Studies in Forensic Psychiatry by Bernard Glueck (best black authors txt) 📕

Upon being imprisoned they are unable to adjust themselves to the strict régime, find difficulty in acquainting themselves with the prison regulations and in consequence have to be frequently disciplined. As a result they begin to misinterpret things in the environment and see in these disciplinary measures nothing but persecution on the part of the prison officials. They become suspicious, seclusive, introspective, spend sleepless nights, until suddenly, in the stillness of night, they perceive isolated phonemes. This strengthens their suspicions. They refuse food, become apprehensive, the hallucinations reach a more definite character, until finally they manifest a well-marked persecutory delirium, or may fall into a semi-delirious stuporous state, show numerous catatonic symptoms, become destructive and untidy, and in general present a picture very similar to true catatonia.

Removal to the hospital ward frequently serves to put a stop to the process at once, and often before reaching the hospital for the insane they show no traces of the acute mental disorder.

The foregoing are types of degenerative psychoses met with in imprisonment, and there can be no question that the prison milieu is the etiologic factor here.

To speak here of a progressive disorder to which imprisonment only gives a characteristic coloring is entirely erroneous. A psychosis which is definitely brought on by a certain environment and which is corrected as soon as the environment is changed, must be looked upon as the product of that environment. That the degenerative soil which permits of the development of these disorders cannot be looked upon as a basic disorder, something like dementia præcox, is likewise unquestionable. These individuals have always shown the same traits of character; it is these very same anomalies which brought them in their childhood days in conflict with the school authorities, which later made them inmates of reformatories, and which finally were at the bottom of their habitual criminality. Finally, the total absence of progression to more or less definite end-results excludes the possibility of an organically determined progressive disorder. A psychosis which develops in imprisonment and progresses irrespective of the change of milieu is not a prison psychosis in the sense that this term is here used. The following cases are illustrative of the type under discussion.

Case I.—A. F., aged 31 years; admitted to the Government Hospital for the Insane April 7, 1911. Father alcoholic; died of cancer of liver and stomach. Mother died of tuberculosis. One brother has been confined in the Gowanda State Hospital for the Insane for past five or six years; has always been an excessive alcoholic. One sister, aged 42, has tuberculosis. One of her children died of tuberculosis of the bones. Another sister is hyper-religious and eccentric.

Patient was born at Olean, New York, in 1871. He knows of nothing unusual attending his birth or childhood. He entered school at the age of six, and attended irregularly for six or seven years. He was usually older than the other children in his class, and was held back a year in the third and fourth grades. He left school at the age of fourteen, while in the fourth grade. He then worked in a shoe store, commencing at a salary of four dollars per week, and receiving six dollars per week at the time of his separation. As far as is known he did his work well, as he was promoted during his stay there. Soon after commencing to earn money he began to indulge in alcoholics. He became intoxicated one day and set fire to a store, which resulted in the death of a human being. It did not take much at that time to intoxicate him—two or three glasses of whiskey being sufficient. He does not definitely say why he set the place on fire; adding, “Perhaps I was drunk and did not know what I was doing and maybe I just wanted to see the fire. I always did like to see fires. Of course, I did not know that somebody was going to get burned to death.” He is not certain whether he felt sorry for the deed, adding: “Why should I care? I did not know the man that was burned. He was no relative or friend of mine; anyway, the people around there said he was no good, and that it served him right.” He was sent to the Elmira Reformatory, where he remained three years, when he was transferred to the New York State Hospital for Criminal Insane at Matteawan. He did not like the Reformatory a bit, they were nagging him all the time. He says it was like a deaf and dumb asylum; a fellow could not even talk when he wanted to, and if he did he was paddled for it. The paddling didn’t make him behave, because, he adds: “You can’t make a fellow behave by beating him all the time.” He was later transferred to Dannemora, spending about two years in all, in both these institutions. He did not like it at the hospital either, because they made him work, and he hated to work; so finally he asked to be transferred back to Elmira, which request was granted him. On returning there he was put to work at brick-laying, but could not get along with the fellow in charge, the latter was too much of a bully and worked him too hard, so finally, they shipped him to the new reformatory at Napanoch, New York. Here he was given employment by the physician in charge of the hospital, and after ten months of good conduct, was paroled. He says he behaved well these ten months because he was treated well by the doctor. Upon being paroled, he returned to Olean and obtained a position in a tannery where he worked for six months, receiving two dollars per night. He was drinking heavily all this time, and one night, failing to return to work, owing to his intoxicated condition, was discharged. He states that the above is the longest he ever worked at any occupation since. Shortly after being discharged, he was arrested in company with several others for robbing a post office. He was about twenty-three years of age then. He claims that he had nothing to do with this robbery, and it was just an unfortunate accident that he got mixed up in it. He was placed in the jail, and while there the warden tried to poison him. He developed various ideas that poison was placed in his food, that his stomach was all dried up, and because he would not eat, he adds: “They sent him over to this Hospital,—the Government Hospital for the Insane.”

