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

At puberty two significant changes take place in the psycho-sexuality of the individual. First the primacy of the genital zone asserts itself, and second, the heretofore autoerotic character of the sexual activity is lost and the instinct finds its object. In order that the former change may be successfully brought about, there is necessitated an amalgamation of all instinctive tendencies which proceed from the erogenous zones and a subordination of all the erogenous zones to the primacy of the genital zone. All this is facilitated by the development of the genital organs and the elaboration of the seminal secretion. To these conditions there is also added at puberty that “pleasure of gratification” of sexuality which ends the normal sexual act, the end pleasure. The second function, the choice of a love-object, is influenced by the infantile inclination of the child towards its parents and nurses which is revived at puberty and similarly directed by the incest barriers against these persons which have been erected in the meantime. If on account of pathological heredity and accidental experiences, this amalgamation of the excitations springing from various sources and its application to the sexual object does not occur, then there result the pathological deviations of the sexual instinct, determined in part by earlier processes, such as a preservation of a definite part of the original polymorphous-perverse tendency. The perversions are thus developed from seeds which are present in the undifferentiated tendencies of the child and constitute in adults a condition of arrested development.

Thus we see that the sexual impulse does not suddenly emerge as a new phenomenon at the age of puberty, but that the form assumed at this period is gradually evolved from rudimentary elements present even in the earliest years of life. Sexuality is not absent in the child, it is merely different, being unorganized and imperfectly adapted to its later functions. All this primordial mass of pleasurable activities enumerated above, undergoes profound modifications as the result of growth and education. One part only becomes selected and differentiated so as to form the adult sexual impulse in the narrower sense. A greater part is found to be incompatible with social observance, and is repressed, buried, forgotten. The repressed impulses, however, do not die; it is much harder to kill old desires than is sometimes thought, they continue throughout life to strive toward gratification. This they cannot do directly, and are thus driven to find indirect, symbolic modes of expression. The energy is transformed into these secondary, more permissible forms of activity, and furnishes a great part of the strivings of mankind that lead to social and cultural interests and development in general—sublimation. (Jones.)

I don’t know whether I have succeeded in putting clearly enough the Freudian views of sexuality, limited as I have to be in my expositions of his theories. I do wish, however, to leave the impression which one must gain from two sentiments frequently expressed by various authors, namely, “Man sexualizes the universe,” and “Man is what his sex is.”

Sexuality and Criminality.—A method of psychological analysis which aside from its originally restricted field has already thrown so much light upon various cultural aspects of life, such as art, poetry, religion, folklore, and mythology, cannot fail to furnish some very helpful discoveries for the problem of criminology. As far as pathological stealing is concerned a number of very suggestive studies have already appeared, a review of which Albrecht has prepared for the Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology. The fact that rich, or at least well-to-do, women are sometimes guilty of theft in the big Department stores has always received a certain amount of attention. Studies of this phenomenon have been made by Duboisson, Contemps, Lasegue and Letulle. In each case examined the woman declared that some unknown power had suddenly compelled her to touch some object, and put it in her pocket.

Stekel,[8] a Viennese psychotherapeutist, claims to have repeatedly proved to himself by psychoanalysis that the root of all these cases of kleptomania is ungratified sexual instinct. These women fight against temptation. They are engaged in a constant struggle with their desires. They would like to do what is forbidden, touch something that doesn’t belong to them. We cannot give here the analyses reported in the literature, though I assure you that they carry convincing proof of the tremendous rôle sexuality plays directly or indirectly in the causation of pathological stealing. This is not confined only to thieving connected with fetichism, numerous cases of which have been reported in the literature. But even less radical Freudians than Stekel admit the importance of sexuality in pathological stealing. Thus Healy, who is eminently fit to speak authoritatively on the subject of recidivism, and who is unusually conservative in his statements, has the following to say:—

“The interpretation of the causes of this impulse to steal is of great interest. We have shown in our chapter on mental conflicts how it may be a sort of relief phenomenon for repressed elements in mental life. The repression is found often to center about sex affairs.” Again, “The correlation of the stealing impulse to the menstrual or premenstrual period in woman, leads us to much the same conclusion. Gudden, who seems to have made the most careful studies of the connection between the two phenomena, maintains that practically all cases of shoplifters whom he has examined were, at the time of their offense, in or near their period of menstruation.” Healy does not go beyond this. He is as yet not ready to agree that some sex difficulty is the only conflict back of kleptomania.

