The ideation of patients with a frank contempt for humanity revealed in such expressions as 'nobody can be trusted', 'everybody is dishonest', 'a person who is honest is a fool or a faker', 'all doctors are fakers', etc., are usually associated with a certain type of personality. They are hypersensitive, fault-finding, inclined to be extremely sceptical, quite inaccessible and some have definite megalomanic fantasies. The misanthrope 'carries within him a reservoir of instinctual hostile aggressions which he freely projects onto the world outside by an ingenious faculty of playing upon the very human frailties which reside in himself in greatest quantities. He wears a mask, which can hardly be detected as such, to hide his own underlying defects.' The paper is an interesting bit of insight which goes beyond the usual descriptive studies of such clinical pictures.