Mask Of Sanity Quotes

I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy. My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage. This was the bone season for me and I needed a vacation.

I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.

My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage.

My nightly blood lust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage.

The Patty Winters Shows were all repeats. Life remained a blank canvas, a cliche, a soap opera. I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy. My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage. This was bone season for me and I needed a vacation. I needed to go to the Hamptons.

The 16 characteristics of psychopaths: 1. Intelligent 2. Rational 3. Calm 4. Unreliable 5. Insincere 6. Without shame or remorse 7. Having poor judgment 8. Without capacity for love 9. Unemotional 10. Poor insight 11. Indifferent to the trust or kindness of others 12. Overreactive to alcohol 13. Suicidal 14. Impersonal sex life 15. Lacking long-term goals 16. Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior

Women often feel ridiculous that they let someone this disordered into their lives and they didn't even recognize the symptoms until she was way in over her head and emotionally destroyed. Welcome to the world of psychopathy where many--even most--don't recognize them either! The main characteristic of this disorder is social behavior and social hiding. Psychopaths blend in as 'normal' and manipulate others into believing them. These chameleon-like traits help them to move about freely and remain largely undetected. This is why Cleckley called these traits 'The Mask of Sanity'--because psychopaths can look and act (at least for a period of time) like a normal person.

If you don't have a filter in your mind, you will immediately offend those who wear filters and masks. To avoid offending, you will also install a filter and become 'sane'.

The reason I suggest that one speaks of a false-self system is that the 'personality', false self, mask, 'front', or persona that such individuals wear may consist in an amalgam of various part-selves, none of which is so fully developed as to have a comprehensive 'personality' of its own.

Holmes was charming and gracious, but something about him made Belknap uneasy. He could not have defined it. Indeed, for the next several decades alienists and their successors would find themselves hard-pressed to describe with any precision what it was about men like Holmes that could cause them to seem warm and ingratiating but also telegraph the vague sense that some important element of humanness was missing. At first alienists described this condition as “moral insanity” and those who exhibited the disorder as “moral imbeciles.” They later adopted the term “psychopath,” used in the lay press as early as 1885 in William Stead’s Pall Mall Gazette, which described it as a “new malady” and stated, “Beside his own person and his own interests, nothing is sacred to the psychopath.” Half a century later, in his path-breaking book The Mask of Sanity, Dr. Hervey Cleckley described the prototypical psychopath as “a subtly constructed reflex machine which can mimic the human personality perfectly. … So perfect is his reproduction of a whole and normal man that no one who examines him in a clinical setting can point out in scientific or objective terms why, or how, he is not real.

Likeable”, “Charming”, “Intelligent”, “Alert”, “Impressive”, “Confidence-inspiring,” and “A great success with the ladies”. This is how Hervey Cleckley described most of his subjects in The Mask of Sanity.

in his path-breaking book The Mask of Sanity, Dr. Hervey Cleckley described the prototypical psychopath as “a subtly constructed reflex machine which can mimic the human personality perfectly. … So perfect is his reproduction of a whole and normal man that no one who examines him in a clinical setting can point out in scientific or objective terms why, or how, he is not real.” People exhibiting this purest form of the disorder would become known, in the jargon of psychiatry, as “Cleckley” psychopaths.

 “Appreciate what you have.  Look at the sun even when it isn’t dusk.

Much of the difficulty which mental institutions have in their relations with the psychopath springs from a lack of awareness in the public that he exists.

Frauds—the deceptions of madness—abound and mask themselves as their mirror opposite: pose as sanity. The masks, however, wear thin and the madness reveals itself. It is an ugly thing.

They also bring to mind what sometimes seems to be a rapt predilection of small but influential cults of intellectuals or esthetes for what is generally regarded as perverse dispirited or distastefully unintelligible. The award of a Nobel Prize in literature to Andre Gide who in his work fervently and openly insists that pederasty is the superior and preferable way of life for adolescent boys furnishes a memorable example of such judgments. Renowned critics and some professors in our best universities reverently acclaim as the superlative expression of genius James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake a 628page collection of erudite gibberish indistinguishable to most people from the familiar word salad produced by hebephrenic patients on the back wards of any state hospital.

It seems like everyone these days is putting on a mask to feel beautiful, trying to fit into some pre-established norms of how we should look. This isn’t only painful, it’s ignorant. Saying like we know, better than nature does, what is beautiful and what is not is like a two-year-old lecturing an old man about patience. Nature’s been creating beauty for millennia and you are part of that creation process. Stop the madness. Stop fighting who you are. Let the mask fall. It’ll be strange at first, yes. But, over time, you’ll see beyond the temporary discomfort of stepping outside social norms and learn to see the beauty you were born with, the beauty you’ve been taught to ignore and cover up. You’ll see beauty that will take your breath away, like a sunset. That’s how beautiful you are—like a sunset, like a forest, like a million fireflies on a calm warm night lighting up the sky. You are made by nature. Nature is wiser in the ways of beauty than cosmetics companies or magazines. Break the spell. Gain back your sanity. Go find that brilliant beauty within every single part of you. Go find the universe in your eyes. Remove that cloak that’s been pulled over your eyes and see yourself for who you really are.

