. This may be manifested in the way they seek power -- either through money (i.e. material goods), manipulation and/or treating people as objects. By enacting such behaviours, the psychopath is also trying to "get back" at society and the world, in order to gain retribution. They will spend their entire lives doing this, whether they are rich or poor, or whatever their social background may be, although studies have shown that they often come from an impoverished or lower socio- economic background and/or social status.
psychopaths can still exist in any social class. Do not be misled). I also wanted to point out that I will be using "he" and "him" for the term psychopath throughout this website; let it not be forgotten, yes, female psychopaths exist as well; however, according to the Sixth Edition of Abnormal Behavior, printed in 2000 by three male professors, David, Derald, and Stanley Sue, the rates do differ by gender. Included in their excellent text is a report by the The American Psychiatric Association that the general estimate is 3% for men, and less than 1% in women [Personality Disorders and Impulse Control Disorders, 238].
Psychopathy Traits
There are usually no symptoms to suggest a psychoneurosis in the clinical sense. In fact, the psychopath is nearly always free from minor reactions popularly regarded as "neurotic" or as constituting "nervousness." The chief criteria whereby such diagnoses as hysteria, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety state, or "neurasthenia" might be made do not apply to him. It is highly typical for him not only to escape the abnormal anxiety and tension fundamentally characteristic of this whole diagnostic group but also to show a relative immunity from such anxiety and worry as might be judged normal or appropriate in disturbing situations. Regularly we find in him extraordinary poise rather than jitteriness or worry, a smooth sense of physical well-being instead of uneasy preoccupation with bodily functions. Even under concrete circumstances that would for the ordinary person cause embarrassment, confusion, acute insecurity, or visible agitation, his relative serenity is likely to be noteworthy.
It is true he may become vexed and restless when held in jails or psychiatric hospitals. This impatience seems related to his inability to realize the need or justification for his being restrained. What tension or uneasiness of this sort he may show seems provoked entirely by external circumstances, never by feelings of guilt, remorse, or intrapersonal insecurity. Within himself he appears almost as incapable of anxiety as of profound remorse.
Though the psychopath is likely to give an early impression of being a thoroughly reliable person, it will soon be found that on many occasions he shows no sense of responsibility whatsoever. No matter how binding the obligation, how urgent the circumstances, or how important the matter, this holds true. Furthermore, the question of whether or not he is to be confronted with his failure or his disloyalty and called to account for it appears to have little effect on his attitude.
If such failures occurred uniformly and immediately, others would soon learn not to rely upon psychopaths or to be surprised at their conduct. It is, however, characteristic for them during some periods to show up regularly at work, to meet their financial obligations, to ignore an opportunity to steal. They may apply their excellent abilities in business or in study for a week, for months, or even for a year or more and thereby gain potential security, win a scholarship, be acclaimed top salesman or elected president of a social club or perhaps of a school honor society. Not all checks given by psychopaths bounce; not all promises are uniformly ignored. They do not necessarily land in jail every day (or every month) or seek to cheat someone else during every transaction. If so, it would be much simpler to deal with them. This transiently (but often convincingly) demonstrated ability to succeed in business and in all objective affairs makes failures more disturbing to those about them.
Furthermore, it cannot be predicted how long effective and socially acceptable conduct will prevail or precisely when (or in what manner) dishonest, outlandish, or disastrously irresponsible acts or failures to act will occur. These seem to have little or no relation to objective stress, to cyclic periods, or to major alterations of mood or outlook. What is at stake for the patient, for his family, or for anybody else is not a regularly determining factor. At the crest of success in his work he may forge a small check, indulge in petty thievery, or simply not come to the office. After a period of gracious and apparently happy relations with his family he may pick a quarrel with his wife, cuff her up a bit, drive her from the house, and then throw a glass of iced tea in the face of his 3-year-old son. For the initiation of such outbursts he does not, it seems, need any great anger. Moderate vexation usually suffices.
The psychopath's unreliability and his disregard for obligations and for consequences are manifested in both trivial and serious matters, are masked by demonstrations of conforming behavior, and cannot be accounted for by ordinary motives or incentives. Although it can be confidently predicted that his failures and disloyalties will continue, it is impossible to time them and to take satisfactory precautions against their effect. Here, it might be said, is not even a consistency in inconsistency but an inconsistency in inconsistency.
The psychopath shows a remarkable disregard for truth and is to be trusted no more in his accounts of the past than in his promises for the future or his statement of present intentions. He gives the impression that he is incapable of ever attaining realistic comprehension of an attitude in other people which causes them to value truth and cherish truthfulness in themselves.
Typically he is at ease and unpretentious in making a serious promise or in (falsely) exculpating himself from accusations, whether grave or trivial. His simplest statement in such matters carries special powers of conviction. Overemphasis, obvious glibness, and other traditional signs of the clever liar do not usually show in his words or in his manner. Whether there is reasonable chance for him to get away with the fraud or whether certain and easily foreseen detection is at hand, he is apparently unperturbed and does the same impressive job. Candor and trustworthiness seem implicit in him at such times. During the most solemn perjuries he has no difficulty at all in looking anyone tranquilly in the eyes. Although he will lie about any matter, under any circumstances, and often for no good reason, he may, on the contrary, sometimes own up to his errors (usually when detection is certain) and appear to be facing the consequences with singular honesty, fortitude, and manliness
Not only is the psychopath undependable, but also in more active ways he cheats, deserts, annoys, brawls, fails, and lies without any apparent compunction. He will commit theft, forgery, adultery, fraud, and other deeds for astonishingly small stakes and under much greater risks of being discovered than will the ordinary scoundrel. He will, in fact, commit such deeds in the absence of any apparent goal at all.
Objective stimuli (value of the object, specific conscious need) are, as in compulsive (or impulsive) stealing, inadequate to account for the psychopath's acts. Evidence of any vividly felt urge symbolizing a disguised but specifically channelized, instinctive drive is not readily available in the psychopath's wide range of inappropriate and self-defeating behavior.
