Psychopath Hervey Cleckley THE MASK OF SANITY, Section 2: The Material , Part 1: The disorder in full clinical manifestations, 15. Walter

15. Walter

Walter is an only child. In the old South Carolina city where he spent his early

years, he is remembered by his first playmates as having been not only normal but also a

particularly desirable friend. During his grammar school days he was a good but not an

exceptionally bright pupil. He was happily at ease with boys his own age, being

generally looked to as a leader, though never aloof or dictatorial. He was somewhat less

inclined than usual to the more destructive forms of mischief so dear to the typical

young male, yet no child could have been more secure from the taunts often evoked by

primness or piety in the schoolboy. It is nothing short of incredible to imagine the term

sissy, withering and still unhackneyed stigma of those times, ever having been applied to

Walter by anyone. That term, in fact, could not have been defined better by those who

used it than as his direct opposite.

Even to the present, several men who were slightly younger schoolboys on the

fringe of the group in which he held his admired position testify to the graciousness and

kindness with which he treated them. All agree that he was, perhaps, the only older boy

they recall as being entirely free from the popular tendency to bully and persecute his

worshipful juniors. If his subsequent course were not known, it is likely that a poll

taken among his former associates would reveal an almost unanimous belief that Walter

showed more promise of becoming a respected, happy member of his community than

any of the group.

In the pleasant little city of some 50,000 people his general situation in life

appeared fortunate. The father was particularly honored.

Starting life with a good name but little money and only a high school education,

the father established himself as a cotton factor and soon attained complete financial

security. During his son's infancy he had played an important part in freeing the city of

a corrupt political machine, and he continued active in civic work, one of the genuine

ornaments of his community. Never a politician in the unpleasant sense of the word, he

has all his life exercised strong and altogether unmercenary constructive influence in

municipal affairs, occasionally heading committees to treat with the state or federal

government about public matters.

Notably upright and capable, the father is still, in his early seventies, a man of

sincere geniality and unusual tolerance. Though free from professional camaraderie, he

is gifted with an unselfconscious knack of friendliness, an easy, unforced humor.

Younger people, feeling in him a lively, almost naive warmth of humanity, tend to forget

that he is a very old man.

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His dignity is and has always been indisputable but entirely without stiffness. The

mother is known as a quiet woman of gentle breeding, chiefly interested in her home

but generally liked and admired. Both parents are Episcopalians and attend a church

which has come down from colonial times.

It would be hard to imagine an environment farther from moral laxity on the one

hand or fanaticism and excessive efforts at piety on the other than that of Walter's

youth. He apparently enjoyed all the pleasures and advantages available to boys of the

leading families in his community. Not only social service reports but also the opinion

of his contemporaries indicate that he was as free from pampering and undue license as

from overzealous severity.

After entering high school he gradually drifted away from his earlier friends,

began to lose interest in his studies, and began to show alarming irresponsibility. The

change in him was at first imperceptible. No one could say definitely when he began to

lose identity with the modest, frank character of his early youth and to become, instead,

notable for juvenile arrogance, a petulant irritability, a quick and limitless facility at lying.

His parents soon began to find him a problem. Nothing seemed to suit him.

Purposeless truancy from school, night wanderings, a disrespectful attitude toward his

elders, and open, fretful defiance at any attempt, however gentle or however firm, to

guide or control him became ever more prominent. He became dissatisfied and carping

and always spoke as if the world were to blame for each difficulty that he made for

himself and for others.

Some of the other boys with whom he had grown up began at this stage of their

lives to indulge in what they regarded as dissipation. Cigarette smoking, occasional

surreptitious experiences with strong drink, and indiscreet behavior with the opposite

sex were adventurously essayed and almost incessantly talked about by the more

wayward spirits. Many of these boys were regarded by their elders as sowing their wild

oats, as perhaps preparing to go to the dogs. Their conduct was far more weightily

regarded by themselves, many exulting in what they imagined to be precocious careers

of worldly license. Walter did not concern himself particularly with these pursuits.

