The Mask of Sanity

by Hervey Cleckley

  In school Roberta’s work was mediocre. She studied little and her truancy was spectacular and persistent. No one regarded her as dull and she seemed to learn easily when she made any effort at all. (Her I.Q. was found to be 135.) She often expressed ambitions, and talked of plans for the future. These included the study of medicine, dress designing, becoming an author, and teaching home economics in a nearby college. For short periods she sometimes applied herself and made excellent grades, but she would inevitably return to truancy, spending the school hours in cheap movie houses, in the drug store, or wandering through shops, stealing a few things for which she seemed to have neither need or specific desire. She did not seem to be activated by any “compulsive” desire emerging against a struggle to resist. On the contrary, she proceeded calmly and casually in these acts. She experienced no great thrill or consummation in a theft nor found in it relief from uncomfortable stress.

  Twice in her early teens she alarmed her family by staying out all night, once after a Sunday school picnic, once after a small dancing party. With what seemed like disarming candor, she had told the girls at whose homes she stayed that her family knew all about her plans.

  Such conduct of course suggests that she might have been deliberately trying to hurt her parents. If so, Roberta herself was quite unaware of such a motive. As with her thievery, her truancy, and her running up of bills, no conscious drive of real significance is found. Roberta insists that she loves her parents. “They’ve made some mistakes with me,” she says, “but I’ve made a lot myself. I appreciate all they’ve done for me. Of course, I’ve learned my lesson now.”

  One of this girl’s most appealing qualities is, perhaps, her friendly impulse to help others. In the hospital she showed tact and kindness in doing small favors for seriously troubled patients. This did not seem pretentious; or in any way staged. At home she had for years shown similar traits. She often went to sit with an ill neighbor, watched the baby of her mother’s friend, and rather patiently helped her younger sister with her studies. In none of these things was she consistent. She often promised her services and, with no explanation, failed to appear. An easy kindness seemed also to mark her attitude toward small animals. She would stop to pet a puppy, take crumbs out to the birds, and comfort a stray cat. Yet, when her own dog was killed by an automobile, she showed only the most fleeting and superficial signs of concern.

  “She has such sweet feelings,” Roberta’s mother said, “but they don’t amount to much. She’s not hard or heartless, but she’s all on the surface. I really believe she means to stop doing all those terrible things, but she doesn’t mean it enough to matter.”

  “Lots of times we thought she’d got on the right track,” the father said, referring to Roberta’s brief period of interest in church work. When 17 years of age she had voluntarily assisted the director of religious education for a couple of months and had talked about making a career of such work. She had seemed sincere and her informal talks to small groups of younger children in Sunday school made a most favorable impression. Even while engaged in these activities, she was occasionally stealing and running up big bills which, by many subtleties, she concealed for a long time from her father.

  “I wouldn’t exactly say she’s like a hypocrite,” the father added. “When she’s caught and confronted with her lies and other misbehavior, she doesn’t seem to appreciate the inconsistency of her position. Her conscience seems still untouched. Even when she says how badly she’s acted and promises to do better, her feelings just must not be what you take them for.”

  Having failed in many classes and her truancy becoming intolerable to the school, Roberta, after several more petty thefts from classmates and teachers, was expelled from the local high school. Her family sent her to a boarding school of her choice, from which she wrote enthusiastic letters. Despite this expressed satisfaction, she ran away from school and could not be located for several days.

  After her return home it was found that she had cashed bad checks at school to obtain money with which she kept herself at a hotel in a town near the school and not far from her home. She knew several boys and girls there and bad spent some time with them going to the movies and having dates. She had told a convincing story to the effect that her father was in town on business and that she had accompanied him. This explanation she made so blandly and with such casual laying in of detail that none of her friends or their parents suspected her of having run away. She borrowed sums of money from several people during this episode, telling them about all sorts of entirely unreal situations which made it necessary for her to have funds at once.

  She seemed entirely untroubled, never by word or gesture giving indication that she might have something to hide or to be seriously worried about. No adequate motive for her leaving school could be brought out. Sometimes she spoke of dislike for a teacher, again of some girl’s having seemed snobbish, or, forgetting the other complaints, explained it all on the basis of having been so homesick. Such expressions she would later contradict thoughtlessly by praise of the school and statements to the effect that she had greatly enjoyed herself there.

  Since she first began to go out to parties, Roberta had given her parents many sleepless nights. With the clear and accepted understanding that she must, like her friends, return home by 10:30 or 11 P.M., she often did not turn up until 1 or 2 A.M., and once or twice not until far later. Sometimes she would while away these postmidnight hours playing pinball and slot machines with several boys in small resorts about the edge of town. Once she rode on a motorcycle with a young man to another town fifty miles away and returned just before dawn. Disturbed by the usual talk about sexual irregularities in young people, her parents had serious discussions with their daughter. Privileges were taken from her, and, sometimes for a month or more after an especially gross act of disobedience, she was not allowed to go out with her crowd.