The psychopath is always distinguished by egocentricity. This is usually of a degree not seen in ordinary people and often is little short of astonishing. How obviously this quality will be expressed in vanity or self-esteem will vary with the shrewdness of the subject and with his other complexities. Deeper probing will always reveal a selfcenteredness that is apparently unmodifiable and all but complete. This can perhaps be best expressed by stating that it is an incapacity for object love and that this incapacity (in my experience with well-marked psychopaths) appears to be absolute.
In a sense, it is absurd to maintain that the psychopath's incapacity for object love is absolute, that is, to say he is capable of affection for another ill literally no degree. He is plainly capable of casual fondness, of likes and dislikes, and of reactions that, one might say, cause others to matter to him. These affective reactions are, however, always strictly limited in degree.
psychopaths are sometimes skillful in pretending a love for women or simulating parental devotion to their children. What part of this is not pure (and perhaps in an important sense unconscious) simulation has always impressed this observer as that other type of pseudolove sometimes seen in very self-centered people who are not psychopaths, which consists in concern for the other person only (or primarily) insofar as he enhances or seems to enhance the self. Even this latter imitation of adult affectivity has been seldom seen in the full-blown psychopath, although it is seen frequently in those called here partial psychopaths. In nonpsychopaths a familiar example is that of the parent who lavishes money and attention on a child chiefly to bask in the child's success and consciously or unconsciously to feel what an important person he is because of the child's triumphs.
What positive feelings appear during the psychopath's interpersonal relations give a strong impression of being self-love.
The psychopath seldom shows anything that, if the chief facts were known, would pass even in the eyes of lay observers as object love. His absolute indifference to the financial, social, emotional, physical, and other hardships which he brings upon those for whom he professes love confirms the appraisal during psychiatric studies of his true attitude. We must, let it never be forgotten, judge a man by his actions rather than by his words. This old saying is especially significant when it is the man's motivations and real feelings that we are to judge.
In addition to his incapacity for object love, the psychopath always shows general poverty of affect. Although it is true that be sometimes becomes excited and shouts as if in rage or seems to exult in enthusiasm and again weeps in what appear to be bitter tears or speaks eloquent and mournful words about his misfortunes or his follies, the conviction dawns on those who observe him carefully that here we deal with a readiness of expression rather than a strength of feeling.
Vexation, spite, quick and labile flashes of quasi-affection, peevish resentment, shallow moods of self-pity, puerile attitudes of vanity, and absurd and showy poses of indignation are all within his emotional scale and are freely sounded as the circumstances of life play upon him. But mature, wholehearted anger, true or consistent indignation, honest, solid grief, sustaining pride, deep joy, and genuine despair are reactions not likely to be found within this scale
In a special sense the psychopath lacks insight to a degree seldom, if ever, found in any but the most seriously disturbed psychotic patients. In a superficial sense, in that he can say he is in a psychiatric hospital because of his unacceptable and strange conduct, and by all other such criteria, his insight is intact. His insight is of course not affected at all with the type of impairment seen in the schizophrenic patient, who may not recognize the fact that others regard him as mentally ill but may insist that he is the Grand Lama and now in Tibet. Yet in a very important sense, in the sense of realistic evaluation, the psychopath lacks insight more consistently than some schizophrenic patients. He has absolutely no capacity to see himself as others see him. It is perhaps more accurate to say that he has no ability to know how others feel when they see him or to experience subjectively anything comparable about the situation. All of the values, all of the major affect concerning his status, are unappreciated by him.
This is almost astonishing in view of the psychopath's perfect orientation, his ability and willingness to reason or to go through the forms of reasoning, and his perfect freedom from delusions and other signs of an ordinary psychosis
Usually, instead of facing facts that would ordinarily lead to insight, he projects, blaming his troubles on others with the flimsiest of pretext but with elaborate and subtle rationalization. Occasionally, however, he will perfunctorily admit himself to blame for everything and analyze his case from what seems to be almost a psychiatric viewpoint, but we can see that his conclusions have little actual significance for him.
The patient seems to have little or no ability to feel the significance of his situation, to experience the real emotions of regret or shame or determination to improve, or to realize that this is lacking. His clever statements have been hardly more than verbal reflexes; even his facial expressions are without the underlying content they imply. This is not insight but an excellent mimicry of insight. No sincere intention can spring from his conclusions because no affective conviction is there to move him.
What I regard as the psychopath's lack of insight shows up frequently and very impressively in his apparent assumption that the legal penalties for a crime he has committed do not, or should not, apply to him. This astonishing defect in realization often seems genuine, as the patient protests in surprise against the idea that prison might be anticipated for him, as for others under similar circumstances. He frequently reacts to such an idea as if to something unexpected and totally inappropriate.
Some observers believe that what the psychopath expresses about himself and his situation constitutes insight and merits such a term. I cannot agree with this opinion. The chief and most valid connotations of the word disappear in such an application. Profoundly psychotic patients whose gross lack of insight would be admitted by all sometimes express opinions which, if fully meant and appreciated, would indicate an insight that is plainly not there.
patient on a closed ward, a man badly disabled for years by obvious schizophrenia, often shouted out to the passerby, "Simple case of dementia praecox, Doc, simple case of dementia praecox," pointing to himself several times. Despite the chance diagnostic accuracy of what he said, this patient, like the one just mentioned, had little grasp of his situation and almost no real appreciation of his disorder and its meaning. Another manic patient not only spoke words that correctly indicated a good deal about his situation but even hammered out with a metal object he had obtained these letters in deep gashes in the wood door: "Bug house nutty."
