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

in entering the Navy. Soon, however, he found out that Navy life was not what he had pictured it to be. It, likewise, was too exacting. He had to live up to prescribed rules, obey orders—things to which he could not reconcile himself, and in consequence failed of a proper adjustment. He knew he could not stand it, he must get out. He must seek something more suitable, something less exacting. In looking for a way out of the situation he availed himself of the first opportunity, stole a suit of clothes with the avowed purpose of being discharged for the offense. Here is the starting point of his criminal career. He did not reflect upon the consequences. He knew he must gratify his desire to get out of the Navy, must do it at any cost, and yielded to temptation. This yielding to temptation, this lack of power of resistance, characterized his entire life. He yielded to every vice that crossed his path; he stole, he drank, he became a morphine habitué, he sniffed cocaine, acquired gonorrhœa and syphilis in his promiscuous sexual trends, and lastly yielded to sexual perversion. After having served his first sentence he was released and again found himself thrown upon his own resources. He had not, as yet, reached the stage of the habitual criminal with the utter disregard for property rights, nor had he reached that nonchalance of the hobo, whose philosophy rests upon the dogma that the world owes him a living, that tomorrow will provide for itself somehow. He began to yearn for the service again. There, at least, he was provided with shelter and food. There, at least, he did not have to worry for the tomorrow. He entered the Army, deserted, re-entered, deserted again, and kept this up until he was dishonorably discharged seven times. He could stand it just so long. His lack of stability, his inability for any continuous purposive effort, made him slip from under the stress. He has less dread for the future now. He was beginning to acquire that naïve philosophy that somehow the world would provide for him. We next hear of him across the ocean. Here his “wanderlust”, his love of adventure, reasserts itself, but somehow he did not fit into existing conditions, and unable, because of his particular organization, because of his disequilibrated mentality, to create for himself a suitable environment, his existence continued to be an unbroken chain of conflicts, of contradictions, and of failure. He finally tried matrimony, but here, too, he soon felt the overwhelming burden of duties and obligations. He was not assisted in sustaining these by any moral sense, by any paternal feelings—and after a more or less continuous struggle to cope with the situation, left wife, situation and all. He realized subjectively that he and his wife were not congenial. As a matter of fact, his entire life has been a continual round of uncongenialities, of inability for a proper concourse with men and things in the world. Throughout his life his ego occupied the center of the stage. It is he that has to be satisfied first. After leaving his wife he resumed his nomadic existence and sometime later married again. But by this time he was a full recidivist, as well as an accomplished hobo. The nomad was no longer able to adjust himself to a communal existence. Besides, it required effort. He was expected to provide and he could not be expected to do anything. Fate was in his favor—his wife died. It must not be forgotten that by this time he had made full use of the kind oversight of the law. He had been arrested innumerable times, he had breathed the atmosphere of the workhouse and partaken of the penitentiary menu. The once unfinished product had been shaped and polished by the machinery of the law and order of our modern civilization so that all dread and fear of punishment had lost its value with him. At last the organism which was originally begotten from decayed stock, which had been tossed and knocked about through its entire existence, and preyed upon by all the vices that modern civilization affords, began to falter and shake. He developed a psychosis. I shall not enter here into an extensive discussion as to the diagnosis of the disorder. The total absence of any indication of progression in this man’s mental disorder, the pliability of the various delusional ideas and hallucinatory experiences, his perfect control over them in the matter of bringing them on and causing their disappearance at will, speaks sufficiently against dementia præcox.

Case IV.—A. W., colored, aged 28. Mother suffers from neuralgia and headaches; one sister died of pulmonary tuberculosis. One brother is now serving a sentence at Moundsville Penitentiary for assault and battery. Another brother has been frequently arrested for various offenses.

