Studies in Forensic Psychiatry by Bernard Glueck (best black authors txt) đź“•
The reader will at once recognize in the above description the well-known Ganser symptom-complex, the several variations of which have been so frequently discussed of late years. Ganser[5] further showed that these cases frequently evidenced vivid auditory and visual hallucinations. At the same time there existed a more or less distinct clouding of consciousness, with the simultaneous presence of hysterical stigma
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Any attempt to bring about this most desirable uniformity of approach to the subject of criminology between the jurist and the physician must be based primarily upon intensive study of the personality of the criminal. Such is the aim of this paper.
IIIn the last analysis malingering is to be looked upon as a special form of lying, and its proper understanding will necessitate a clear insight into lying in general.
Lying, a very natural and generally prevalent phenomenon, may manifest itself in all gradations—from the occasional, quite innocent “white lie” as it occurs in a perfectly normal individual to the pathological lying exhibited in that mental state known as “pseudologia phantastica.” Its proper understanding, however, no matter under what circumstances and to what degree it be manifested, will be possible only through a strict adherence to the theory of absolute psychic determinism.
Lying, like every other psychic phenomenon, never occurs fortuitously, but always has its psychic determinants which determine its type and degree.
Naturally many of these determinants are quite obvious and readily ascertainable. One has only to recall the lying and deceit practiced by children. But many others, if indeed not most of them, are active in the individual’s unconscious motives and accessible objectively as well as subjectively only with great difficulty and by means of special psychological methods.
The degree of participation of unconscious motives in lying will be determined in the individual case by the extent of repression necessitated because of social, ethical, and æsthetic considerations. It is for this reason that lying is most prevalent and exhibited with the least amount of critique in those individuals who either have never developed those restraining tendencies which a normal appreciation of social, ethical, and æsthetic consideration demands, or in whom these restraining influences have been weakened or abolished by some exogenous insult to the nervous system—as, for instance, the tendency to fabrication dependent upon chronic alcoholism or morphinism. A beautiful illustration of the latter type is furnished by General Ivolgin in Dostoieffsky’s “Idiot.”
The child’s tendency to lying and deceit is dependent to a large extent upon the undeveloped state of those restraining forces. To state, however, that this is the sole mechanism underlying the phenomenon of lying would be to state only half a truth. For it is an undeniable fact that, no matter how strongly endowed an individual may be with ethical or moral feelings, still there comes a time when these are entirely forgotten and neglected; when, finding himself in a stressful situation, the instinctive demands for a most satisfactory and least painful adjustment, no matter at what cost, assert themselves. It is then that the lie serves the purpose of a more direct, less tedious gratification of an instinctive demand. The resort to this mode of reaction, to evasion of real issues for the purpose of gratification of instinctive demands, is not characteristic of man alone, but is quite prevalent even in some very low forms of life. We will have more to say about this later. It is an important tool in the struggle for existence among all living beings; it is one of the mechanisms by means of which the weaker inferior being escapes annihilation at the hands of the stronger, superior being.
Malingering, it will be seen later, appears to certain individuals to be the only possible means of escape from and evasion of a stressful and difficult situation of life. The lack of critique which permits such an abortive attempt at adjustment and the inherent weakness and incapacity to meet life’s problems squarely in the face which drives them to resort to such a means of defense are some of the traits of character which serve to distinguish these individuals from what is generally conceived to be normal man.
The extent to which lying and allied behavior depend upon unconscious motives has never been so well illustrated as in recent psychoanalytic literature, especially in a paper by Brill.[1] This author is so thoroughly convinced of the value of conscious lying as an indicator of unconscious strivings and motives that he frequently asks his patients to construct—artificially—dreams which he finds to be of valuable aid in the analysis of the patient’s unconscious. After citing a number of examples Brill states: “These examples suffice to show that these seemingly involuntary constructions have the same significance as real dreams, and that as an instrument for the discovery of hidden complexes they are just as important as the latter. Furthermore, they also demonstrate some of the mechanisms of conscious deception. The first patient deliberately tried to fool me by making up what he thought to be a senseless production, but what he actually did was to produce a distorted wish. He later admitted to me that for days he was on his guard lest I should discover his inverted sexuality, but it never occurred to him that I could discover it in his manner. That his artificial dreams have betrayed him is not so strange when one remembers that no mental production, voluntary or involuntary, can represent anything but a vital part of the person producing it.”
