A Critical Analysis of the Historical and Conceptual Evolution of Psychopathy

In psychology and related fields, the concept of psychopathy is roughly two hundred years old, yet there have been very few attempts to understand its history. Through a critical examination of logical positivism, the dominant epistemology of contemporary psychology, the author argues that the widespread inattention and disavowal of psychopathy's history may be a byproduct of positivist method and worldview. The author stresses the importance of understanding the relationship between psychopathy, history, and culture. He recommends a hermeneutic epistemology to address this subject matter and begins his work by building a framework to build upon in the future. This framework is a description of nearly all the most important concepts of psychopathy over the past two hundred years. Beyond the improvement of contextualizing this subject within the realm of epistemology, this work is also the first to synthesize other incomplete or discrepant accounts of psychopathy's history, and provides a more in depth analysis of contributions from Hervey Cleckley, Reid Meloy, and Robert Hare.