He was admitted here the first time on May 29, 1904, on a medical certificate which stated: “About April 19, 1904, he refused to take food and claimed to be kidnapped. He had delusions of persecution—said his head was full of nails and requested that his brain be cut up. Said the President was his friend.”

On August 1st, he eloped while at work in company with another patient. The record of his mental disturbance at that time is very meagre, and nothing of a definite nature can be obtained from it.

From here he beat part of his way, and walked part of the way to Cincinnati, where he had a sister living. One night he heard her talking to her husband about sending him back to the hospital, so he robbed them of what money they had in the house, bought a revolver and returned to Olean. He says he bought the revolver to protect himself from a certain police captain at Olean. He frequently refers to this man in a vindictive and abusive manner. States that this police captain was after him all the time; that whenever any crime was committed in the city, he was immediately suspected. He was “tired of this” and bought the gun, intending to kill the police officer if he should bother him any more. Here he adds: “Anyhow, the cur was killed afterwards, I am glad of it.” After a series of crimes, tramping and debauchery, during which he suffered from an attack of delirium tremens, and served a sentence of nine months in a Pennsylvania jail, he was again arrested for a post office robbery and sentenced to five years at Leavenworth, whence he was transferred to this institution April 7, 1911.

As has been stated, he commenced to indulge in alcoholics at a very early age and has continued this habit during his lifetime. He states that he had an attack of delirium tremens, during which he received a severe burn on his left arm by jumping out of a window into a bonfire, while trying to escape imaginary persecutors. During the years 1903-04, he was addicted to the steady use of morphine and cocaine. He has led a very loose sexual life; has been infected with gonorrhœa on numerous occasions, and contracted syphilis several years ago. He has never married. He intended to marry once, but the girl, he discovered, was not true to him, so he gave her up. He is a Catholic, attends church occasionally when at liberty, and was in the habit of going to confession while at the Penitentiary.

The medical certificate on his present admission stated that on the night of March 20, 1911, the patient was reported for shouting while in his cell, claiming that invisible enemies were shocking him with electricity. There were no symptoms observable before that. Has delusions of persecution in which invisible enemies are continually shocking him with electricity and other means and are planning to do him other bodily harm.

He complained of not being able to sleep and of being tortured. Said they wired his cell and gave him an electric shock; that he spoke to the President of the United States and was told that the latter would visit him.

On March 22d, complained of being choked by supposed workmen. Later he stated that he had been kidnapped at Erie, Pennsylvania, and expected the President of the United States to get him out in a few days. He requested the doctor to send for a priest, complained that they had failed to send for the President as promised. Said that he had received a severe shock the night before from the people upstairs, and stated that they had stored two thousand volts to turn on him. Following this, he was restless at night and was apprehensive of being burned to death. Finally he wrote a letter to the President in which he complained that his life and health were in grave danger; that he was the victim of a conspiracy, and was being detained illegally at the Penitentiary, stating that when he was walking peaceably along the railroad track, he was kidnapped by enemies who had a design upon his life. He was arrested and while in jail these same officers robbed the post office and later accused him of the crime. They bribed a witness to testify at the trial against him and because of this he received an unjust sentence of five years. He believed that the friends of the chief of police of his home town, Olean, New York, were paying large sums of money to the warden of the Leavenworth Penitentiary in an endeavor to have him electrocuted, and that their efforts had nearly proven successful, as he had been tortured night and day for the past month, in fact he was unable to stand it any longer, and if the President did not come to his relief at once, he intended to take the matter in his own hands and make short work of the warden. He thought he was accused of the murder of the police officer who was killed