Wace's charm and ease of manner, his smile, his warmth, had vanished. Once before, Strike had faced a killer whose eyes, under the stress and excitement of hearing his crimes described, had become as black and blank as those of a shark, and now he saw the phenomenon again: Wace's eyes might have turned into empty boreholes.

They later adopted the term “psychopath,” used in the lay press as early as 1885 in William Stead’s Pall Mall Gazette, which described it as a “new malady” and stated, “Beside his own person and his own interests, nothing is sacred to the psychopath.” Half a century later, in his path-breaking book The Mask of Sanity, Dr. Hervey Cleckley described the prototypical psychopath as “a subtly constructed reflex machine which can mimic the human personality perfectly. … So perfect is his reproduction of a whole and normal man that no one who examines him in a clinical setting can point out in scientific or objective terms why, or how, he is not real.” People exhibiting this purest form of the disorder would become known, in the jargon of psychiatry, as “Cleckley” psychopaths.

A man without a mask’ is indeed very rare. One even doubts the possibility of such a man. Everyone in some measure wears a mask, and there are many things we do not put ourselves into fully. In ‘ordinary’ life it seems hardly possible for it to be otherwise. The false self of the schizoid individual differs, however, in certain important respects from the mask worn by the ‘normal’ person, and also from the false front that is characteristically maintained by the hysteric.

You look like a goddess,” he murmured as he raked his eyes down her form. And she melted into a puddle. “Thank you.” She tried to sound cool and sophisticated. “I much prefer wearing a gown that’s not too tight.” “Except where it should be.” He dropped his gaze pointedly to her bosom. The frank admiration in his eyes made her glad that she’d let Betty guide her choice for tonight. After that other scandalous gown, she’d been reluctant to wear anything low cut, but this one did look beautiful on her, even with its décolletage. Salmon had always been a good color for her, and the satin rouleaux trim made her feel pretty and elegant. “So it’s presentable enough for dinner with your family?” she asked. “They don’t even deserve to see you in it.” The low rumble of his voice made her breath catch in her throat. “I only wish that you and I could-“ “You do look lovely,” said another voice. Lord Gabriel came up from behind Oliver, dressed all in black as usual. A look of pure mischief crossed his face. “Sorry I’m late, Miss Butterfield, but thank you, brother, for keeping her company until I arrived.” Oliver glared at him. “What the devil do you mean?” “I’m taking the young lady down to dinner.” “That office should be left to her fiancé, don’t you think?” Oliver bit out. “Pretend fiancé. You have no real claim on her. And since you had her to yourself all day…” Lord Gabriel offered his arm. “Shall we, Miss Butterfield?” Maria hesitated, unsure what to do. But Oliver was a danger to her sanity, and his brother wasn’t. So she was better off with Lord Gabriel. “Thank you, sir,” she said, taking his arm. “Now just wait one blasted minute. You can’t-“ “What? Be friendly to our guest?” Lord Gabriel asked, his face a mask of innocence. “Really, old boy, I didn’t realize it mattered that much. But if it upsets you to see Miss Butterfield on the arm of another man, I’ll certainly yield the field.” Lord Gabriel’s words seemed to give Oliver pause. Glancing from Maria to his brother, he smiled, though it didn’t nearly reach his eyes. “No, it’s fine,” he said tightly. “Perfectly fine.” When they headed down the hall with Oliver following behind, Lord Gabriel flashed her a conspiratorial glance. She wasn’t sure what the conspiracy was, but since it seemed to irritate Oliver, she went along. The incident was only the first in a series that continued throughout the week. Whenever she and Oliver found themselves alone, even for a moment, one of his siblings popped up to offer some entertainment-a stroll in the gardens, a ride into Ealing, a game of loo. With each instance, Oliver grew more annoyed, for no reason that she could see. Unless… No, that was crazy.

We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.” Ted Bundy

Dr. Hervey Cleckley wrote in The Mask of Sanity

How to start a war? Nurture your own latent hungers for power. Forget that only madmen pursue power for its own sake. Let such madmen gain power — even you. Let such madmen act behind their conventional masks of sanity. Whether their masks be fashioned from the delusions of defense or the theological aura of law, war will come. — Gowachin aphorism

Through them we attempt to understand the line between sanity and insanity - and come to realize that it does not exist. The most fragile, vulnerable people can still offer strength and wisdom. Those hardened by cruel circumstances can show real kindness and compassion towards those who treat them. And those of us who outwardly appear untroubled can mask an inner life of turmoil.

