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

Case II.—J. H., aged 37. Admitted to the Government Hospital for the Insane, March 8, 1909. Maternal grandfather died suddenly from unknown cause. Was a race-track operator. Father alcoholic. Mother suffered from vertiginous attacks. There were twenty-one children in the family, fifteen of whom died in infancy. One brother died of brain tumor. One sister is neurotic; her eight year old son suffers from congenital heart disease. Patient was born in Manchester, England. He was the twentieth child; mother was over forty years old at the time of his birth. He was an unusually small and puny infant and remembers using crutches when a child. At seven he was bitten by a dog and dragged about on the ground for a great distance; when finally rescued was unconscious for a long time. No further ill-effects. School life was characterized throughout by truancy and disobedience and finally terminated in expulsion. At that early period of life he already showed marked egotism, extreme vindictiveness and an utter disregard for consequences. The immediate cause of his expulsion from school was a fistic encounter with a teacher. At the age of eleven, his family immigrated to this country. He states that he was different from other boys of his age, did not care for the ordinary childhood sports, and the only friends he had were a young sister and a dog. He states that he couldn’t get along somehow with the other boys, that he often thought that the whole world was trying to down him and persecute him. About that time someone stole his dog. He brooded over this so much that he finally jumped into a creek, intending to commit suicide, but was rescued by bystanders. He has made several other attempts at suicide in later life. In describing these he elaborates them with a lot of fanciful trimming, dilates on the importance of the various situations attending them, and how much uproar they caused among those who knew of them. At the age of fourteen he had a quarrel with another boy. Upon being reprimanded by the latter’s father, he could not rest until he had obtained a gun and fired at the boy’s father while the latter was sitting at the supper table with his family. In relating this incident he states with great vanity that he fully intended to kill the boy’s father; he wasn’t going to be insulted by anyone and let it go at that. Here was probably the first well-illustrated instance of his pathologic emotionalism, the tendency to a complete dominance of a certain affect. He was committed to some sort of an industrial school for a year. Upon his release from there he went to work in a machine shop in his native town. One day a couple of gentlemen and a lady walked through the shop and stopped in front of the machine on which he was working. He did not like this, became angered, picked up the dog which followed them and threw it into the oil tank which fed his machine. At sixteen he ran away from home. He gives a history of an industrial career and apparently he had no difficulty in learning a trade, and it is quite likely that he was a skilled workman. His entire industrial career, however, is characterized by an inability to fit harmoniously into the situation at hand, not because of an intellectual deficiency, but because of the disharmony between his various mental faculties. His extreme sensitiveness and emotionalism, his vindictiveness, the total lack of a sense of responsibility, his impulsive existence, all these, were always at play in his relations with man. If to these be added his extreme egotism and vanity, the reasons for his conflicts become clear. “Here, the foreman thought he knew more than I did.” “There, I did not like the way they were running the business,” etc. Among his occupations, saloon-keeping and professional gambling played an important rôle. He finally gave up all attempts at leading an honest existence and turned to crime. Our record of the man in this regard is rather incomplete, but according to his record at the Secret Service Bureau, he was sentenced in 1890 to a two years’ term for highway robbery. In 1902 to three years for counterfeiting; in 1904 to three and a-half, and in 1908 to six years for the same offense. These sentences were incurred under various aliases. He married at a very early age. He says he made up his mind one night to get married and two days later was married. His conjugal life, like everything else he engaged in, proved a failure and was characterized by repeated desertions. He commenced using alcoholics at a very early age and has indulged excessively all his lifetime. He has had several gonorrhœal infections, and has an active luetic infection at the present time. On May 5, 1908, he was sentenced to a six years’ term of imprisonment. Soon after it became necessary to perform an operation for appendicitis, and upon recovering he began to complain of having been cut open and of having had poison put inside of him. The U. S. Government sent men down to the prison who were threatening to kill him. He saw detectives from Washington whom he recognized. He was very apprehensive and refused to submit himself to an examination, and made homicidal attacks upon the officers. On March 8, 1909, he was admitted to this institution. His conduct here was characterized throughout his entire stay by the same attributes of character which were at play throughout his entire antisocial existence. He was at all times very emotional. He was very sensitive, becoming offended on the least provocation, and