During his third year of high school Walter ran away from home, having no plan

or discernible purpose. His money soon became exhausted, and his father brought him

home. Shortly afterward he ran away again. He had been very disagreeable to his

parents since his first misadventure and seemed bored and aimless. The father, thinking

he might learn something to his profit, allowed him to stay away, supplying him with

sums of money from time to time.

Before long he succeeded in getting work as an unskilled laborer at a

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factory in a large industrial city on the eastern seaboard. Losing this place, he soon

found another. After working a few weeks or sometimes a few months, he always fell

into difficulty with his employers, often losing positions because of his high-handed and

dictatorial ways, drifting about from one place to another. He dressed rather flashily

and squandered money that his father sent him on making a cheap display. Much of his

leisure was spent standing around on street corners or strutting about in front of cigar

stores. Meanwhile, he lived among uneducated and depressing people in a dreary

section of town and seemed to have no interest in finding suitable associates or

surroundings. Though he indulged in casual relations with prostitutes, there is no

record of his ever having regarded any woman as a love object. What relations he has

had of this sort, though not infrequent, seem very insignificant in the story of his life,

involving little emotion, implying no sexual contact of two personalities beyond the

more or less mechanical friction of the parts technically involved.

He was considered an intelligent workman during his brief periods of activity and

several times advanced in various companies, occasionally attaining promising positions

as salesman only to throw them away by neglect or by petulant bickering with his

superiors.

When his country entered World War I, he promptly enlisted. After going to

France, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant in the air corps. According to reports,

he showed considerable skill as a mechanic. He was, however, reduced to private for

going A.W.O.L. before his discharge from the army at the end of the war.

On returning home he referred to himself as an aviator, implying that he had

been an officer and a pilot, and assumed the airs of one who imagines himself a

distinguished hero or who means, at any rate, for others to hold this opinion of him.

He made no attempt to associate with people his contemporaries found interesting,

worked for short periods as a mechanic in local garages, and caused his parents deep

mortification and distress by going on periodic sprees either alone or with the most

vulgar and uninspiring companions. He continually spoke of his dissatisfaction with the

town in which his parents lived, complaining that it offered no opportunities for a man

such as himself, and, taking a superior manner, harped exasperatingly on his travels and

adventures and his alleged successes afar.

He soon left home again for Chicago, where he obtained and lost several

positions as mechanic or as salesman. He drifted on to Cincinnati and Detroit,

following the same career. His father was frequently called on to furnish money when

he got into difficulties or was without work. Occasionally he came home for short

periods during which he remained arrogant, idle, and full of absurd stories about his

own importance, the superior

THE MATERIAL 139

positions he had held, the high and mighty people he associated with, the fashionable

gatherings he graced. He sometimes drank until he was in a deplorable condition,

staggering home disheveled and rowdy, creating a great uproar in the simple, dignified

household of his parents, or from time to time ending up at the police barracks where

his father had to come at inconvenient hours of the night to remove him from the filthy

and disreputable group of prostitutes, vagrants, and petty criminals among whom he

had been confined. When not drinking he showed, in less dramatic form, the same

attitudes and qualities.

During all this time his father supported and protected him with unvarying tact

and persistence. Though the public at large knew how disheartening and harassing a

burden the son had become and what a particularly bitter change he had brought into

his parent's serene and honored life, they both continued to treat him with dignity and

consideration. The whole town regarded Walter as a heartbreaking disappointment, but

little of this was learned from complaints by the parents.

Time after time the father obtained positions for his son; time after time he paid

the son out of debt, effected his release from jail, and submitted to abuse for his pains.

Although he reasoned with his son and sought in every possible way to influence him,

the father did not allow an attitude of hopeless contempt to possess him.

In some subtle way that is difficult to describe, he seemed to accept his son

before the world and, while denying none of the son's faults, to put his whole attention

on offering new opportunities, none of it on lamenting what he had been made to suffer

or on throwing this up to the person who caused his suffering. He tried, it seemed, not

only to wipe the slate clean of material hindrances to a fresh start but also to wipe it

clean subjectively, to let the son start over without the burden of shame that one in such

circumstances might be imagined to feel.