A major point about the psychopath and his relation to alcohol can be found in the shocking, fantastic, uninviting, or relatively inexplicable behavior which emerges when he drinks - sometimes when he drinks only a little. It is very likely that the effects of alcohol facilitate such acts and other manifestations of the disorder. This does not mean, however, that alcohol is fundamentally causal. Good criteria for differentiation between psychopaths and others who drink, moderately or excessively, can be found in what tendencies emerge after similar amounts have been consumed.
A peculiar sort of vulgarity, domineering rudeness, petty bickering or buffoonish quasi-maulings of wife, mistress, or children, and quick shifts between maudlin and vainglorious moods, although sometimes found in ordinary alcoholics with other serious patterns of disorder, are pathognomonic of the psychopath and in him alone reach full and precocious flower. Even in the first stages of a spree, perhaps after taking only two or three highballs, he may show signs of petty truculence or sullenness but seldom of real gaiety or conviviality. Evidence of any pleasurable reaction is characteristically minimal, as are indications that he is seeking relief from anxiety, despair, worry, responsibility, or tension.
Alcohol, as a sort of catalyst, sometimes contributes a good deal to the long and varied series of outlandish pranks and inanely coarse scenes with which nearly every drinking psychopath's story is starred.
The alcohol probably does not of itself create such behavior. Alcohol is not likely to bring out any impulse that is not already potential in a personality, nor is it likely to cast behavior into patterns for which there is not already significant subsurface predilection. The alcohol merely facilitates expression by narcotizing inhibitory processes.136 In cases of this sort very little narcotizing may be needed. The oil which lubricates the engine of an automobile neither furnishes the energy for its progress nor directs it.
All the curious conduct reported in patients who drank and who were presented here occurred in the absence of delirium tremens, alcoholic hallucinosis, or any other of the well-known psychoses due directly to intoxication. Of course, such psychotic conditions may occur in psychopaths and in neurotic drinkers. It is important to keep such symptoms separate, since they are clearly due to another type of mental disorder.
For whatever reason the psychopath may drink, it is true that, in contrast with others who use alcohol to excess, he hits upon conduct and creates situations so bizarre, so untimely, and so preposterous that their motivation appears inscrutable. Many of his exploits seem directly calculated to place him in a disgraceful or ignominious position. He often chooses pranks and seeks out situations that would have no appeal for the ordinary person, whether the ordinary person be drunk or sober. The observer sometimes wonders if a truly astonishing ingenuity, or an actively perverse inventiveness is directing him, so consistently does he bring off scenes not only uncongenial but even unimaginable to the average man.
Suicidal tendencies have been stressed by some observers as prevalent. This opinion, in all likelihood, must have come from the observation of patients fundamentally different from our group, but who, as we have mentioned, were traditionally classified under the same term. It was only after a good many years of experience with actual psychopaths that I encountered my first authentic instance of suicide in a patient who could be called typical.
Instead of a predilection for ending their own lives, psychopaths, on the contrary, show much more evidence of a specific and characteristic immunity from such an act. This immunity, it must be granted, is, like most other immunities, relative.
As might be expected, in view of their incapacity for object love, the sexual aims of psychopaths do not seem to include any important personality relations or any recognizable desire or ability to explore or possess or significantly ravish the partner in a shared experience. Their positive activities are consistently and parsimoniously limited to literal physical contact and relatively free of the enormous emotional concomitants and the complex potentialities that make adult love relations an experience so thrilling and indescribable. Consequently they seem to regard sexual activity very casually, sometimes apparently finding it less shocking and enthralling than a sensitive normal man would find even the glance of his beloved.
None of the psychopaths personally observed have impressed me as having particularly strong sex cravings even in this uncomplicated and poverty stricken sense. Indeed, they have nearly all seemed definitely less moved to obtain genital pleasure than the ordinary run of people. The impression one gets is that their amativeness is little more than a simple itch and that even the itch is seldom, if ever, particularly intense.
The familiar record of sexual promiscuity found in both male and female psychopaths seems much more closely related to their almost total lack of self-imposed restraint than to any particularly strong passions or drives. Psychopaths sometimes seem by preference to seek sexual relations in sordid surroundings with persons of low intellectual or social status. Often, however, the convenience by which what is little more than a whim can be gratified may play a greater part in this than specific preference. Another and more serious kind of sordidness also seems to constitute real inducement.
Entanglements which go out of their way to mock ordinary human sensibility or what might be called basic decency are prevalent in their sexual careers. To casually "make" or "lay" the best friend's wife and to involve a husband's uncle or one of his business associates in a particularly messy triangular or quadrilateral situation are typical acts. Such opportunities, when available, seem not to repel but specifically to attract the psychopath. Neither distinct appeal of the sex object nor any formulated serious malignity toward those cuckolded or otherwise outraged seems to be a major factor in such choices. There is more to suggest a mildly prankish impulse such as might lead the ordinary man to violate small pedantic technicalities or dead and preposterous bits of formality as a demonstration of their triviality.
Sexual exploits often seem chosen almost purposively to put the subject himself, as well as others, in positions of sharp indignity and distastefulness. The male psychopath who goes through legal matrimony with the whore he has picked up for the evening furnishes a clear example. And so does the well-born woman who submits to several men in rapid succession, none of whom takes the least trouble to conceal his contempt for her. I have seen psychopaths who seriously attempted to seduce sisters, mothers-in-law, and even their actual mothers. One boasted to his wife in glowing detail of his erotic feats with her mother and with his own. His excellent talents at lying lead me to doubt the truth of his claims. I have little doubt, however, that he would have hesitated to carry out all that he boasted of if the ladies had allowed him to proceed.
It is true he may become vexed and restless when held in jails or psychiatric hospitals. This impatience seems related to his inability to realize the need or justification for his being restrained. What tension or uneasiness of this sort he may show seems provoked entirely by external circumstances, never by feelings of guilt, remorse, or intrapersonal insecurity. Within himself he appears almost as incapable of anxiety as of profound remorse.
