Race, psychopathy and the self: a discourse analytic study

This discourse analytic study explores the implicit psychological models articulated within the admission reports of black and white men admitted to a forensic hospital under the diagnostic category of psychopathy. The white admission reports reproduce a traditional psychological model of the self in which intra-psychic states are causally linked to external behaviour whilst the black reports de-emphasize internal states and stress the relevance of the external world in influencing psychological equilibrium. The influence of these models upon the experience of psychopathology is discussed and it is argued that they are directly relevant to the (seemingly) paradoxical underepresentation of black men under the medico-legal category of psychopathy.