Reading this New Yorker piece by John Seabrook, I hit the sentence “The word ‘psychopath’ (literally, ‘suffering soul’) was coined in Germany in the eighteen-eighties” and of course turned immediately to the OED, where I found that the entry had been revised as recently as September of last year. It says “after PSYCHOPATHIC adj., PSYCHOPATHY n. Compare Russian psixopat (1888 or earlier), French psychopathe (1894), German Psychopath (1898 or earlier).” I was naturally interested to see the earliest attested form was Russian, and a little googling got me this Russian webpage (“Диссоциальное расстройство личности”), which says “по данным О. В. Кербикова (1955) в России термин «психопат» был впервые употреблен И. М. Балинским в 1884 г. во время выступления в суде по делу некоей Семеновой” [according to O. V. Kerbikov (1955), in Russia the term psikhopat was first used by I. M. Balinsky in 1884 in his appearance in court in the case of one Semenova]. The first OED cite supports Balinsky’s priority: 1885 Pall Mall Gaz. 21 Jan. 3/2 “For the benefit of those who are as yet ignorant of the meaning of psychopathy.. we give M. Balinsky’s [sc. a Russian psychiatrist] explanation of the new malady. ‘The psychopath.. is a type which has only recently come under the notice of medical science… Beside his own person and his own interests, nothing is sacred to the psychopath.'” It would be nice to have an exact cite for Balinsky’s original use; at any rate, Seabrook seems to be incorrect in claiming it was coined in Germany. The terms it was based on, however—psychopathic and psychopathy—are in fact of German origin (psychopathisch dates back to 1845).
Update. In this thread, LH reader hilding very kindly provided the text of Balinsky’s statement: “Психопат тип, лишь недавно установленный в медицинской науке.” Now if only we could find an earlier cite!
Further update (July 2021). That last wish has been granted; it turns up in an 1856 publication by Tarasenkov. See my comment below.
It’s always fascinating to me which bits of psychological terminology “catch” as everyday language.
The terms it was based on, however—psychopathic and psychopathy—are in fact of German origin (psychopathisch dates back to 1845).
I know next to nothing about this and there’s nothing in German wiki, but if psychopathisch dates back to 1845, isn’t it likely that psychopath would be from around that date too, even if the Pall Mall Gazette thought it recent forty years later?
Did you know that Matthew Freud, g. grandson of the great man, is married to Rupert Murdoch’s daughter and they have children? Scary. I’ll be dead by then.
if psychopathisch dates back to 1845, isn’t it likely that psychopath would be from around that date too
No, I assure you the OED would have run across it in the past century. It’s not unusual that it would take forty years or so for a noun to be created based on a newly coined adjective.
AJP, if “psychopathic” means “relating to psychopathy”, then there’s no reason to assume the existence of a noun “psychopath” — any more than the word “pharmacologic” implies there’s a noun “pharmacolog(ue)”.
Max Born (Nobel Prize-winning physicist) is Olivia Newton-John’s grandfather.
There has always tension between psychopath as occasionally associated with psychopathology ([the study of] “mental disorders”) and as more properly associated with psychopathy (a specific diagnosis, within the domain of psychopathology). Psychopath is, partly for this very reason, deprecated in psychonosological circles. For better or worse the terms sociopath and sociopathy are more in favour; but the whole field is muddy and unsettled.
O, and the linked article discusses sociopathy too, I see. But it doesn’t give the reason that I adduce for the shift.
I wonder if the Russian origin also explains the odd formation of the word. If it came from German, it would be more likely to be Psychopathiker (like Schizophreniker) in German, resulting in psychopathic as a noun in Emglish.
It would be interesting to know more about Semenova, whoever she was, if she really is the world’s first psychopath. If British newspapers picked up on the case it must have been fairly interesting.
I wonder if the Russian origin also explains the odd formation of the word.
Probably the Russians were in Greece before they went on to Rome.
Going off on a tangeant. I think it’s interesting that meteopathy and meteopath, referring to those physically affected by changes in weather or certain kinds of weather, don’t seem to be very well established in English yet (from what I find in google) though they’re common in a number of other European languages.
the whole field is muddy and unsettled.