Though the psychopath is likely to give an early impression of being a thoroughly reliable person, it will soon be found that on many occasions he shows no sense of responsibility whatsoever. No matter how binding the obligation, how urgent the circumstances, or how important the matter, this holds true. Furthermore, the question of whether or not he is to be confronted with his failure or his disloyalty and called to account for it appears to have little effect on his attitude.
If such failures occurred uniformly and immediately, others would soon learn not to rely upon psychopaths or to be surprised at their conduct. It is, however, characteristic for them during some periods to show up regularly at work, to meet their financial obligations, to ignore an opportunity to steal. They may apply their excellent abilities in business or in study for a week, for months, or even for a year or more and thereby gain potential security, win a scholarship, be acclaimed top salesman or elected president of a social club or perhaps of a school honor society. Not all checks given by psychopaths bounce; not all promises are uniformly ignored. They do not necessarily land in jail every day (or every month) or seek to cheat someone else during every transaction. If so, it would be much simpler to deal with them. This transiently (but often convincingly) demonstrated ability to succeed in business and in all objective affairs makes failures more disturbing to those about them.
Furthermore, it cannot be predicted how long effective and socially acceptable conduct will prevail or precisely when (or in what manner) dishonest, outlandish, or disastrously irresponsible acts or failures to act will occur. These seem to have little or no relation to objective stress, to cyclic periods, or to major alterations of mood or outlook. What is at stake for the patient, for his family, or for anybody else is not a regularly determining factor. At the crest of success in his work he may forge a small check, indulge in petty thievery, or simply not come to the office. After a period of gracious and apparently happy relations with his family he may pick a quarrel with his wife, cuff her up a bit, drive her from the house, and then throw a glass of iced tea in the face of his 3-year-old son. For the initiation of such outbursts he does not, it seems, need any great anger. Moderate vexation usually suffices.
The psychopath's unreliability and his disregard for obligations and for consequences are manifested in both trivial and serious matters, are masked by demonstrations of conforming behavior, and cannot be accounted for by ordinary motives or incentives. Although it can be confidently predicted that his failures and disloyalties will continue, it is impossible to time them and to take satisfactory precautions against their effect. Here, it might be said, is not even a consistency in inconsistency but an inconsistency in inconsistency.
The psychopath shows a remarkable disregard for truth and is to be trusted no more in his accounts of the past than in his promises for the future or his statement of present intentions. He gives the impression that he is incapable of ever attaining realistic comprehension of an attitude in other people which causes them to value truth and cherish truthfulness in themselves.
Typically he is at ease and unpretentious in making a serious promise or in (falsely) exculpating himself from accusations, whether grave or trivial. His simplest statement in such matters carries special powers of conviction. Overemphasis, obvious glibness, and other traditional signs of the clever liar do not usually show in his words or in his manner. Whether there is reasonable chance for him to get away with the fraud or whether certain and easily foreseen detection is at hand, he is apparently unperturbed and does the same impressive job. Candor and trustworthiness seem implicit in him at such times. During the most solemn perjuries he has no difficulty at all in looking anyone tranquilly in the eyes. Although he will lie about any matter, under any circumstances, and often for no good reason, he may, on the contrary, sometimes own up to his errors (usually when detection is certain) and appear to be facing the consequences with singular honesty, fortitude, and manliness
Not only is the psychopath undependable, but also in more active ways he cheats, deserts, annoys, brawls, fails, and lies without any apparent compunction. He will commit theft, forgery, adultery, fraud, and other deeds for astonishingly small stakes and under much greater risks of being discovered than will the ordinary scoundrel. He will, in fact, commit such deeds in the absence of any apparent goal at all.
Objective stimuli (value of the object, specific conscious need) are, as in compulsive (or impulsive) stealing, inadequate to account for the psychopath's acts. Evidence of any vividly felt urge symbolizing a disguised but specifically channelized, instinctive drive is not readily available in the psychopath's wide range of inappropriate and self-defeating behavior.
The psychopath is always distinguished by egocentricity. This is usually of a degree not seen in ordinary people and often is little short of astonishing. How obviously this quality will be expressed in vanity or self-esteem will vary with the shrewdness of the subject and with his other complexities. Deeper probing will always reveal a selfcenteredness that is apparently unmodifiable and all but complete. This can perhaps be best expressed by stating that it is an incapacity for object love and that this incapacity (in my experience with well-marked psychopaths) appears to be absolute.
In a sense, it is absurd to maintain that the psychopath's incapacity for object love is absolute, that is, to say he is capable of affection for another ill literally no degree. He is plainly capable of casual fondness, of likes and dislikes, and of reactions that, one might say, cause others to matter to him. These affective reactions are, however, always strictly limited in degree.
psychopaths are sometimes skillful in pretending a love for women or simulating parental devotion to their children. What part of this is not pure (and perhaps in an important sense unconscious) simulation has always impressed this observer as that other type of pseudolove sometimes seen in very self-centered people who are not psychopaths, which consists in concern for the other person only (or primarily) insofar as he enhances or seems to enhance the self. Even this latter imitation of adult affectivity has been seldom seen in the full-blown psychopath, although it is seen frequently in those called here partial psychopaths. In nonpsychopaths a familiar example is that of the parent who lavishes money and attention on a child chiefly to bask in the child's success and consciously or unconsciously to feel what an important person he is because of the child's triumphs.
What positive feelings appear during the psychopath's interpersonal relations give a strong impression of being self-love.
The psychopath seldom shows anything that, if the chief facts were known, would pass even in the eyes of lay observers as object love. His absolute indifference to the financial, social, emotional, physical, and other hardships which he brings upon those for whom he professes love confirms the appraisal during psychiatric studies of his true attitude. We must, let it never be forgotten, judge a man by his actions rather than by his words. This old saying is especially significant when it is the man's motivations and real feelings that we are to judge.