The Mask of Sanity—An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality.7

Amalfitano had some rather idiosyncratic ideas about jet lag. They weren’t consistent, so it might be an exaggeration to call them ideas. They were feelings. Make-believe ideas. As if he were looking out the window and forcing himself to see an extraterrestrial landscape. He believed (or liked to think he believed) that when a person was in Barcelona, the people living and present in Buenos Aires and Mexico City didn’t exist. The time difference only masked their nonexistence. And so if you suddenly traveled to cities that, according to this theory, didn’t exist or hadn’t yet had time to put themselves together, the result was the phenomenon known as jet lag, which arose not from your exhaustion but from the exhaustion of the people who would still have been asleep if you hadn’t traveled. This was something he’d probably read in some science fiction novel or story and that he’d forgotten having read. • Anyway, these ideas or feelings or ramblings had their satisfactions. They turned the pain of others into memories of one’s own. They turned pain, which is natural, enduring, and eternally triumphant, into personal memory, which is human, brief, and eternally elusive. They turned a brutal story of injustice and abuse, an incoherent howl with no beginning or end, into a neatly structured story in which suicide was always held out as a possibility. They turned flight into freedom, even if freedom meant no more than the perpetuation of flight. They turned chaos into order, even if it was at the cost of what is commonly known as sanity.

The origins of the current description of the psychopathy syndrome can be traced back to the work of Harvey Cleckley in 1940s, and his book, The Mask of Sanity. Some of the key features of psychopathy recorded by Cleckley included: absence of nervousness, interpersonal charm, lack of shame, impoverished affect (emotions seem shallow and are often used to manipulate others), and antisocial behaviour that appears senseless and without obvious motivation. Since Cleckley’s days, scientists have systematically developed ways of assessing psychopathy in criminal populations and in community samples. They have also developed assessments for psychopathic traits in children.

Hervey Cleckley, M.D., from The Mask of Sanity

It is difficult, however, for society to hold these people to account for their damaging conduct or to apply any control that will prevent its continuing. Those who commit serious crimes have a history that any clever lawyer can exploit in such a way as to make his client appear to the average jury the victim of such madness as would make Bedlam itself tame by comparison. Under such circumstances they escape the legal consequences of their acts, are sent to mental hospitals where they prove to be “sane,” and are released. On the other hand, when their relatives and their neighbors seek relief from them and take action to have “lunacy warrants” drawn against them, not wanting to be restricted, they are able to convince the courts that they are as competent as any man.

The headlines emphasize, however, what sometimes seems to be a rapt predilection of small but influential cults of intellectuals or esthetes for what is generally regarded as perverse, dispirited, or distastefully unintelligible.

It may drive us insane when we see the simple mathematics apparently failing in the system surrounding us: just a handful of wrongdoers oppressing the vast number of the wronged ones! But it’s not the truth, if we have a closer look at it… The unfortunate truth is that the majority of the wronged ones are shackled within their own periphery by fear, greed, egoism and many other trammels, but it’s not that they remain there all the time… They, now and again, come out of their periphery to register themselves among the wrongdoers whenever it suits them and then retreat again inside their periphery after serving their purposes. Once inside the periphery they are once again the innocent wronged ones… They can’t see the transition, as there are masks upon their faces, which restrict their vision: the masks of sanity, behind which they are allowed to commit all the insanities. And at times the mask of sanity appears so dreadful that insanity feels saner before it. The fanaticism, the terrorism, the cast-carnages! Inflicting punishment upon an insane person for his insanity! Beating him black and blue for a crime he isn’t even conscious of having committed! Just to protect honor! The honor, which doesn’t get tarnished by the heinous crimes they commit! But it gets tainted by an insane act from an insane person! What an irony!

However, it is important to note that Breonna Taylor's story does not solely define her. While she may not have pursued a career as a doctor, nurse, or ambulance personnel, (she wasn’t Holy Mary) it is unfair to dismiss her intelligence or potential. As much as it is unfair to say „she was such a bright lady, and was always doing the right things in life, she was about to become a doctor, saving lives, and of course she was such a good kid.” The evidence shows otherwise. „Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Martina was such a good kid too. On the surface. The mask of sanity. Mirroring the victim. Illusion. Illusionist. Not with her hairy thing. But that smile. Like Monroe in the movies. „Hollywood.” „Holy.” Wood. The Cross. The Show. Atop a hill. „Look look.

How to start a war? Nurture your own latent hungers for power. Forget that only madmen pursue power for its own sake. Let such madmen gain power—even you. Let such madmen act behind their conventional masks of sanity. Whether their masks be fashioned from the delusions of defense or the theological aura of law, war will come. —Gowachin aphorism

The ease with which defective heredity may be found in any case in which one looks for it is well known. A study published in 1937 revealed that fifty-seven per cent of a group of normal people showed a positive family history of “neuropathic taint.” {36}

What amazed him was how much medical care one could deliver while on autopilot.

Even if Gloria Picardo hadn’t looked like she’d hired the Ghost of Christmas Past for an image consultant,

Serial killers suck the life out of the people around them. They harbor an effortless capability of donning what psychopathy pioneer and psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley coined in 1941 as “the mask of sanity.” It was Cleckley’s work before his death in 1984 that flexed Canadian psychologist Dr. Robert Hare’s mental muscle enough to develop his Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R): twenty characteristics defining psychopathic behavior. Used properly, the PCL-R checklist is an accurate way to determine the psychopath from the non-psychopath.

A good way to think about it is when you deal with a psychopath you are really interacting with their ‘Mask of Sanity or Normalcy,’ as it has been called. They can keep relationships up for years if the circumstances support it. But most of their relationships sour and fail because people eventually do see through the mask to their real core: which is pure selfishness and, many times, evil.