however, admirably suited to the working off of compulsive antisocial behavior; they sparkle with the glitter of personal freedom; the checks and reins of the community are absent and there are no limits either in a physical or in a psychological sense. So when the geography of a nation or a community or even a civilization becomes fixed, behavior of an unsocial variety which has been flung there by centrifugal action, now works itself out in a harmful manner in the culture itself. Especially is this true where the psychological horizon is similarly limited by economic underprivilege, lack of educational opportunities, the immediacy of poignant social contrasts and repetitious occupational activity; in a word, by social disinheritance.
IV
It seems to this writer that it is of paramount importance that we know more about psychopathic personalities than the tentative conclusions we have thus far outlined. While the present status of psychopathy is that of an irritant to the clinician (who despairs ofdoing anything more than diagnosing a case), a local annoyance to prison and hospital officials, a source of problems to police and service officers, and a slough of shame and hopelessness to sorely-tried parents and relatives, the essence of the problem of psychopathy is that it represents a social and even political problem of the first magnitude. It is the contention of this investigator that psychopathy is more wide-spread today than ever before in the history of our civilization; that it is assuming more and more the proportions of a plague; that it is today ravishing the world with far greater ill effect than the most malignant of organic diseases; that it represents a terrible force whose destructive potentialities are criminally underestimated.
That the incidence of psychopathy is increasing is evident not from the neat statistical studies originating in the basement laboratories of our universities or the brightly-lighted halls of government bureaus but from a glance at the current world situation. The last few years have witnessed the triumphal heavy-booted march of psychopathy not only over an entire continent but over every painfully won tenet of what we call our civilization. And as when a stone is cast on still waters, the mononuclear psychopathic center has communicated its convulsive impulses outwardly to awaken latent psychopathy many times removed from the volcanic core.
This is the menace of psychopathy: The psychopath is not only a criminal; he is the embryonic Storm-Trooper; he is the disinherited, betrayed antagonist whose aggressions can be mobilized on the instant at which the properly-aimed and frustration-evoking formula is communicated by that Leader under whose tinseled aegis license becomes law, secret and primitive desires become virtuous ambitions readily attained, and compulsive behavior formerly deemed punishable becomes the order of the day.
History has assigned to this country and her allies the task of cleansing civilization of the predatory creature whose typical history is presented in this volume. Psychological science has provided us with an instrument to study him closely and at first hand; to examine him thoroughly as we would a virulent bacillus; to dissect him and obtain his measure; perhaps even—assisted by those great social forces which are beginning to clear the slime and muck of underprivilege and economic expediency—to make of him a good citizen in a new world …
THE METHOD: HYPNOANALYSIS
I
Since the cavalier abandonment of cathartic hypnosis by the founding fathers of psychoanalysis instituted a tradition of disrepute for hypnosis in particular and suggestive therapy in general, psychiatrists and psychologists have been wary of identifying themselves with treatment procedures reminiscent of these methods. However, informal use has undoubtedly been made of the investigative and therapeutic technique herein to be described and illustrated as
hypnoanalysis.
In no place and
Bathroom Readers’ Institute