The original master of psychopathy trait analysis was Dr. Hervey Cleckley, a psychiatrist and professor of neuropsychiatry. His case-oriented clinical research led him to identify the observable traits that mark all psychopaths. One of the dominant is lying, and no one characterizes it better than he did in the very first edition of his famous work ... The Mask of Sanity, published in 1941.
"[The psychopath] appears to have a total disregard for truth and is to be trusted no more in his accounts of the past than in his promises for the future or his statement of present intentions. ... The conception of living up to one's word seems actually to be regarded by him as nothing but a useful phrase with which to obtain his ends. No matter how vividly or how repeatedly his utter falsity is demonstrated to him, he is not confounded but continues to expect his word to be regarded as a very serious matter." The Mask of Sanity, p. 239 (1st Ed. St. Louis).
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