In addition to his incapacity for object love, the psychopath always shows general poverty of affect. Although it is true that be sometimes becomes excited and shouts as if in rage or seems to exult in enthusiasm and again weeps in what appear to be bitter tears or speaks eloquent and mournful words about his misfortunes or his follies, the conviction dawns on those who observe him carefully that here we deal with a readiness of expression rather than a strength of feeling.
Vexation, spite, quick and labile flashes of quasi-affection, peevish resentment, shallow moods of self-pity, puerile attitudes of vanity, and absurd and showy poses of indignation are all within his emotional scale and are freely sounded as the circumstances of life play upon him. But mature, wholehearted anger, true or consistent indignation, honest, solid grief, sustaining pride, deep joy, and genuine despair are reactions not likely to be found within this scale
In a special sense the psychopath lacks insight to a degree seldom, if ever, found in any but the most seriously disturbed psychotic patients. In a superficial sense, in that he can say he is in a psychiatric hospital because of his unacceptable and strange conduct, and by all other such criteria, his insight is intact. His insight is of course not affected at all with the type of impairment seen in the schizophrenic patient, who may not recognize the fact that others regard him as mentally ill but may insist that he is the Grand Lama and now in Tibet. Yet in a very important sense, in the sense of realistic evaluation, the psychopath lacks insight more consistently than some schizophrenic patients. He has absolutely no capacity to see himself as others see him. It is perhaps more accurate to say that he has no ability to know how others feel when they see him or to experience subjectively anything comparable about the situation. All of the values, all of the major affect concerning his status, are unappreciated by him.
This is almost astonishing in view of the psychopath's perfect orientation, his ability and willingness to reason or to go through the forms of reasoning, and his perfect freedom from delusions and other signs of an ordinary psychosis
Usually, instead of facing facts that would ordinarily lead to insight, he projects, blaming his troubles on others with the flimsiest of pretext but with elaborate and subtle rationalization. Occasionally, however, he will perfunctorily admit himself to blame for everything and analyze his case from what seems to be almost a psychiatric viewpoint, but we can see that his conclusions have little actual significance for him.
The patient seems to have little or no ability to feel the significance of his situation, to experience the real emotions of regret or shame or determination to improve, or to realize that this is lacking. His clever statements have been hardly more than verbal reflexes; even his facial expressions are without the underlying content they imply. This is not insight but an excellent mimicry of insight. No sincere intention can spring from his conclusions because no affective conviction is there to move him.
What I regard as the psychopath's lack of insight shows up frequently and very impressively in his apparent assumption that the legal penalties for a crime he has committed do not, or should not, apply to him. This astonishing defect in realization often seems genuine, as the patient protests in surprise against the idea that prison might be anticipated for him, as for others under similar circumstances. He frequently reacts to such an idea as if to something unexpected and totally inappropriate.
Some observers believe that what the psychopath expresses about himself and his situation constitutes insight and merits such a term. I cannot agree with this opinion. The chief and most valid connotations of the word disappear in such an application. Profoundly psychotic patients whose gross lack of insight would be admitted by all sometimes express opinions which, if fully meant and appreciated, would indicate an insight that is plainly not there.
patient on a closed ward, a man badly disabled for years by obvious schizophrenia, often shouted out to the passerby, "Simple case of dementia praecox, Doc, simple case of dementia praecox," pointing to himself several times. Despite the chance diagnostic accuracy of what he said, this patient, like the one just mentioned, had little grasp of his situation and almost no real appreciation of his disorder and its meaning. Another manic patient not only spoke words that correctly indicated a good deal about his situation but even hammered out with a metal object he had obtained these letters in deep gashes in the wood door: "Bug house nutty."
A major point about the psychopath and his relation to alcohol can be found in the shocking, fantastic, uninviting, or relatively inexplicable behavior which emerges when he drinks - sometimes when he drinks only a little. It is very likely that the effects of alcohol facilitate such acts and other manifestations of the disorder. This does not mean, however, that alcohol is fundamentally causal. Good criteria for differentiation between psychopaths and others who drink, moderately or excessively, can be found in what tendencies emerge after similar amounts have been consumed.
A peculiar sort of vulgarity, domineering rudeness, petty bickering or buffoonish quasi-maulings of wife, mistress, or children, and quick shifts between maudlin and vainglorious moods, although sometimes found in ordinary alcoholics with other serious patterns of disorder, are pathognomonic of the psychopath and in him alone reach full and precocious flower. Even in the first stages of a spree, perhaps after taking only two or three highballs, he may show signs of petty truculence or sullenness but seldom of real gaiety or conviviality. Evidence of any pleasurable reaction is characteristically minimal, as are indications that he is seeking relief from anxiety, despair, worry, responsibility, or tension.
Alcohol, as a sort of catalyst, sometimes contributes a good deal to the long and varied series of outlandish pranks and inanely coarse scenes with which nearly every drinking psychopath's story is starred.
The alcohol probably does not of itself create such behavior. Alcohol is not likely to bring out any impulse that is not already potential in a personality, nor is it likely to cast behavior into patterns for which there is not already significant subsurface predilection. The alcohol merely facilitates expression by narcotizing inhibitory processes.136 In cases of this sort very little narcotizing may be needed. The oil which lubricates the engine of an automobile neither furnishes the energy for its progress nor directs it.
All the curious conduct reported in patients who drank and who were presented here occurred in the absence of delirium tremens, alcoholic hallucinosis, or any other of the well-known psychoses due directly to intoxication. Of course, such psychotic conditions may occur in psychopaths and in neurotic drinkers. It is important to keep such symptoms separate, since they are clearly due to another type of mental disorder.
For whatever reason the psychopath may drink, it is true that, in contrast with others who use alcohol to excess, he hits upon conduct and creates situations so bizarre, so untimely, and so preposterous that their motivation appears inscrutable. Many of his exploits seem directly calculated to place him in a disgraceful or ignominious position. He often chooses pranks and seeks out situations that would have no appeal for the ordinary person, whether the ordinary person be drunk or sober. The observer sometimes wonders if a truly astonishing ingenuity, or an actively perverse inventiveness is directing him, so consistently does he bring off scenes not only uncongenial but even unimaginable to the average man.