  Having long feared that Roberta would in such circumstances lose her virginity, the parents, after her episode of staying several days away from school at the hotel, prepared themselves for the worst. She, of course, denied any sexual relations, but she also regularly denied stealing, truancy, surreptitiously charging things to her father, and all her other faulty conduct. When she missed a menstrual period shortly after running away from school, her parents were so perturbed that a medical examination was made. Not only was there no evidence of pregnancy, but a definitely intact hymen was obvious.

  Roberta was sent to two other boarding schools from which she had to be expelled. She entered a hospital for training to be a registered nurse but did not last a month. Employed in her father’s business as a bookkeeper, she used her skill at figures and a good deal of ingenuity to make off with considerable sums.

  Although she had a number of boyfriends and spoke of having often been in love, Roberta was not the typical flirt. Apparently she had only mild experiences in kissing and necking, these activities seemingly vaguely pleasant but not arousing any vivid passion. The war having been for some time in progress, Roberta met scores of young soldiers from a nearby camp. She kept up a lively correspondence with many of them after they were sent overseas or to other posts. She spoke of her satisfaction in sending letters to these men who were serving their country and expressed herself from time to time as being in love with one or another of them. One of those with whom she corresponded most regularly was killed in an accident on the West Coast and another during combat in Italy. She seemed little affected by these incidents, though her expressions of regret were verbally appropriate. Apparently she was unaware that under such circumstances another girl might have felt more.

  In telling of her initial sexual experience, which had occurred about a year before I first saw her, she seemed frank and by no means embarrassed. After her discharge from the WAC, which she had entered with apparent enthusiasm and wonderfully expressed intentions, she remained at home and, for a few months, despite relatively small irregularities, appeared at last to be making a better adjustmen
t. She often seemed mildly bored but never pathologically restless or distinctly unhappy. She wrote many sentimental letters to a couple of dozen soldiers, read True Story magazine, Little Women, The Story of Philosophy, and comic books and attended movies and parties at the Red Cross.

  With no explanation to her parents she suddenly disappeared. To me she explained that she had left with the intention of visiting a boyfriend stationed at a camp in another state. She admitted that she had in mind the possibility of marrying this man but that no definite decision had been made by her, much less by him. She had, it seems, given the matter little serious thought, and from her attitude one would judge she was moved by little more than what might make a person stroll off into the yard to see if the magnolia tree had bloomed. She left with a little over $4.00 in her purse. Getting off the bus in a town three hours’ ride from home, she tried to reach the boyfriend by telephone and ask him to telegraph funds to her. She could not at the time reach him. She had realized her family might trace her if she continued by bus to the city for which she had bought a ticket. This was the chief factor in her getting off where she did.

  Balked in her efforts to reach the soldier, she remembered another boy, now overseas, who lived in this town in which she found herself almost without funds. She decided to go to his family and spend the night with them. With the most artless manner and with no sign of uneasiness or tension, she explained to these people that she was hurrying to the bedside of an aunt, that her father had been away on business when she left, and that there had been a mistake in her understanding of the bus schedule. She found, she said, that she would have to take the morning train from here to reach the bedside of her aunt. There was much pleasant conversation and these people insisted on her staying for the night.

  While alone she attempted to place another long-distance call to the soldier. She still had in mind ideas about marrying him but had come no closer to a decision. The call not being completed, she began to fear the operator might ring back. She also was not quite sure her hostess had not overheard her at the telephone. After thinking of this and realizing that her family might trace her in such a nearby place, she slipped off after pretending to go to bed early, leaving no message for these people who had taken her in.

  Catching a bus bound in another direction, she rode for a few hours and got off at a strange town where she knew no one. Not having concluded plans for her next step, she sat for a while in a hotel lobby. Soon she was approached by a middle-aged man. He was far from prepossessing, smelt of cheap liquor, and his manners were distinctly distasteful. He soon offered to pay for her overnight accommodations at the hotel. She realized that he meant to share the bed with her but made no objection. As well as one can tell by discussing this experience with Roberta, she was neither excited, frightened, repulsed, nor attracted by a prospect that most carefully brought-up virgins would certainly have regarded with anything but indifference.

  The man, during their several hours together, handled her in a rough, peremptory fashion, took no trouble to conceal his contempt for her and her role, and made no pretense of friendliness, much less of affection. She experienced moderate pain but no sexual response under his ministrations. After giving her $5.00 with unnecessarily contemptuous accentuations of its significance, he left her in the room about midnight.

  Next morning she reached her soldier friend by telephone and suggested that he send her sufficient funds to join him. She had not discarded the idea of marrying him, nor had she progressed any further toward a final decision to do so. He discouraged her vigorously against coming, refused to send money, and urged her to return home. She was not, it seems, greatly upset by this turn of events and, with little serious consideration of the matter, decided to go to Charlotte, which was approximately 150 miles distant. She seemed frank in admitting that she had no distinct purpose in mind, was prompted by no overmastering thrill of adventure or fear that her parents might consider her “ruined” or disgraced. She was, in fact, not conscious of any strong reason for not going home or for having left in the first place.