when laboring under some imaginary grievance his antagonism and vindictiveness knew no bounds. He was constantly plotting and scheming some means of inciting a revolt among the other inmates and took every opportunity to put himself forth as the champion of the other patients. He was very egotistical and vain and showed a marked tendency to interpret most trivial occurrences in his environment as having some reference to him. He was always ready to endow every incident with a personal note of prejudice. He showed throughout marked fluctuations of mood. One never knew what sort of a reception one would meet. He was a pathological liar, was keenly alert to everything that transpired about him and was always ready to utilize every incident to his own advantage. He was depraved to a very marked degree morally. He gave his past history without the least sign of regret and when questioned concerning the reason of his criminal life, he objected strenuously to being called a criminal, insisting that what he did was right. At times he impressed one by his mode of reaction to various daily occurrences as being as naïve as a child and suggestible to a very marked degree. He frequently threatened to commit suicide if refused some of his impossible requests and showed a marked tendency to hypochondriasis and exaggeration of actual ills. On this basis he developed various persecutory ideas, exclusively against those who had anything to do with his care and safe-keeping. The warden at the jail before he came here tried to poison him and took the opportunity of accomplishing this while he (the patient) was undergoing an operation. The Government sent Secret Service men down to watch him and persecute him. Here the physicians are doing the same thing. They are trying to down him, to make his life miserable for him, etc. Throughout his sojourn here he was clearly oriented, knew everything that was going on and failed to show the least indication of the existence of a deteriorating process. He showed also a marked tendency to write a good deal of poetry and fiction in which he spoke of himself as a martyr who had been persecuted and downed all his lifetime. His stories were of a fantastic, adventurous kind, in which gambling, shooting, and similar highly melodramatic situations were enacted. On July 17, 1911, he was returned to prison as recovered. Another point of interest in this case and one to which I have briefly alluded before, was his tendency to the exaggeration of symptoms and to malingering, but the malingering which he manifested was of the kind that the child manifests in an endeavor to attract attention to itself and to arouse the sympathy of those about him.

Here again we have before us a kaleidoscopic picture of the life of a human being who from childhood showed tendencies so antisocial, so criminalistic, that it is hard to get away from the belief that most of the attributes which went to make him just what he is, must have been inherited. Let us take this poorly-begotten organism and follow it through life. We shall see how its existence has been a continuous round of conflicts with everything it came in contact. He entered school and meets with the first obligation, with the first necessity for a well-regulated, purposive existence. What is the result? Truancy, disobedience, and finally expulsion—not because of intellectual deficiency, but because of those same attributes which later served to put him in the penitentiary. It was the first evidence of his pathologic emotionalism and vindictiveness. We next see him in an effort to lead an industrial life, but here, too, everything he does proves a failure, and likewise not because of intellectual deficiency, but because of a disharmony, a disproportion, between his various mental faculties. He could not, somehow, submit himself to any well-regulated existence. His egotism and absolute lack of the sense of responsibility made it impossible for him to adjust himself effectively to the world about him. He next tries matrimony, and the same story reasserts itself. His conjugal life is characterized by repeated desertions; and thus he becomes steadily more debased, more depraved, sinks to the level of the professional gambler and finally even this becomes too strenuous for him, and he turns to a life of crime. At the age of forty we find him with a record of numerous arrests, and as far as known, one-fourth of his lifetime has thus far been spent in jails and penitentiaries. The characterological anomalies at the bottom of his career came to the front already in his childhood days. Before completing his fourteenth year we find him deliberately planning the murder of a human being because of an insult. His idea concerning that situation has not changed in the least since then. He now speaks of it without the least sign of remorse or regret. As a matter of fact, he is inclined to impress one as being rather proud of that deed, and he cannot see the criminality of it. The atavistic nature of his act in throwing the dog into the oil tank is quite evident. Then his attempts at suicide throughout his lifetime, evidence of a pathologic emotionalism, must also be remembered. These are a few examples of his mode of reaction to everyday occurrences in life. Is it at all strange that he has developed finally into the habitual criminal? On the contrary, it would be rather strange that an individual with such attributes should turn out to be an honest, peaceful citizen. He likewise was a prey to all the vices of modern civilization, and