I remember once telling a psychiatrist that I thought so-and-so was a psychopath, and he smiled and told me that ‘we doctors’ have a very precise definition for the word. It turned out we meant the same thing, but now I wonder if this muddiness is what he was talking about. I think ‘psychopath’ is a much better word than ‘sociopath’. Probably thanks to Alfred Hitchcock, it’s more suggestive of doom. ‘Sociopath’ just sounds like an annoying person you met at a party.
My common usage defintitions (not to be confused with anything a professional would recognize or approve of) of psychopath and sociopath are not the same thing at all.
Psychopaths have extremely low (or no) impulse control on their own behavior and don’t recognize social boundaries. They can be characterized by unpredictable behavior that can be hazardous to themselves and others.
A sociopath knows social boundaries and violates them selectively counting on others to not follow suit. There is a basic lack of empathy and no inhibitions on using and manipulating others for their own ends.
Again, these are what the words mean to me when used in everyday speech or writing and not to be confused with (or understood as challenging) specialist understanding of the issues involved.
Nabokov in his book on Gogol says,
think it’s interesting that meteopathy and meteopath… don’t seem to be very well established in English yet
By “not very well established” I take it you mean “completely nonexistent.” Meteopath gets no Google hits whatever, and meteopathy exists only in explanations of how parallel words are used in other languages and badly translated titles of technical articles (e.g., this one: “[Interval hypoxic training as a method of prophylaxis of meteopathic reactions in patients with bronchial asthma: guide for physicians],” from the Russian journal Voprosy kurortologii, fizioterapii, i lechebnoi fizicheskoi kultury).
if psychopathisch dates back to 1845, isn’t it likely that psychopath would be from around that date too
My sOED notes (without further explanation) that ‘psychopathy’ originally meant simply ‘mental illness’.
It seems a reasonable hypothesis, therefore, that ‘psychopathisch’ originally likewise had a broader sense – and that the contemporary meaning of ‘psychopathy’ as ‘the condition suffered by psychopaths’ actually came after the identification of this condition and Balinsky’s consequent coining.
That’s speculation on my part, though.
By “not very well established” I take it you mean “completely nonexistent.”
Well I was erring on the side of caution. I would also say that if even if meteopathic “exists only in explanations of how parallel words are used in other languages and badly translated titles of technical articles” then it’s not completely nonexistent and is at least a (very) marginal word.
I think it’s interesting that meteopathy and meteopath, referring to those physically affected by changes in weather or certain kinds of weather, don’t seem to be very well established in English yet
That’s because, in the U.S. at least, people are not pathologically (!) afraid of the Föhn or the mistral or of drafts in general. There’s SAD, but that’s about it.
Max Born (Nobel Prize-winning physicist) is Olivia Newton-John’s grandfather.
So that’s why she’s nicknamed “Olivia Neutron Bomb”.
Born, not Teller!
I seem to recall that Havelock-Ellis disliked the word “homosexual” for being a mishmash of Greek and Latin. But he wasn’t a bitchabout it.
He was the first to insist that “inversion” as he called it, wasn’t an illness (I think).
Is there a difference between meteopathy and meteoropathy? A Greek-speaking coiner would, I think, choose the latter, which does get some ghits.
Sili: Ah, I can’t stand mixed Greek/Latin coinages. They have a whiff of “I don’t know what I’m doing, but this sounds impressive”. Television. Sociopathy. I suppose they’re harmless.
Is the piece itself worth reading?
Did you know that Matthew Freud, g. grandson of the great man, is married to Rupert Murdoch’s daughter and they have children?
I’m going to start warning everyone I know.
Is the piece itself worth reading?
If you’re interested in the subject, sure.
I’m going to start warning everyone I know.
Yeah. They have about twenty years to build a fallout shelter. Granddad will have passed on by then, and they’ll have the money to… well, who knows what?
hjælmer:
Wouldn’t “weather bones” and the like qualify? Those are pretty common over here…. If you haven’t heard the term, that’s when someone’s bones hurt in response to pressure changes. Often caused by an imperfectly-healed break, arthritis, or just by age.
