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The psychopaths delineated in this paper are the over-promiscuous of either sex and the criminal psychopath such as the pathological liar, thief, swindler, imposter, murderer. Discussion of the creative psychopath whom we may call the “psychopath superieur” will be postponed and presented in a separate paper. We begin our discussion with the apparently over-sexed promiscuous man and woman because we purpose to find in them psychopathy less complicated with neurosis than in the criminal types. They are, I believe, the primal representation of the psychopath. We will endeavor to show in this paper that the psychopath has his fixation point in Freud's phallic phase—in point of fact, in the first part of this phase in which the sex differences are not as yet recognized as decisive.
The “Don Juan Figure” has been explained psychoanalytically as endlessly seeking his mother; one who time and again kills his father and desires to possess his mother. We find this viewpoint in a paper by Otto Rank (1) which has its genesis in comments by Freud. Stekel (2) has emphasized that the Don Juan defends himself against homosexual tendencies which trouble him unconsciously—a statement which also can be traced back to Freud's elucidation of erotomania. (3) Both theories are derived from clinical observations. But they are valid only for the neurotic, medieval-Christian Don Juan. The classical Renaissance figure, which we encounter so brilliantly in Mozart's opera, knows neither fear nor defense of any internal dangers. He kills his father, not out of his oedipus conflict, but as he would kill anyone out of motives of self-preservation. The very fact that he does not know what a father is makes him so terrible: he is precedipal. He invites the marble statue (the guest of stone) for dinner sans fear or regret. Finally, he goes to hell rejecting in a grandiose way any feelings of guilt or atonement. He knows no mother-respect either, and in the most gruesome way, makes a fool of Elvira wh