There seemed, however, to be no attempt on the father's part to deceive this son

into thinking his behavior was condoned or minimized. In dealing with such a problem

one can err in either one way or the other, and usually one errs in both. He seemed,

however, hardly to err at all in the long and trying years of struggle to rehabilitate his

son. Numerous psychiatrists who worked with the case over a decade were impressed

and considered it a remarkable performance.

Finally, after several other short sojourns in psychiatric institutions, Walter was

sent to a Veterans Administration hospital. He did not want to come. His running up

of bills and his small but very spectacular offenses against legal statutes and public taste

had become so extreme and so frequent, his trips to jail and his bawdy, argumentative

tantrums at home so

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trying, and his sporadic sprees with drink so extraordinary it was plain that desperate

measures should be taken. The parents did not hesitate to make it clear to Walter why

he had to come to the hospital. The son knew that the father, by relaxing his

protection, could in a few days leave him only the alternative of jail. So he came.

On arriving, he confessed that he was astonished at his family for sending him to

a mental institution. He simply could not understand such an attitude. He said that he

had, perhaps, taken a quart of whiskey during the two previous years, behaving as if

surprised and very much vexed at the idea that he might have been drinking to excess.

He suggested that some vague gossip about his being a user of alcoholic liquors might

have started because in the town of his birth, to which he had recently returned, one

had to go to disreputable places, extremely unsuitable to his own fastidious tastes and

frequented by rough and vulgar people, to get the occasional drink of whiskey that any

gentleman might want. His little difficulties with the law about bad checks and

swindling schemes he waived aside as if they had been matters too small and too

irrelevant for serious discussion. He showed plainly that he considered himself of a type

superior to the best people in town and to his parents and dwelt at length on the

rarefied social and intellectual atmosphere in which he moved when away. Though

assuming an air of condescension in speaking of his father, as if with the chivalrous

intention to deal lightly and generously with him, he admitted that he could not but

resent his actions. He described his parents as meddling in his affairs and repeatedly

interfering with the important plans he outlined for himself. His manner was so

convincing that the examining physician thought at first he might really be, despite his

bad record, a man of some attainment, since he was plainly a man of intelligence. Had

the parents been, perhaps, a little too quick and severe in their action? The social service

report cleared up all doubt on these points. During study in the hospital he showed no

technical evidence of psychosis or psychoneurosis, His disturbance was diagnosed as

psychopathic personality, and he was discharged at the end of a month's observation.

On returning home, Walter continued in his old ways, losing each position

obtained for him, wandering about the streets at night, or sometimes when drinking,

falling maudlin and semistuporous in parks, coal yards, or on the riverbank. He was

furnished with money to go to Boston, where he insisted opportunities now awaited

him. He soon obtained a position as a salesman of radios and, despite irregularity at

work, embarrassing behavior, and periodical sprees of drinking, seemed to do fairly well

for a month or two. Then, complaining of discrimination against him at his office, he

gave his employers a piece of his mind, threw up his position, and enlisted in the

THE MATERIAL 141

army. Four months later he suddenly deserted and, after wandering about the Midwest

obtaining and losing various positions but chiefly making petty troubles for himself and

others, came home to his parents. He was quickly discovered and taken into custody by

army authorities.

He admitted that he knew what he was doing when he deserted, said that he had

not been drinking at the time, and dismissed the whole matter with the supercilious

remark that he left the army because he had some business that needed attention

without delay. He was examined by physicians at this time. No evidence of a psychosis

was found, but it was noted that he showed "ungratefulness, moral uselessness, a failure

to profit by experience, and utter irresponsibility." He was judged unfit for military

duties and, perhaps with some special leniency because of his wartime service, released

without further punishment.