Suicidal tendencies have been stressed by some observers as prevalent. This opinion, in all likelihood, must have come from the observation of patients fundamentally different from our group, but who, as we have mentioned, were traditionally classified under the same term. It was only after a good many years of experience with actual psychopaths that I encountered my first authentic instance of suicide in a patient who could be called typical.
Instead of a predilection for ending their own lives, psychopaths, on the contrary, show much more evidence of a specific and characteristic immunity from such an act. This immunity, it must be granted, is, like most other immunities, relative.
As might be expected, in view of their incapacity for object love, the sexual aims of psychopaths do not seem to include any important personality relations or any recognizable desire or ability to explore or possess or significantly ravish the partner in a shared experience. Their positive activities are consistently and parsimoniously limited to literal physical contact and relatively free of the enormous emotional concomitants and the complex potentialities that make adult love relations an experience so thrilling and indescribable. Consequently they seem to regard sexual activity very casually, sometimes apparently finding it less shocking and enthralling than a sensitive normal man would find even the glance of his beloved.
None of the psychopaths personally observed have impressed me as having particularly strong sex cravings even in this uncomplicated and poverty stricken sense. Indeed, they have nearly all seemed definitely less moved to obtain genital pleasure than the ordinary run of people. The impression one gets is that their amativeness is little more than a simple itch and that even the itch is seldom, if ever, particularly intense.
The familiar record of sexual promiscuity found in both male and female psychopaths seems much more closely related to their almost total lack of self-imposed restraint than to any particularly strong passions or drives. Psychopaths sometimes seem by preference to seek sexual relations in sordid surroundings with persons of low intellectual or social status. Often, however, the convenience by which what is little more than a whim can be gratified may play a greater part in this than specific preference. Another and more serious kind of sordidness also seems to constitute real inducement.
Entanglements which go out of their way to mock ordinary human sensibility or what might be called basic decency are prevalent in their sexual careers. To casually "make" or "lay" the best friend's wife and to involve a husband's uncle or one of his business associates in a particularly messy triangular or quadrilateral situation are typical acts. Such opportunities, when available, seem not to repel but specifically to attract the psychopath. Neither distinct appeal of the sex object nor any formulated serious malignity toward those cuckolded or otherwise outraged seems to be a major factor in such choices. There is more to suggest a mildly prankish impulse such as might lead the ordinary man to violate small pedantic technicalities or dead and preposterous bits of formality as a demonstration of their triviality.
Sexual exploits often seem chosen almost purposively to put the subject himself, as well as others, in positions of sharp indignity and distastefulness. The male psychopath who goes through legal matrimony with the whore he has picked up for the evening furnishes a clear example. And so does the well-born woman who submits to several men in rapid succession, none of whom takes the least trouble to conceal his contempt for her. I have seen psychopaths who seriously attempted to seduce sisters, mothers-in-law, and even their actual mothers. One boasted to his wife in glowing detail of his erotic feats with her mother and with his own. His excellent talents at lying lead me to doubt the truth of his claims. I have little doubt, however, that he would have hesitated to carry out all that he boasted of if the ladies had allowed him to proceed.
Beneath his outwardly gracious manner toward women and his general suavity and social charms, the male psychopath (or part psychopath) nearly always shows an underlying predilection for obscenity, an astonishingly ambivalent attitude in which the amorous and excretory functions seem to be confused. He sometimes gives the impression that an impulse to smear his partner symbolically, and even to wallow in sordidness himself, is more fundamental than a directly erotic aim, itself hardly more to him than a sort of concomitant and slightly glorified back scratching.
The psychopath shows a striking inability to follow any sort of life plan consistently, whether it be one regarded as good or evil. He does not maintain an effort toward any far goal at all. This is entirely applicable to the full psychopath. On the contrary, he seems to go out of his way to make a failure of life.
By some incomprehensible and untempting piece of folly or buffoonery, he eventually cuts short any activity in which he is succeeding, no matter whether it is crime or honest endeavor.
More often than not, the typical psychopath will seem particularly agreeable and make a distinctly positive impression when he is first encountered. Alert and friendly in his attitude, he is easy to talk with and seems to have a good many genuine interests. There is nothing at all odd or queer about him, and in every respect he tends to embody the concept of a well-adjusted, happy person. Nor does he, on the other hand, seem to be artificially exerting himself like one who is covering up or who wants to sell you a bill of goods. He would seldom be confused with the professional backslapper or someone who is trying to ingratiate himself for a concealed purpose. Signs of affectation or excessive affability are not characteristic. He looks like the real thing.
Very often indications of good sense and sound reasoning will emerge and one is likely to feel soon after meeting him that this normal and pleasant person is also one with high abilities. Psychometric tests also very frequently show him of superior intelligence. More than the average person, he is likely to seem free from social or emotional impediments, from the minor distortions, peculiarities, and awkwardnesses so common even among the successful. Such superficial characteristics are not universal in this group but they are very common.
Here the typical psychopath contrasts sharply with the schizoid personality or the patient with masked or latent schizophrenia. No matter how free from delusions and other overt signs of psychosis the schizoid person may be, he is likely to show specific peculiarities in his outer aspect. Usually there are signs of tension, withdrawal, and subtle oddities of manner and reaction. These may appear to be indications of unrevealed brilliance, perhaps even eccentricities of genius, but they are likely to complicate and cool easy social relations and to promote restraint. Although the psychopath's inner emotional deviations and deficiencies may be comparable with the inner status of the masked schizophrenic, he outwardly shows nothing brittle or strange. Everything about him is likely to suggest desirable and superior human qualities, a robust mental health.