Birth and childhood of patient apparently uneventful. During childhood fell from a fence following which he was unconscious for some time. Entered school between the ages of seven and eight, and attended regularly for about two years, when he became unruly and ungovernable—would play truant on frequent occasions, and finally left school before finishing the fourth grade. He worked around home for a little while, and was arrested the first time when eleven or twelve years old, for assault. At fourteen he was again arrested for some minor offense, and shortly afterwards was sentenced to one year in jail. On August 20, 1902, at the age of eighteen was arrested for carrying concealed weapons and discharging them in the street, for which offense he served five months in jail. March 3, 1903, sentenced to serve thirty days for larceny, and on the same date was further charged with disorderly conduct, for which he was given fifteen days in the workhouse. May 1, 1903, he was sentenced to sixty days in jail for petty larceny; July 18, 1903, charged with fornication, but charge was withdrawn. August 31, 1903, sentenced to thirty days in jail for being drunk and disorderly, and committing assault. November 1, 1903, sentenced to fifteen days in the workhouse on a charge of disorderly conduct. November 17, 1903, sentenced to twelve years for assault and highway robbery. He commenced using alcoholics at a very early age, and has indulged heavily since then. He was admitted to the Moundsville Penitentiary, December 13, 1903, where he remained until July 4, 1908, when he was transferred to Leavenworth. His record at the penitentiary is a very bad one, he was frequently punished for various offenses and showed a constant tendency to disobey rules and get into altercations with fellow prisoners. He was in solitary confinement several times, and forfeited almost all of his good time. Frequently became mildly excited, singing, shouting, praying and cursing in the most irrational manner. This state of excitement persisted unremittingly for seventy-two hours on one occasion. He declared that his lungs were rotting with tuberculosis or some other foul disease, and that he was suffocating. He persisted in exposing himself in a nude condition and refused nourishment.

He was admitted to the Government Hospital for the Insane, December 24, 1909.

Physical examination showed him to be a well-developed, healthy negro. Both deep and superficial reflexes exaggerated; ankle clonus both sides; hyperæsthesia of abdomen and face. He stated that two or three months prior to his admission to this Hospital he became suspicious of his food; had a burning in his stomach after eating; believed that his health was failing him; his breath became short; voice weak and lungs rotting. Early in December, 1909, he believed that he had been chloroformed by the prison officials for five days; he was not certain how this was done but believed that it might have been poured through the keyhole. During this period he sang like a graphophone; voices said “move his head”, and his head would move itself. When his eyes were open he saw nothing unusual but when they were shut he could hear them operating a machine on his body; they were pumping his stomach, and he became a skeleton. This was done to him through prejudice; did not know who was prejudiced against him, but at the prison they know all about it. Said he had not slept a wink since his admission to the Hospital; his breath is short; he has pains around his heart, but thinks he is getting better now.

He was a negro of limited mental capacity and possessed very little acquired knowledge. He was clean and tidy in his habits, keenly interested in his environment, and well oriented in all spheres. He lacked insight into the nature of his trouble. Attention could be easily gained and held; he comprehended well and readily, and showed no memory defect. There was a very marked tendency to hypochondriasis and exaggeration of actual ills. Soon after admission the active symptoms of his disorder disappeared, and he gradually acquired an adequate amount of insight, realizing that he had been insane. His conduct, at first orderly, now assumed the same character as that at prison. He frequently became involved in altercations with other patients and on several occasions manifested decidedly vicious tendencies. He was almost absolutely unamenable to the Hospital regulations and on that account had to be frequently reprimanded. He incited the other patients in his ward to all sorts of misdemeanors, and when not having any complaints himself, would fight the other patients’ battles. He remained clearly oriented throughout. He was decidedly deficient morally—could not see where his life had been an unsocial one, and did not even promise to lead a better one in the future.

Here, again, we see disease and crime rampant in the family history of a man who himself began to manifest criminal tendencies at a very early age. His school career is characterized by truancy, and he never made an effort at an industrial career. At the age of eleven or twelve, we already find him arrested for an offense against the person, and before having reached his twentieth year he has received a penitentiary sentence of twelve years. His psychosis is unquestionably one belonging to that large group developing on a degenerative basis, the same soil which is at the bottom of his criminal career. What his future life is going to be may readily be surmised; he has not yet reached his thirtieth year—and by turning him loose at the expiration of his present sentence, society adds only another parasitic and infective organism to gnaw at its roots. It would be indeed ridiculous to expect the boy who at the age of nineteen was placed in the environment of a penitentiary—the hot-bed of crime—to be turned out a better man after having spent twelve years there. Something over two years has elapsed since the original publication of this paper and I am able to furnish some additional data concerning this case.

Upon the expiration of his sentence we were obliged to discharge the patient because he showed no symptoms of mental disease, and in consequence we had no authority for holding him in a hospital for the insane. He was discharged in March, 1912. In October of the same year he was again arrested, charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and received a seven-year penitentiary sentence.

There can be very little doubt as to what his future career will be following this second penitentiary sentence.

Case V.—W. A., white male, aged 36 on admission to the Government Hospital for the Insane, January 18, 1911. Father was an alcoholic; mother neurotic, one sister insane, one uncle suicide. Mother enjoyed good health during her pregnancy with the patient, but birth was an extremely difficult one.

Patient learned to talk and walk at the age of five, when he was severely scalded which necessitated his confinement to bed for a long time. Entered school at the age of seven and attended for about eight years,