Some months later he was readmitted to the hospital after a series of

misadventures in no way different from his earlier ones. He also had gonorrhea, which

he was glad to have treated. He was at this time aloof and superior in his attitude,

complained about being confined with psychotic patients, and professed himself

disgusted at their table manners. He now admitted excessive drinking but attributed it

and all his difficulties to his mother, saying little now about his father. He plainly

considered himself a martyr to his mother's efforts to keep him out of jail and able to

work. This he regarded as meddling and seemed to feel that it fully justified his own

conduct. After six weeks he was discharged.

He was back again, however, after a short period of freedom, brought by his

father, who in the interval had continued his efforts to get the patient established.

Several positions had been arranged for him in the city of his birth, and he had also

been sent off and given financial assistance in an industrial center in the North. Always

he failed, losing each position or giving it up and roaming the streets, getting into brawls

or legal difficulties about debts, lying out in brothels or flophouses until rescued by the

police or his father. This time he remained in the hospital for seven weeks.

When brought before the staff he was quite self-contained and spoke of his

misconduct as though he were rather proud of it and considered it a humorous and fully

justified sort of retaliation against his parents. He laughed and said that after having got

pretty well drunk, he decided that his father might want to send him to the hospital and

so continued drinking until this was inevitable. He admitted that his parents had

suggested he drink at his own house with them as an alternative to his sodden sprees

but could not see that this implied any tolerance on their part. He spoke with

satisfaction about slipping away from them, taking the automobile, and, having loaded

in several gallons of whiskey, heading out into the country

142 THE MASK OF SANITY

where he would remain for four or five days, at times in thorough stupefaction.

His tone throughout the interview was brisk, self-assured, and somewhat

pompous. He admitted verbally that the whole fault might not lie with his parents, but

it was plain that this concession was made only for the purpose of showing his

broadmindedness toward them. "Of course, there must be two sides to any question,"

he agreed with grudging deliberation, as if gratified and a bit surprised at his own

generosity. It was obvious that no real conviction lay behind his words. The following

samples are typical of his talk to the staff:

Since I seem to end here anyway I thought I'd make a party of it. This has been going

on for fifteen or twenty years, and I'm sick and tired of being dictated to. My father has a

temper which has caused me considerable trouble at times. My career has not been

perfect; nevertheless, I play the game on the level. I play it right on through. I was just

matching my wits with my father. It just seems that there should be a stop put to this [his

being sent to the hospital] because I'm satisfied I'm a kind of nuisance out here.

He then quoted his father as having expressed ideas of vengeance toward him in

profane language and having gloated over his confinement at the hospital. Both the

thought and the language were absurdly inconsistent with that grave man's despair about

his son.

After six weeks he was taken out of the hospital on furlough. Five days later

police brought the patient back, peevish, dictatorial, and uncontrollable. A few days

later the father took him out again, only to have him escape. Several days passed before

he could be found, the police finally bringing him in from the abandoned stables behind

an old unrented house where their attention had been drawn by midnight barking of

stray dogs who had gathered and were thus saluting Walter as he fumbled about.

He was returned to the hospital, taken out again by his family, and sent back

because of similar capers time after time. His father evidently hoped that the prospect

of being confined indefinitely in a mental hospital would curb his activities and tried

repeatedly to impress him by this means. Nothing, however, was accomplished, and

after eight months spent on the wards and out on furloughs the attempt was

abandoned. Walter left again to seek his fortune selling electric refrigerators in a large,

distant city.

After losing a number of positions in various cities, spending many nights in jails

over the country, and lying out in low dives or in the woods on prolonged solitary

drinking sprees, he returned to his parents. He now began to make himself even more

difficult than formerly. After uproarious, obscene, and threatening entrances into the

house between midnight and

THE MATERIAL 143

dawn, he would sleep until the early afternoon, then, on arising, make a canvass of the

city, calling chiefly on quiet old ladies, preferably close friends of his mother's, to

wheedle money from them. Knowing that he would take whatever they furnished him

and use it to make further trouble, these ladies, after giving him a few dollars, would, on

the second or third visit, often send word by the servant that they were not at home.