The so-called psychopath is ordinarily free from signs or symptoms traditionally regarded as evidence of a psychosis. He does not hear voices. Genuine delusions cannot be demonstrated. There is no valid depression, consistent pathologic elevation of mood, or irresistible pressure of activity. Outer perceptual reality is accurately recognized; social values and generally accredited personal standards are accepted verbally. Excellent logical reasoning is maintained and, in theory, the patient can foresee the consequences of injudicious or antisocial acts, outline acceptable or admirable plans of life, and ably criticize in words his former mistakes. The results of direct psychiatric examination disclose nothing pathologic - nothing that would indicate incompetency or that would arouse suspicion that such a man could not lead a successful and happy life.
Not only is the psychopath rational and his thinking free of delusions, but he also appears to react with normal emotions. His ambitions are discussed with what appears to be healthy enthusiasm. His convictions impress even the skeptical observer as firm and binding. He seems to respond with adequate feelings to another's interest in him and, as he discusses his wife, his children, or his parents, he is likely to be judged a man of warm human responses, capable of full devotion and loyalty.
There are usually no symptoms to suggest a psychoneurosis in the clinical sense. In fact, the psychopath is nearly always free from minor reactions popularly regarded as "neurotic" or as constituting "nervousness." The chief criteria whereby such diagnoses as hysteria, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety state, or "neurasthenia" might be made do not apply to him. It is highly typical for him not only to escape the abnormal anxiety and tension fundamentally characteristic of this whole diagnostic group but also to show a relative immunity from such anxiety and worry as might be judged normal or appropriate in disturbing situations. Regularly we find in him extraordinary poise rather than jitteriness or worry, a smooth sense of physical well-being instead of uneasy preoccupation with bodily functions. Even under concrete circumstances that would for the ordinary person cause embarrassment, confusion, acute insecurity, or visible agitation, his relative serenity is likely to be noteworthy.
The psychopath's unreliability and his disregard for obligations and for consequences are manifested in both trivial and serious matters, are masked by demonstrations of conforming behavior,
Very often indications of good sense and sound reasoning will emerge and one is likely to feel soon after meeting him that this normal and pleasant person is also one with high abilities. Psychometric tests also very frequently show him of superior intelligence. More than the average person, he is likely to seem free from social or emotional impediments, from the minor distortions, peculiarities, and awkwardnesses so common even among the successful. Such superficial characteristics are not universal in this group but they are very common.
Here the typical psychopath contrasts sharply with the schizoid personality or the patient with masked or latent schizophrenia. No matter how free from delusions and other overt signs of psychosis the schizoid person may be, he is likely to show specific peculiarities in his outer aspect. Usually there are signs of tension, withdrawal, and subtle oddities of manner and reaction. These may appear to be indications of unrevealed brilliance, perhaps even eccentricities of genius, but they are likely to complicate and cool easy social relations and to promote restraint. Although the psychopath's inner emotional deviations and deficiencies may be comparable with the inner status of the masked schizophrenic, he outwardly shows nothing brittle or strange. Everything about him is likely to suggest desirable and superior human qualities, a robust mental health.
The so-called psychopath is ordinarily free from signs or symptoms traditionally regarded as evidence of a psychosis. He does not hear voices. Genuine delusions cannot be demonstrated. There is no valid depression, consistent pathologic elevation of mood, or irresistible pressure of activity. Outer perceptual reality is accurately recognized; social values and generally accredited personal standards are accepted verbally. Excellent logical reasoning is maintained and, in theory, the patient can foresee the consequences of injudicious or antisocial acts, outline acceptable or admirable plans of life, and ably criticize in words his former mistakes. The results of direct psychiatric examination disclose nothing pathologic - nothing that would indicate incompetency or that would arouse suspicion that such a man could not lead a successful and happy life.
Not only is the psychopath rational and his thinking free of delusions, but he also appears to react with normal emotions. His ambitions are discussed with what appears to be healthy enthusiasm. His convictions impress even the skeptical observer as firm and binding. He seems to respond with adequate feelings to another's interest in him and, as he discusses his wife, his children, or his parents, he is likely to be judged a man of warm human responses, capable of full devotion and loyalty.
There are usually no symptoms to suggest a psychoneurosis in the clinical sense. In fact, the psychopath is nearly always free from minor reactions popularly regarded as "neurotic" or as constituting "nervousness." The chief criteria whereby such diagnoses as hysteria, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety state, or "neurasthenia" might be made do not apply to him. It is highly typical for him not only to escape the abnormal anxiety and tension fundamentally characteristic of this whole diagnostic group but also to show a relative immunity from such anxiety and worry as might be judged normal or appropriate in disturbing situations. Regularly we find in him extraordinary poise rather than jitteriness or worry, a smooth sense of physical well-being instead of uneasy preoccupation with bodily functions. Even under concrete circumstances that would for the ordinary person cause embarrassment, confusion, acute insecurity, or visible agitation, his relative serenity is likely to be noteworthy.
The psychopath's unreliability and his disregard for obligations and for consequences are manifested in both trivial and serious matters, are masked by demonstrations of conforming behavior,
I don’t think I feel things the same way you do.”
I don’t think I feel things the same way you do.”
The concept of the psychopath is only the latest and most refined in a long string of attempts to account for a certain pattern of conduct. In the 19th century, psychiatric clinicians began to notice patients in their care who fit no known diagnosis, but who nevertheless displayed strange and disturbing behaviors. They were impulsive and self-destructive. They had no regard for the feelings and welfare of others. They lied pathologically, and when caught, they shrugged it off with a smirk and moved on to the next lie. It was a puzzle—because while there was clearly something unusual about these patients, they showed none of the psychotic symptoms or defects in reason thought necessary for mental illness at the time. Indeed, apart from a tendency to follow foolish and irresponsible impulses that sometimes got them into trouble, they were coldly rational—more rational, perhaps, than the average citizen. Their condition therefore came to be referred to as manie sans délire (“insanity without delirium”), a term which later evolved into moral insanity once the central role of a “defective conscience” came to be appreciated. By the 20th century, these individuals would be called sociopaths or said to suffer from antisocial personality disorder, two terms that are still used interchangeably with psychopathy in some circles, while in others are considered distinct but related conditions.
