The Mask of Sanity Cleckley, Hervey

First ed., first printing. 298 pp. Very good in unclipped jacket. Book is tight and square. Former owner's name in pen to top right ffep. Old pen price to top left of rear paste-down. Otherwise unmarked throughout. Red boards stamped in gold. Jacket with minor chipping to some extremities, but an example of a lucky survivor; this book is not often seen with a jacket at all. "There is no doubt that deeds of apparently purposeless folly, even of apparent madness, are found in the life stories of great men. The writer does not, however, believe that this is sufficient evidence to class them as psychopaths in the sense with which that term is here employed. These geniuses despite their bizarre conduct worked on with unmistakable purpose to concrete results. In considering their works of art, even if not in the secondhand story of their lives, one feels the unmistakable impress of mighty passions, of a violent, whirling life-force. Their lapses into irrationality appear to be the result of these unusual forces breaking through ordinary, or even extraordinary, restraints. The psychopath on the other hand shows no forceful life-drive, no overpowerful current which breaks through. With apparently weak impulses he addresses himself directly at folly. [.] No real psychopath [.] will ever produce any important, or even any sincere, work of art. Schizophrenics and manics may do so; but not the psychopath. If the psychopath appears to do so, close and more earnest study will always reveal it as a fraud. The genius may be uneven, and his weak moments may be shocking. But his greatness can come only out of strength."