Also, the NYT parsed “psychopath” as “suffering soul” — given other medical usage of -path, wouldn’t it be more like “sick soul”?
given other medical usage of -path, wouldn’t it be more like “sick soul”
As I have said, it’s all mixed up. I too am suspicious of this “suffering soul” business. Of course the relevant Greek words import “suffering” (as in pathemata mathemata: “sufferings are lessons”), and doesn’t the same root branch forth into Latin as passio, whence our passion, passive, and so on? But the Greek quite naturally acquires the restricted sense of disease, and so we have pathology and later psychopathology. Psychopathy, on the other hand, works as if it were a formation from psychopath. I am as much against Latin-Greek hybrids as the next pedant; but I am sympathetic (or to latinise, compassionate) towards those preferring sociopath.
If it had been Iris Murdoch’s daughter, I would have been cool with that.
The basic problem is that there should never have been a Rupert Murdoch, nor should he have fathered children, nor should any of his children have married. The Freud part is basically a red herring.
Sigmund Freud is a red herring. Let me write that one more time: Sigmund Freud is a red herring. But the Freuds are unbelievably good at whatever they turn their hand to. Matthew does PR.
(looking for a thread with Cyrillic so I can pretend this is on topic)…for what’s it’s worth, I found the following in my spam filter, maybe should have left it there:
Yes, I will agree that Sigmund may have been the best red herring of all time. And I say that in all seriousness.
Ha!
No, no, no. I meant red herring in the sense of surrealism. Sigmund’s just out of style at the moment — we all would be after a century. He’ll be back, you’re going to love him.
Zombie Sigmund! Instead of brains, he eats minds!
Here, for example, is one approach by the wonderful Lesley Chamberlain.
Nikolai Karabchevsky’s 1885 speech in defense of Mironovich is online here (the second speech down); he quotes Balinsky, but of course it would be nice to have the latter’s 1884 remarks in full.
But never mind Balinsky, it occurs twice in Tarasenkov’s Последние дни жизни Гоголя [The last days of Gogol’s life] — from 1856!
(The linked book publication is from 1857, but the piece was first in the Dec. 1856 issue of Otechestvennye zapiski.)
It would be interesting to know more about Semenova, whoever she was, if she really is the world’s first psychopath. If British newspapers picked up on the case it must have been fairly interesting.
Murder of Sarra Becker (also known as the Mironovich case) was one of the most sensational trials in the Russian empire.
Mironovich, owner of a small loan agency in St.Petersburg, was accused of attempted rape and murder of 13 year old Sarra Becker, daughter of his clerk who helped in the office.
His conviction seemed imminent when suddenly a woman named Ekaterina Semenova confessed to the police that she killed Sarra Becker.
The motive for murder was sensational: Semenova decided to commit a major burglary and murder in order to solve her financial difficulties while making her lover Michael Bezak an accomplice to the crime (so that he wouldn’t leave her).
Needless to say psychopatic Semenova seriously miscalculated: Bezak took the 50 roubles she stole after the murder of Sarra Becker giving only 5 roubles to Semenova and then left her for good.
Disappointed Semenova confessed the crime to the police.
Now, Mironovich was freed and Semenova was in prison. But when Bezak was arrested by police as an accomplice, he came out with another version of the event. Bezak claimed that Semenova didn’t actually kill Sarra Becker, the girl was already killed by Mironovich when she came to rob the office.
The police liked this version better. At the trial of 1884, Semenova was sent to the asylum, Mironovich was convicted of murder and Bezak of failing to report a crime.
But this was not the end. The case went to second trial next year and now Mironovich was acquitted, Bezak convicted of complicity to murder and Semenova sent to the asylum again.
Wow! What a movie that would make…
Totally. I see it as a 1920s (i.e. silent) movie. I don’t see many later movie directors willing or able or foolish enough to handle a plot that knotty. Or more exactly, a plot that strays so much from a clear arc.
