Journal of Mental Science (1947) 93: 93-100. doi: 10.1192/bjp.93.390.93
© 1947 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
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On the Concept of "Psychopathy" and the Treatment of So-Called "Psychopaths"

Olof Kinberg, M.D.

Lately Lecturer in Forensic Psychiatry in the Medical Faculty of Stockholm

ABSTRACT

The organization of the treatment of mentally diseased, abnormal or defective people should be carried out on the following lines:

For socially maladjusted people, delinquent or not, there should be established a medico-social treatment under central and local medical guidance. This organization should belong neither to the prison administration nor to the mental hospital organization.

This kind of institution for criminal policyand social welfare should be open also for such cases of social maladjustment as are liable to criminal development, but have not so far committed crimes.

Treatment in the institutions must be combined with out-patient treatment, and with consulting and preventive agencies for behaviour cases of all kinds. In Sweden there is a rudiment of such consulting and preventive agencies in the institution of Skyddskonsulentem (protective agents) provided by the new legislation on probation (1939). These, however, lack medical assistance, and are therefore rather primitive.

This organization must have at its disposal the best technical resources of clinical psychiatry for diagnosis and treatment, and be administered by a sufficient number of doctors with the best possible clinical training, and provided with competent psychologists and social workers as their assistants. One of the most important, tasks of such an organization would be to procure a fully competent staff for its very difficult work.

Only when we have tried to realize this project of social welfare are we entitled to say that we have taken the first step towards a rational and effective treatment of the great group of mentally diseased abnormal and defective persons who have been herded together under the inadequate and vacant diagnosis psychopathy and psychopaths.

Received for publication November 10, 1946.