The Masque of Sanity
My reading lately has taken me into some odd places. I’ve been steadfastly working through Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March, despite the distinct feeling I will remember very little about it once I’ve finished it.
It’s a novel from another era, when a writer could pass off yet another bloated tale of a young man’s coming of age as a contender for the GAM (Great American Novel). Yet I still enjoy such novels, if only because I, too, am a young man coming of age. Ahem. Yes, seriously.
But my interest has really been piqued by this old book I discovered in the library, after hearing it mentioned by N., a friend.
The Mask of Sanity, by Hervey Cleckley. N. read the book as part of an introductory psychology course in the sixties, and she has referred often enough to it in conversation that I thought it worth checking out.
I don’t believe there is a more recent edition than 1976, and that edition was a fifth edition, the original having been published around 1940. It should here be noted that Cleckley is also the co-author of The Three Faces of Eve.
What makes The Mask of Sanity interesting is that Cleckley starts from the premise that people who pass as “sane” in our society, but who nonetheless demonstrate non-adaptive and anti-social behavior, are perhaps more interesting than the lunatic. Modern psychiatry knows what to do with a lunatic–permanent hospitalization is in order–but for the sociopath who is otherwise what we would call “high-functioning,” what is to be done?
As always with books on human psychology, the best parts are the case histories. Clekley’s presentation is as interesting for its candor about the subjects’ sexual history as it is humorous–a true rarity among psychologists. Take the following example. Writing of a millionaire who had spent his money irrationally, Cleckley writes:
For months he had maintained 138 bird dogs scattered over the countryside, forty-two horses, and fourteen women, to none of whom he resorted for the several types of pleasure in which such dependents sometimes play a part.
I don’t think Cleckley could have anticipated that far from being considered irrational or a sign of mental defect, in our era, pointless squandering of wealth in conspicuous consumption is actually celebrated.
Take another example of, perhaps in this case, unintentional humor. Describing the aberrant sexual history of a female patient, Cleckley writes:
Occasionally during her early thirties, but also a few times since, Anna had engaged in a pastime know as gangbanging…Usually drinks with five or six men , whom she might pick up in one of the less inviting honky-tonks or frolic spots about town, constituted the first phase. Later the group rode out into the country and all her companions had sexual relations with her, each taking his turn.
“Frolic spot?” The phrase leaves me wondering what he meant. I imagine playful youths celebrating the pleasures of Bacchus in a willow grove. And it was quite gentlemanly of the men to at least take turns, I think.
Anyway, again humor arises from the juxtaposing of low and high–the term “gangbanging” with a more or less clinical description of the act. As a dangerous compulsion (Anna was beaten up and thrown in a river during one of these gangbangs), her behavior is worthy of clinical analysis, but I’m not sure that even today Anna would find any help from a therapist unless she herself asked.
In 1940, it would have been Anna’s parents or husband who sought help for her, usually in the form of involuntary commitment.
Perhaps far more interesting from the modern perspective is that such case histories remove the rose colored glasses with which we often view the past. If asked, most people would probably say the term, if not the concept, of a gangbang, originated in the nineteen-sixties rather than the nineteen-thirties.
I’m of the opinion that whatever depravity we practice today was probably not unknown to our ancestors.
The Mask of Sanity is a fascinating book, and worth a read, if you can find a copy. The essential problem–what can be done to help the neurotic who cannot be committed, but has difficulty functioning within the bounds of society–remains relevant to our time.