George E. Partridge

George Everett Partridge (31 May 1870, Worcester, Massachusetts – November 1953, Baltimore) was an American psychologist credited with popularizing the term sociopath. He worked with the influential G. Stanley Hall at Clark University.

Partridge's PhD and early work focused on the psychology of using alcohol and other intoxicants. He surveyed historical patterns of use, including in religious and social contexts, and considered why there may be a human 'intoxication impulse'. He conducted his own research experiments on the effects of alcohol, in which he found opposite effects to those reported by the influential German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin. Partridge's interest stemmed from a "desire to test the value of psychological methods in dealing with certain ethical problems. Any one of a large number of impulses which are important because they determine morbid conduct might have been chosen for similar study, as for example, the gambling impulse, envy and jealousy, or the sexual impulse."

He published a short book in 1910 concerning the philosophical and scientific issue of individuality, and how teachers can learn each child's unique character, temperament and potential. He also helped publish Hall's writings on education.

He began writing a book during the final months of World War I, published in 1919, in which he analyzed motives for war "in the light of the general principles of the development of society", and addressed the likely effects of the war on countries and the 'world-consciousness'.

Starting in 1928 he published a series of studies conducted at The Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Baltimore on the 'psychopathic personality' - a broad category used somewhat differently from some predominant definitions today. He postulated three subtypes - delinquent (commonly in males), inadequate (commonly in females), and the generally incompatible or emotionally unstable. He speculated that the first two were likely more biologically determined while the latter appeared to be more linked to early upbringing. He then published a brief paper in 1929 outlining the negative social effects of the 'legion of deviates' vaguely classed as having psychopathic personalities, while noting the difficulty in discerning the interaction between cultural patterns and personality patterns, and suggesting that groups as a whole could also become pathological, perhaps most strikingly so in national motivations for war. He concluded: "The thesis here is that the thorough and adequate investigation of the individual consciousness in its pathological manifestations yields us precisely the background needed for the study of the group consciousness - that is, for the development of a scientific socio-pathology."

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