Were this thesis on malingering to succeed in nothing else than in bringing home to our legal brethren this important truth of absolute psychic determinism, that a man is what he is and acts as he does because of everything that has gone before him—because of ontogenetic as well as phylogenetic instinctive motives—it will have fully established its raison d’être. For a realization of this truth would at once annihilate from our minds that deceptive notion of the “freedom of will” upon which our laws are based, and will be certain to bring about a more enlightened solution of the problem of the criminal, all attempts at which, we are constrained to state, have thus far[A] undeniably been huge failures.
[A] Intimate contact with members of the legal profession, both professionally and socially, for some years past has convinced me that the average lawyer still looks upon the ideas concerning crime and the criminal expressed by physicians of a forensic bent as totally unpractical and visionary. It would take only a brief visit to a criminal department of any modern, well-conducted hospital for the insane to convince any fair-minded individual that the physician handles the problem of the criminal not only in a more scientific and rational manner than does one not possessed of this particular training, but also in an eminently more practical manner, even so far as dollars and cents are concerned. I have frequently had patients come under my observation who for a great number of years had been oscillating between penal institutions and hospitals for the insane, in whom each additional sentence did not only fail to bring about the hoped-for reformation, but served to render them more depraved and criminally inclined, and who would have undoubtedly continued this checkered career throughout life, had not their true, unreformable nature been discovered and thus caused their permanent isolation from society, not by the jurist but by the physician. Should reformation ever take place in any of these individuals it is safe to assume that the one who was clear-visioned enough to discover the cause of their antisocial existence would likewise be competent enough to know when this cause has disappeared.
The psychic mechanism of lying is the same both in the occasional and in the pathological liar—in both it is the expression of a wish—but the difference in the personalities of the two is a very decided one. On the one hand we have an individual who closely approaches normal man, while on the other hand one who is closely allied to the mentally diseased. The difference between the pathological liar and the habitual criminal, aside from the moral phase of lying, is perhaps but a very slight one, when we keep in mind that in both instances we are dealing with individuals who habitually resort to a form of reaction in their attempts at adjustment to reality which aims at a direct, simple, and least resistant means for gratification. In both we are dealing with a type of mental organization which is primarily incompetent to face reality in an adequate, socially acceptable manner, and therefore has to resort to constant deceit and lying, and in which those inhibitions determined by social, ethical, and æsthetic considerations are equally impotent. The marked egotistic trend which constantly comes to the surface in the habitual liar when he attempts to play the part of the hero and central figure in the most fantastic, bizarre, and impossible adventures is likewise frequently at the bottom of the escapades of the habitual criminal. The two traits are frequently, though by no means always, concomitant manifestations in the same individual.
When, in 1891, Anton DelbrĂĽck[2] published the first comprehensive study of the pathological liar, he not only succeeded in very accurately delineating a more or less distinct psychopathological entity, but also furnished additional proof in substantiation of the fact, well known in psychiatry but as yet unrecognized by the legal profession, that the transition from mental health to mental disease is not a sudden one; that any dividing line which would have for its purpose the strict separation of the mentally sound from the mentally diseased must of necessity be a purely imaginary one, and one not justified by existing facts.
The transition from absolute mental health to distinct mental disease is never delimited by distinct landmarks, but shows any number of intermediary gradations. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the pathological liar. Here one sees how a psychic phenomenon regularly manifested by perfectly normal individuals may gradually acquire such dimensions and dominate the individual to such an extent as to render him frankly insane.
To endeavor, however, to definitely state where normality leaves off and disease begins would be, to say the least, to attempt something well-nigh impossible. And yet this is just what the jurist constantly demands of the alienist. The law as it is laid down in the statutes, especially in this country, does not permit of any intermediary stages between mental health and mental disease. An individual, according to law, must either be sane or insane. This point seems to me to be of very vital importance, and I shall have occasion to refer to it again in the consideration of our clinical material.
The part played in lying by disturbances of the apprehensive, retentive, and reproductive faculties will not be discussed here in detail. These undeniably have their influence in facilitating the mechanism of lying. But to attribute this phenomenon wholly to disturbances of this nature would be to assign to it a purely passive rĂ´le, whereas experience teaches that back of every lie are active forces, either conscious or unconscious, which give birth to it and determine its type and degree.
The following two cases will illustrate better than any formal description could what is meant by pathological lying, a psychopathological state for which Delbrück proposed the term “Pseudologia phantastica”:
E. W. S., a colored male, aged thirty-two years, was admitted to the Government Hospital for the Insane from Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming, on January 29, 1912, on a
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