My intellectual ancestor Edgar A. Singer found it necessary back at the turn of the 19th-20th century to coin two terms for purely physical and psychological effects on the mind. Unfortunately for him, he chose neurotic and psychotic.
@John Cowan: It sounds like Singer may have been way too late with neurotic. The OED has the adjectival form, defined as “of the nature of a neurosis” from 1866, with a citation that is unambiguous about what it means.*
The corresponding noun [“A person suffering from a neurosis; (also with the) neurotic people as a class. Also in extended use”] is, in principle, attested from even earlier, although the only pre-1884 cite the OED actually has is this rather ambiguous one from The Lancet, all the way back in 1835:
* The citation is from a book entitled St. Martin’s Summer, which was also the name of a 1909 novel by Rafael Sabatini, better known as the author of Captain Blood. The names of both books were apparently taken from an expression meaning a period of unusual warmth in the autumn—Saint Martin’s Day falling on November 11. (There is a pre-1918 tradition in some places of beginning celebration of Saint Martin’s Day at 11:11 that morning.)
There is a long and sad tradition of scholars ignoring all previous usage and deciding on terms, orthographies, definitions, etc., that make sense to them personally, not giving a damn for what anybody else thinks or what might be useful in the real world.
Dobson’s grammars of early Chinese used all sorts of terms that neither I nor my linguist friend had seen before.
Harbsmeier’s Aspects of Classical Chinese Syntax says
A footnote reads:
https://www.ikgf.uni-erlangen.de/people/Aspects-of-Classical-Chinese-Kyoto-1981.pdf
Reading Dobson I saw many interesting things, and others that seemed not quite right. It was a very ambitious enterprise and it’s really a pity.
Before the People’s Republic put its weight behind Pinyin, it was a common saying among Sinologists that the first sign of senility was the urge to come up with a new transcription system. Many did follow that urge.
The first sign of ….. something….. is translating the Daodejing.
Which I am doing.
By now there are enough DDJ translations into English (about 300) to do a statistical composite translation.
PS: I’ve seen Harbsmeier and Cikoski (Graham’s disciples, I think) do a hatchet job on someone else, so I deduct a little from what they say. They’re a bit combative.
Philosophers are typically justified in making up their own terminology, particularly one like Singer who didn’t belong to any school except perhaps Peirce’s (and that only by reading his books, not by studying with him).
Pierce — who also made up his own terminology.
They’re a bit combative.
True.
Harbsmeier’s site includes a paper criticising Baxter and Sagart’s work on the reconstruction of the phonology of Old Chinese which is frankly Zoilist, especially given that H preemptively disclaims any particular expertise in the very field B & S are discussing.
At one time I had as many as 8 reconstructions of Old Chinese. Karlgren, Schuessler (3), Baxter, Zhou Fazang (? I forget the name , 2 ), Wang Li and maybe another. And I am unequipped to choose or to criticize.
I had to look up Zoilist and its interesting etymology. If I’m remembering the paper right, I have to agree on the assessment.
In the Quixote’s “Prologue to the Reader”, Cervantes tells his readers that they must not expect marginal notes, or poems written by noblemen at the end, nor an impressive bibliography at the beginning:
Maldiciente is good, though nowadays it seems to refer to foul language rather than slander. At any rate, the historical Zoilus became famous for his attacks on Homer against the fabulous element in him, and the stories of Zoilus being crucified for slandering Ptolemy Philadelphus are probably just projections from his perhaps-intemperate literary criticism.
Maldecir will indeed be usually understood as meaning ‘to swear, to use offensive language’, but I’m not sure that semantic shift has affected the adjective. Even if historically it represents an active participle, it’s not uncommon for it to have drifted quite significantly from its verbal counterparts: corriente can be glossed as ‘in common use’, for example, but that meaning is not available for correr. (And that’s without going into cases like durante, which have moved into a different syntactic class.)
From what I can see, the little use maldiciente enjoys is in highfalutin’ literary writing, where it still seems to mean chiefly ‘slanderous’. It’s not in my idiolect, though, unlike its Latinate doublet maledicente.