With these introductory remarks we will proceed to the discussion of our case. X——, a colored boy aged 23, was admitted to the Government Hospital for the Insane on January 16, 1915, from the District Jail, where he was awaiting trial on two indictments for larceny.

Anamnesis obtained from the patient, his relatives and official sources is to the effect that the patient comes from an unusually refined colored family, his father being a rather prominent colored minister in this city. The patient is one of eight children, all of whom with the exception of the patient have led a normal and fairly successful life. He was born in Washington, D.C., April 17, 1892. Birth and early childhood up to four years of age were normal. At that time he was rather seriously bitten by a large St. Bernard dog, following which he was ill for about two months. He was rather restive under this enforced confinement and one day in attempting to escape from the house he fell from a second story window. His relatives attribute all his difficulties to these two accidents, for it was soon after that his stealing tendencies became manifest. The patient himself can place only approximately the onset of his stealing propensities, stating that he was quite young and that his first theft consisted in stealing ten cents from his father. It was in connection with this theft that he first experienced the sensations to be described later. His school career was irregular owing to the interruptions necessitated by his repeated sojourns at the Reformatory. He entered school at the age of 7 and at 11 was sent to the Reform School for the first time. This step was taken by his father because the patient for some years previously had been frequently placed under arrest on charges of larceny. He showed, according to the statements of his relatives, a decided preference for horses and vehicles of all sorts, which he would utilize for joy riding, although he not infrequently stole objects of which he could make absolutely no use. One time, for instance, he stole a dozen bricks from a neighbor. The Chief Probation Officer of the District of Columbia, who was an official of the Reformatory during the patient’s sojourn there, states in a letter to the hospital the following: “While there he (X) gave very little trouble, except in the way of stealing. He would steal any and every thing he could lay hold of. It mattered not whether the article was of any use to him or not. After stealing an article or articles he would make very little effort to hide it, and when taken to task and charged with having stolen an article he would acknowledge it but would say that he did not know what made him take the article, only that something told him to take it and when this thought came to him he did not have the power to resist it, but felt that he was compelled to take it. At the Training School we looked upon him as a rather peculiar subject. We really never considered him insane except that his desire to steal might be classed in that line.”

It is somewhat difficult to get a coherent and full account of the patient’s delinquencies. His record at the National Training School is as follows: “Rec. on September 4, 1906, sentenced by the D.C. Juvenile Court charged with larceny, escaped August 30, 1907. Returned from elopement September 5, 1907, special parole to father October 23, 1909. Recommitted by D.C. Juvenile Court February 3, 1910, charge larceny. May 2, 1911, escaped from Freedman’s Hospital while left there for treatment after operation. Returned on May 25, 1911, from Baltimore, Md. July 13, 1912, escaped.” During his various sojourns there he was noted to be wilful and unprincipled. Every time he gained his freedom his father attempted to keep him at school, thus he attended night school and Law Department of Howard University for short periods. His father likewise put forth many genuine efforts to reform the boy, plead with him and begged him, supplied him with considerable spending money, but his efforts were as fruitless as the various punishments he underwent. The boy would behave well for a while, but sooner or later he would be arrested for stealing. Patient states that he stole many times when he successfully evaded the police, that he frequently took unusual chances in his escapades, preferred to steal in the daytime and it was this that led him to believe that God had chosen this particular mode of life for him, and that as a result of this conviction he practices the habit of giving one-fourth of his earnings to charity. He had learned from his father that somewhere the Bible teaches to give one-fifth of the earnings to charity, but owing to the manner in which he acquired his possessions he felt that he ought to give more to charity, a rather characteristic mode of rationalization for a man of his type.

Aside from the arrests recorded above he has been arrested in the cities of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, always for stealing, and spent about 19 months in the Pennsylvania Industrial Reform School.

His latest arrest and subsequent admission to the Government Hospital for the Insane was the result of an attempt at housebreaking on August 1, 1914. He states that he entered this house with the full intention of robbing it, that he found considerable jewelry and some $30 in money which he collected on a dresser, when he suddenly began to think of his mother, and the anxiety he would cause her should he be caught in the act, whereupon he left everything on the dresser and left the house. He