Progressive Muscular Atrophy and Syphilis

Hervey Cleckley (1903–1984): Contributions to the study of psychopathy.

“…We further suspect that few readers are aware of Cleckley's scholarship on a plethora of other topics, including electroshock and other convulsive therapies (Cleckley, Hamilton, Woodbury, & Volpitto, 1942;Cleckley & Templeton, 1941), major depression (Cleckley, 1954), the shortcomings of Freudian psychoanalysis (Cleckley, 1962), the practice of psychotherapy (Cleckley, 1941a), the misuse of psychiatric terminology and the overhyping of claims in academic psychiatry (Cleckley & Thigpen, 1955), the insanity verdict (Bromberg & Cleckley, 1952;Cleckley, 1955), the pathophysiology of syphilis (Cleckley & Geeslin, 1941), niacin deficiency encephalopathy (Cleckley, Sydenstricker, & Geeslin, 1939), and medical education (Mettler, Cleckley, & Slaughter, 1940). Although we focus on Cleckley's contributions to psychopathy in this article, we briefly review Cleckley's diverse intellectual contributions to DID, sexual orientation, psychoanalysis, and other domains in the online supplemental materials.…”