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A Note on Moral Insanity and Psychopathic Disorders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

F. A. Whitlock
F. A. Whitlock*
Affiliation:
University of Queensland, Australia
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Despite a good deal of argument to the contrary (Maughs, 1941; Hunter and Macalpine, 1963; Walk, 1954; Walk and Walker, 1961; Craft, 1965; Whitlock, 1967) it is still commonly believed that Prichard's ‘moral insanity’ (1835) was the forerunner of our present-day concept of psychopathic (sociopathic) personality; the most recent example of this appearing in the paper by Davies and Feldman (1981), who write: ‘In 1801 Pinel described a condition termed by him manie sans délire, the notable feature of which was that the sufferer showed bouts of extreme violence but with no signs of psychosis … Prichard confirmed Pinel's observation and coined the term “moral insanity” which led to “a marked perversion of the natural impulses”.’ A number of modern textbooks (Sim, 1974; Friedman et al, 1975; Slater and Roth, 1977; Trethowan, 1979) also appear to regard moral insanity as the precursor of psychopathic disorder, although Trethowan correctly noted how the word ‘moral’ denoted ‘affective’ and was not being used in the usual ethical sense. He went on, however, to write that Prichard described cases showing antisocial or even criminal behaviour.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , April 1982 , pp. 57 - 59
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1982

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