Well into the eighteenth century, the only types of mental illness – then collectively known as “delirium” or “mania” – were depression (melancholy), psychoses, and delusions. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the French psychiatrist Pinel coined the phrase “manie sans delire” (insanity without delusions). He described patients who lacked impulse control, often raged when frustrated, and were prone to outbursts of violence. He noted that such patients were not subject to delusions. He was referring, of course, to psychopaths (subjects with the Antisocial Personality Disorder). Across the ocean, in the United States, Benjamin Rush made similar observations.
In 1835, the British J. C. Pritchard, working as senior Physician at the Bristol Infirmary (hospital), published a seminal work titled “Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorders of the Mind”. He, in turn, suggested the neologism “moral insanity”.
To quote him, moral insanity consisted of “a morbid perversion of the natural feelings, affections, inclinations, temper, habits, moral dispositions, and natural impulses without...
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