The psychopath does not merely repress feelings of anxiety and guilt or fail to experience them appropriately; instead, he or she lacks a fundamental understanding of what these things are. When asked a question such as “What does remorse feel like?” for instance, the typical psychopath will become irritated, deflect the question, or attempt to change the subject
apparent success many psychopaths find within society. The majority of these individuals are not violent criminals; indeed, those that turn to crime are generally considered “unsuccessful psychopaths” due to their failure to blend into society. Those who do succeed can do so spectacularly. For instance, while it may sound like a cynical joke, it’s a fact that psychopaths have a clear advantage in fields such as law, business, and politics. They have higher IQs on average than the general population. They take risks and aren’t fazed by failures. They know how to charm and manipulate. They’re ruthless. It could even be argued that the criteria used by corporations to find effective managers actually select specifically for psychopathic traits: characteristics such as charisma, self-centeredness, confidence, and dominance are highly correlated with the psychopathic personality, yet also highly sought after in potential leaders.
In romantic relationships, a psychopath may be charming and affectionate just long enough to establish intimacy with a partner, and then suddenly become abusive, unfaithful, and manipulative. The bewildered partner might turn to friends and family with their story, only to be met with disbelief—how could the warm, outgoing individual everyone has come to know possibly be guilty of these acts? All too often, the abused partner blames the situation on themselves, and comes out of the relationship emotionally destroyed.
In social circles, psychopaths are often the most popular friends among members of both sexes.
And strikingly, in entertainment media such as films and books, it’s not just the villains who tend to have psychopathic personalities—it’s the heroes, too.
One doesn’t have to look far to find examples of this kind of protagonist. James Bond, the promiscuous, daring secret agent who can ski down a mountainside while being chased by armed attackers without breaking a sweat, is a textbook case.
The reasons we look up to these conscience impaired people are unclear. Recent Bond film Casino Royale didn't shy away from acknowledging Bond's psychopathic tendenciesMost likely it has something to do with the confidence they exude, the ease they seem to feel in any situation—a trait that comes easily in someone essentially incapable of fear or anxiety. Maybe we’re easily suckered in by their natural glibness and charm. Or maybe on some level we envy the freedom they have, with no burden of conscience or emotion.
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=936
The concept of the psychopath is only the latest and most refined in a long string of attempts to account for a certain pattern of conduct. In the 19th century, psychiatric clinicians began to notice patients in their care who fit no known diagnosis, but who nevertheless displayed strange and disturbing behaviors. They were impulsive and self-destructive. They had no regard for the feelings and welfare of others. They lied pathologically, and when caught, they shrugged it off with a smirk and moved on to the next lie. It was a puzzle—because while there was clearly something unusual about these patients, they showed none of the psychotic symptoms or defects in reason thought necessary for mental illness at the time. Indeed, apart from a tendency to follow foolish and irresponsible impulses that sometimes got them into trouble, they were coldly rational—more rational, perhaps, than the average citizen. Their condition therefore came to be referred to as manie sans délire (“insanity without delirium”), a term which later evolved into moral insanity once the central role of a “defective conscience” came to be appreciated. By the 20th century, these individuals would be called sociopaths or said to suffer from antisocial personality disorder, two terms that are still used interchangeably with psychopathy in some circles, while in others are considered distinct but related conditions.
The psychopath does not merely repress feelings of anxiety and guilt or fail to experience them appropriately; instead, he or she lacks a fundamental understanding of what these things are. When asked a question such as “What does remorse feel like?” for instance, the typical psychopath will become irritated, deflect the question, or attempt to change the subject
apparent success many psychopaths find within society. The majority of these individuals are not violent criminals; indeed, those that turn to crime are generally considered “unsuccessful psychopaths” due to their failure to blend into society. Those who do succeed can do so spectacularly. For instance, while it may sound like a cynical joke, it’s a fact that psychopaths have a clear advantage in fields such as law, business, and politics. They have higher IQs on average than the general population. They take risks and aren’t fazed by failures. They know how to charm and manipulate. They’re ruthless. It could even be argued that the criteria used by corporations to find effective managers actually select specifically for psychopathic traits: characteristics such as charisma, self-centeredness, confidence, and dominance are highly correlated with the psychopathic personality, yet also highly sought after in potential leaders.
In romantic relationships, a psychopath may be charming and affectionate just long enough to establish intimacy with a partner, and then suddenly become abusive, unfaithful, and manipulative. The bewildered partner might turn to friends and family with their story, only to be met with disbelief—how could the warm, outgoing individual everyone has come to know possibly be guilty of these acts? All too often, the abused partner blames the situation on themselves, and comes out of the relationship emotionally destroyed.
In social circles, psychopaths are often the most popular friends among members of both sexes.
And strikingly, in entertainment media such as films and books, it’s not just the villains who tend to have psychopathic personalities—it’s the heroes, too.
One doesn’t have to look far to find examples of this kind of protagonist. James Bond, the promiscuous, daring secret agent who can ski down a mountainside while being chased by armed attackers without breaking a sweat, is a textbook case.
The reasons we look up to these conscience impaired people are unclear. Recent Bond film Casino Royale didn't shy away from acknowledging Bond's psychopathic tendenciesMost likely it has something to do with the confidence they exude, the ease they seem to feel in any situation—a trait that comes easily in someone essentially incapable of fear or anxiety. Maybe we’re easily suckered in by their natural glibness and charm. Or maybe on some level we envy the freedom they have, with no burden of conscience or emotion.
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