Thereupon he would become insistent, saying that his business was urgent, that he

would wait until the lady returned. Growing particularly vehement, he sometimes

accused the servants of lying, called in a loud voice up the stairs, and made such a

commotion that his victim would have to come down and see him.

On several occasions he even disturbed these lifelong friends of his mother's

from their beds, keeping up his calls until they came to the stairs and spoke with him.

He did not readily take no for an answer but continued to beg after repeated refusals.

His manner was supercilious and haughty, though his words were sometimes shamefully

abject. During these interviews he outrageously and falsely criticized his parents,

accusing them of the most fantastic mistreatment and laying all his difficulties at their

door.

Few of his parents' friends escaped these embarrassing encounters. Respect and

admiration for the parents' prevented these people from calling the police to rid them of

such a pest, and most would rather have suffered ten times such inconvenience than let

it come to his parents' attention. Walter himself was a virtual stranger to these quiet old

ladies, never having had much to do with respectable people since his childhood.

On one occasion he accosted the mother of a former playmate as she was

walking down the street: "Hello, Aunt Maisie, hello!" he called in a loud, insistent voice

from behind her. Superficially polite, but with a discernible swagger, he approached.

She had not laid eyes on him for many years and scarcely recognized him. "I say, my

car's just broken down up the street. Could you lend me a couple of dollars?"

Placing him after a moment, she regretfully said that she had only a little change

in her purse. "Well, how much have you?" he countered briskly, smiling in a brittle

sham of courtesy. As she opened the purse his eager hands flew to her assistance,

mimicking still the action of a gentleman performing a small service for a lady. The few

coins were scarcely in her palm before his fingers licked them up. With brief but

extravagant words of thanks which had a peculiarly hollow ring, he was off.

Some months later he was readmitted to the hospital, coming from the police

barracks. His father had become afraid that he might, in a fit of temper, actually harm

his mother. Though he had often threatened both parents and once had even pulled his

mother a few yards by the wrists,

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neither parent heretofore had seriously feared violence at his hands. He had brawled

often in taverns, poolrooms, bars, and on the streets, but he had never shown sufficient

violence to suggest that he was really dangerous. He had, however, recently adopted the

habit of sleeping with a gallon of whiskey under his bed on which he laid a loaded

revolver. His father did not want to take chances on his personal belief that Walter was

unlikely to kill.

Let it be recorded here again that this patient's father showed no signs of being a

victim of parental blindness, of foolish pride in his child, or of perceptible weakness in

dealing with him. In discussing the case with physicians at the hospital, he spared no

detail of the history, made no effort to whitewash the son's motives or to excuse him; as

ugly as this situation was, he seemed to face it squarely at all times. There was no sign

of vindictiveness or personal bitterness, but there was always complete frankness and

remarkable insight. His grief and shame seemed almost, but not quite, too much for

him. His unfailing devotion to his son as expressed in his actions became steadily more

impressive to those who observed. Some of the physicians who dealt with the case felt

that this man's understanding and his adequacy all but matched his son's spectacular

opposite.

This time Walter stayed in the hospital for nearly three months. He was, as

before, supercilious, full of quietly boastful innuendos, and totally unwilling to accept

any of the responsibility for his maladjustment.

This time it was his mother who, by nagging at him and meddling with him, had

got him into the hospital. At the staff meeting he came in rather like a lord. With chilly

politeness not free from contempt he stated, in reply to a question, that he was an

engineer, giving the term a pompous accent that showed his sense of superiority. This

statement was based on his former work as a mechanic and was plainly not a delusion

but a boastful exaggeration.

He was extremely dissatisfied on a ward with psychotic patients and incessantly

demanded his release. Only the knowledge that his father would refer him at once to

the police kept him from forcing the hospital to let him go. He seemed as out of place

as any normal man would be, and he was no less impatient to gain his freedom. He was

soon tried on parole. This did not last long, for he went off again and almost at once

got into difficulties. After several such trials he was again discharged.

