The Firebirds Among the Psychopaths

This book is an attempt to describe and make understandable this rare phenomen of complete remission in psychopathy and the developmental emedding of it. In this book the history of the concept of psychopathy; the psychosocial, psychodynamic, genetic and neurobiological aspects, the diagnostic tools as well as the therapeutic determinants of the phenomenon will be discussed in this volume. A complete remission of psychopathy is defined as complete disappearance of all such manifestations of disease. The case reports of remitted criminal and noncriminal psychopaths which are presented in this book are the only examples of real remission in a sample 667 patients which were treated in a forensic psychiatric hospital between 1966 and 1995 . This a percentage of just nearly 2% . They might become “weller than well” as Karl Menninger called this phenomenon in his study of remitted in schizophrenic patients. This means that these patients are not just cured, but their life as very much enriched by the experience of conquer the disorder and self-transformation. They will continue improve still further.