Psychiatric Quarterly. XXIII, 1949: From the Autobiography of a Liar: Toward the Clarification of the Problem of Psychopathic States. Part II. Ben Karpman. Pp. 497–521.

This study of a psychopath is based on personal interviews, the patient's written narrative, and reports from his case file at St. Elizabeth's Hospital. Their value is much diminished because at least fifty percent of the statements are presumed to be false. The study is valuable because of the scarcity of material on such a typical case. Even Karl Abraham's 'History of an Impostor' was based on anamnestic rather than psychoanalytic material.

The patient was a forty-three-year-old white male, serving a life sentence for murder. The evidence discerned through the tissue of his lies favors the following history. He was brought up and lived in poverty and squalor. His father was very cruel, jealous, and alcoholic. In every respect the environment was rejecting, cruel, indifferent, and without opportunity for healthy identification. His later life runs the entire gamut of crime and perversity without evidence of guilt or social feelings. He reacts to real fear but his impulsiveness, weak ego control, and poor evaluation of reality handicap him. Occasionally there are moments when a glimmer of social awareness and a desire to be different and socially acceptable appear. Karpman places him diagnostically in the group of idiopathic psychopaths (anethopaths) of the aggressive, predatory type. The diagnosis puts the emphasis on the constitutional and hereditary factors. This is difficult to understand in view of the history. The author comments that for all the punishment meted out, the patient has remained, in the manner