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Walter Bromberg, MD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1967;17(6):641-645.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

IT HAS become a psychiatric commonplace to say that the psychopathic personality diagnosis is a wastebasket—too generalized, too inexact, too all-inclusive. The 202 variations of this diagnosis collected by Cason,¹ which vary from "volitional inferiority" to "constitutional psychopathic inadequate" to "sociopath" demonstrate this diagnostic confusion and conceptual inexactness. A life-long student of the subject, Dr. Ben Karpman, has properly asked: "Is psychopathic personality a disease or a peculiarity of behavior?" This basic question to which this paper addresses itself, has wide implications, encompassing not only diagnosis and classification, but also management, therapy, and indeed the total attitude of psychiatry toward this group of troublesome individuals.

In approaching this question, the diagnostic position of the psychopathic concept, let us focus on a first consideration, namely the meaning of a "diagnosis." A diagnosis itself is a technical device in medicine; it is . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Brooklyn, NY

From the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY.

Footnotes
Submitted for publication Aug 25, 1967.

Read before the staff of the Elmhurst General Hospital, Psychiatric Division, New York, November 1966.

Reprint requests to 344 E Main St, Mt Kisco, NY 10549.

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