Soon afterward he went to the telephone one morning, called up a man he had

known during his childhood, and said he was in trouble and needed help at once. The

other man, though he remembered Walter as a child, had not seen him for a number of

years. He was busy with pressing matters at

THE MATERIAL 145

the time in a cotton mill several miles from town where he held an important position.

"But I've got to see you at once," Walter insisted. "I tell you I'm in trouble." The

other, becoming vexed at such insistence and at the highhanded, preemptory tone,

explained that his own affairs were urgent also and asked to be told more about the

matter. Walter would give no details. He became more demanding. "I tell you I want

to see you. You come on down to 1321 Juniper Street. I'll be in front of the house.

And if you've ever traveled fast in your life you travel fast now."

At this the other man became rebellious. He frankly stated that he could not and

would not tear himself away from his own business at such a time on such an

inscrutable errand. Walter then began to compromise and at last grudgingly agreed to a

meeting in a few hours. His whole manner in the conversation was that of one who

demands fulfillment of an obligation, not of one who requests a favor.

On arriving at the address given, the former acquaintance was at once beckoned

by an abrupt jerk. of the thumb to draw aside under a tree.

"I'm in a sort of jam," Walter said condescendingly. "Owe a man three dollars.

I'd like for you to let me have that amount."

"I'm sorry," said the other, determined not to give anything after being so

inconsiderately put upon, "I haven't got it on me."

Walter thereupon became insistent. Making it plain that he did not believe what

the other man said, he continued as if demanding his rights, "Well, what have you in

your pockets? just give me what you have. That will be all right." Finally, uncomfortable

at participating in this shameless demonstration, the other gave over some small change

and left.

Walter continued on the same course, losing positions which his father obtained

for him in other cities. Sometimes he worked for two or three months, but even during

such periods he had many small social difficulties. He was sent to private institutions

several times for whiskey cures and returned to take up immediately his well-known

ways. Once he went to an evangelist's meeting, professed salvation, and assumed for a

week or ten days an attitude of piety and spoke of carrying on the Lord's Work. Despite

this period of propriety, he was in the police barracks about three or four times each

month.

He disappeared again and was sought for several days by his anxious parents. A

week later a friend of the family, on returning to her house which had been closed

during her absence from the city, found him inside, stretched on the floor, snoring. He

was disheveled and dirty. After a little shaking and shouting he aroused, blinked at her

calmly, and acted as if he

146 THE MASK OF SANITY

had been disturbed by some irresponsible person who must be treated as an indulgent

grown person treats a child. In the house was also a half-dressed woman of frankly

disreputable character whom he had brought with him. The rugs were stained with

overturned drinks and bottles and Mason jars were scattered over the floors. Unwashed

dishes were piled in stacks or littered broken about the rooms. Several disarranged beds

were heaped with stale sheets. Here and there furniture was overturned or burned with

cigarettes. "Sorry," said Walter as if making gallant apology for having accidentally

jostled a lady in a crowd, "I am made so miserable at home that I had to come in."

He was sent again to the hospital by his father, following a series of

misadventures somewhat more trying than usual. On arrival he was moderately

influenced by drink but well aware of his actions. "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you

no lies," he shouted gaily. "Yep, I've been drunk for five weeks. Drank a pint today.

Carry it pretty well, don't I?"

He soon sobered up and insisted on leaving stating that he had never done

anything out of the ordinary and that he was sane and in the wrong place. He spoke

convincingly of plans he had made to study air conditioning and of great engineering

opportunities that awaited him in this field. Seeing him for the first time, it would have

been easy to believe that he was a gifted and energetic young man whose ambitions

were to be fulfilled as soon as he obtained his freedom.

Despite his many evasions and his opinions contrary to fact, no delusion, in the

sense ordinarily understood by psychiatry, was ever found in Walter. After careful study

and prolonged observation, he was again given the diagnosis of psychopathic

personality. He was discharged at the end of five weeks as sane.

According to trustworthy reports he is continuing without any notable change in

his former ways.