  Reaching Charlotte, she had little trouble finding small jobs in restaurants and stores. She supported herself for several days by working but found that her funds barely provided for room and food. She thereupon began to spend the nights with various tipsy soldiers, travelling salesmen, and other men who showed inclination to pick her up. With all these she had sexual intercourse. From this she eventually began to experience a moderate, half-warmed pleasure, but nothing like intense passion. Despite extensive promiscuity since that time, she has never experienced a sharp and distinguishable orgasm or found sexual relations in any way a major pleasure or temptation. Nor has she felt any of the frustrations and unrelieved tension so familiar in some women who are aroused but left unsatisfied. Her family, meanwhile, not knowing whether she was dead or alive, was making every effort, through the police and otherwise, to find her. These efforts met with success after about three weeks.

  On meeting her parents she expressed affection, running to them and throwing herself in their arms. At their prompting she found it easy to make use of the formalities indicative of penitence but seemed remarkably free from actual humiliation or distress. Neither the recent anxiety of her mother and father nor her own social jeopardy overwhelmed or even greatly daunted her. She seemed little vulnerable to the inevitable gossip that on her return beat like a tempest about town. As if armored by a sort of innocence, she went her way freely-affable, unembarrassed, the picture of an artless girl fond of others and expecting kindliness from all.

  In this episode, as in most of her other behavior, it is not easy to see what such a girl as this is driving at. If she had, through hallucinations, heard God’s voice telling her to leave home, or if she believed with the conviction of delusion she had been invited by a princely suitor to spend the night in love, her conduct would be easier to understand and would, in a very important sense, be more rational and appropriate. It would also be easier to understand if she had been driven by sexual craving to sacrifice social approval for an enticing hedonistic goal.

  During her hospitalization she spoke convincingly of the benefit she was obtaining and discussed her mistakes with every appearance of insight. She spoke like a person who had been lost and bewildered but now had found her way. She did not seem to be making any voluntary effort to deceive her physicians.

  Soon after she returned home, reports came, all indicating that she was continuing in her old patterns of behavior. A secretarial position was obtained for her in Spartanburg, S.C., with a large corporation. She was quick and effective in her work and was liked by all for her simple, friendly ways. Soon her landlady began to worry about her moral status as evidence accumulated that she let various men who were casual acquaintances come up to her room. She showed a good deal of skill in avoiding detection, and her manner made it hard for such suspicions to be taken seriously. She was so calm, so free of anything that would suggest a passionate nature, so polite, and so proper that irregularities of this sort were all but inconceivable to those she met. At last it was evident that this apparently candid and well brought-up girl was turning the place into the modest approximation of a brothel. Before the kindly landlady could steel herself to have a showdown, Roberta disappeared owing a month’s rent.

  She had, with her convincing manner, succeeded in drawing a sum of money from a loan fund the employees of the company had built up for their convenience. Having obtained this, Roberta did not show up for work and was not heard from for a couple of weeks. Shortly thereafter she returned home. She told little of the real story to her parents but convinced them she had left her job under honorable circumstances. This was believed until the facts at last caught up with her.

  Other positions were obtained for her in various towns and at home. Each time her failures were similar and always without adequate motive or extraneous cause. She returned for psychiatric treatment on several occasions, always saying she had been helped and expressing simple bu
t complete confidence that it was impossible for her to have further trouble.

  Despite her prompt failures she would, in her letters to us at the hospital, write as if she had been miraculously cured:

  You and Doctor _____ have given me a new outlook and a new life. This time we have got to the very root of my trouble and I see the whole story in a different light. I don’t mean to use such words lightly and, of all things, I want to avoid even the appearance of flattery, but I must tell you how grateful I am, how deeply I admire the wonderful work you are doing … If, in your whole life you had never succeeded with one other patient, what you have done for me should make your practice worthwhile … I wish I could tell you how different I feel. How different I am. But, as I so well realize now, it isn’t saying things that counts but what one actually does. I am confident that my life from now on will express better than anything I can say what you have done for me—and my admiration … It is good to feel that as time passes, you can be proud of me and as sure of me as I am sure of myself … whether I go on to college or follow up my old impulse and become a nurse; if I become a business girl or settle for being just a normal, happy wife, my life will be fulfilling and useful … If it had not been for you, I shudder to think what I might have become.

  Additional letters, which she continued to send from time to time, were filled with similar statements. Occasionally she mentioned difficulties but never a serious discouragement. She continued in behavior such as that mentioned previously, and the actuality of her conduct and of her situation seemed not to weigh in her estimate of her present or future.

  Though she realized I had been informed of recent episodes quite as bad as those in the past, on several occasions she wrote requesting letters of recommendation for various positions she had applied for or was considering. More than once blank forms appeared in my mail with notices that Roberta had given my name as a reference. It was interesting and not without an element of sad irony to note that these forms made specific queries about “good character,” “high moral standards,” “reliability,” “would you employ the applicant yourself, realizing the position is one of considerable responsibility,” etc. Roberta seemed sweetly free of any doubt that such recommendations would be given without qualification and in the highest terms of assurance.