Abstract

Psychopathy, as articulated in Hare’s PCL-R, appears to reliably pick out a forensic category of troubled people. This chapter considers the use and utility of PCL-R by focussing upon two interrelated questions. Does philosophical investigation direct attention toward the issues that should interest us about psychopathy? Is being diagnosed as psychopathic or having ASPD clinically useful, as well as for judicial and sentencing purposes? While the research programmes that developed following the attention paid to psychopathy are warranted, more attention could be directed to the varied nature of psychopathy and the presentations of it that Cleckley described in the Mask of Sanity. It is important to understand psychopathy as it affects lives, as well as a forensic problem.