Criminal Psychology by Hans Gross (best book recommendations .TXT) 📕

be roused to attention and to more certain and vigorous responses according to the quantity of detail told him.[1] On the other, caution and other considerations warn against telling an unknown witness, whose trustworthiness is not ascertained, delicate and important matters. It is especially difficult if the witness is to be told of presuppositions and combinations, or if he is to be shown how the case would alter with his own answer. The last especially has the effect of suggestion and must occur in particular and in general at those times alone when his statement, [1] Slaughter: The Fluctuations of Attention. Am. Jour. of Psych. XII, 313

(1901).

 

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or some part of it, is apparently of small importance but actually of much. Often this importance can be made clear to the witness only by showing him that the difference in the effect of his testimony is pointed out to him because when he sees it he will find it worth while to exert himself and to consider carefully his answer. Any one of us may remember that a witness who was ready with a prompt, and to him an indifferent reply, started thinking and gave an essentially different answer, even contradictory to his first, when the meaning and the effect of what he might say was made clear to him.

 

How and when the witness is to be told things there is no rule for.

The wise adjustment between saying enough to awaken interest and not too much to cause danger is a very important question of tact. Only one certain device may be recommended—it is better to be careful with a witness during his preliminary examination and to keep back what is known or suspected; thus the attention and interest of the witness may perhaps be stimulated. If, however, it is believed that fuller information may increase and intensify the important factors under examination, the witness is to be recalled later, when it is safe, and his testimony is, under the new conditions of interest, to be corrected and rendered more useful. In this case, too, the key to success lies in increase of effort—but that is true in all departments of law, and the interest of a witness is so important that it is worth the effort.

 

Topic III. PHENOMENOLOGY: STUDY OF THE OUTWARD

EXPRESSION OF MENTAL STATES.

 

Section 10.

 

Phenomenology is in general the science of appearances. In our usage it is the systematic coordination of those outer symptoms occasioned by inner processes, and conversely, the inference from the symptoms to them. Broadly construed, this may be taken as the study of the habits and whole bearing of any individual.

But essentially only those external manifestations can be considered that refer back to definite psychical conditions, so that our phenomenology may be defined as the semiotic of normal psychology.

This science is legally of immense importance, but has not yet assumed the task of showing how unquestionable inferences may be drawn from an uncounted collection of outward appearances to inner processes. In addition, observations are not numerous <p 42>

enough, far from accurate enough, and psychological research not advanced enough. What dangerous mistakes premature use of such things may lead to is evident in the teaching of the Italian positivistic school, which defines itself also as psychopathic semiotic.

But if our phenomenology can only attempt to approximate the establishment of a science of symptoms, it may at least study critically the customary popular inferences from such symptoms and reduce exaggerated theories concerning the value of individual symptoms to a point of explanation and proof. It might seem that our present task is destructive, but it will be an achievement if we can show the way to later development of this science, and to have examined and set aside the useless material already to hand.

 

Section II. (a) General External Conditions.

 

“Every state of consciousness has its physical correlate,” says Helmholtz,[1] and this proposition contains the all in all of our problem.

Every mental event must have its corresponding physical event[2] in some form, and is therefore capable of being sensed, or known to be indicated by some trace. Identical inner states do not, of course, invariably have identical bodily concomitants, neither in all individuals alike, nor in the same individual at different times. Modern methods of generalization so invariably involve danger and incorrectness that one can not be too cautious in this matter. If generalization were permissible, psychical events would have to be at least as clear as physical processes, but that is not admissible for many reasons. First of all, physical concomitants are rarely direct and unmeditated expressions of a psychical instant (e. g., clenching a fist in threatening). Generally they stand in no causal relation, so that explanations drawn from physiological, anatomical, or even atavistic conditions are only approximate and hypothetical. In addition, accidental habits and inheritances exercise an influence which, although it does not alter the expression, has a moulding effect that in the course of time does finally so recast a very natural expression as to make it altogether unintelligible. The phenomena, moreover, are in most cases personal, so that each individual means a new study. Again the phenomena rarely remain constant; e. g.: we call a thing habit,—

 

[1] H. L. Helmholtz: <U:>ber die Weebselwirkungen der Naturkr<a:>fte.

K<o:>nigsberg 1854.

 

[2] A. Lehmann: Die k<o:>rperliche <A:>usserungen psychologischer Zust<a:>nde.

Leipsig Pt. I, 1899. Pt. II, 1901.

 

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we say, “He has the habit of clutching his chin when he is embarrassed,”—

but that such habits change is well known. Furthermore, purely physiological conditions operate in many directions, (such as blushing, trembling, laughter,[1] weeping, stuttering, etc.), and finally, very few men want to show their minds openly to their friends, so that they see no reason for coordinating their symbolic bodily expressions. Nevertheless, they do so, and not since yesterday, but for thousands of years. Hence definite expressions have been transmitted for generations and have at the same time been constantly modified, until to-day they are altogether unrecognizable.

Characteristically, the desire to fool others has also its predetermined limitations, so that it often happens that simple and significant gestures contradict words when the latter are false. E. g., you hear somebody say, “She went down,” but see him point at the same time, not clearly, but visibly, up. Here the speech was false and the gesture true. The speaker had to turn all his attention on what he wanted to say so that the unwatched co-consciousness moved his hand in some degree.

 

A remarkable case of this kind was that of a suspect of child murder. The girl told that she had given birth to the child all alone, had washed it, and then laid it on the bed beside herself.

She had also observed how a corner of the coverlet had fallen on the child’s face, and thought it might interfere with the child’s breathing. But at this point she swooned, was unable to help the child, and it was choked. While sobbing and weeping as she was telling this story, she spread the fingers of her left hand and pressed it on her thigh, as perhaps she might have done, if she had first put something soft, the corner of a coverlet possibly, over the child’s nose and mouth, and then pressed on it. This action was so clearly significant that it inevitably led to the question whether she hadn’t choked the child in that way. She assented, sobbing.

 

Similar is another case in which a man assured us that he lived very peaceably with his neighbor and at the same time clenched his fist. The latter meant illwill toward the neighbor while the words did not.

 

It need not, of course, be urged that the certainty of a belief will be much endangered if too much value is sanguinely set on such and similar gestures, when their observation is not easy. There is enough to do in taking testimony, and enough to observe, to make it difficult to watch gestures too. Then there is danger (because of [1] H. Bergson: Le Rire. Paris 1900.

 

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slight practice) of easily mistaking indifferent or habitual gestures for significant ones; of supposing oneself to have seen more than should have been seen, and of making such observations too noticeable, in which case the witness immediately controls his gestures.

In short, there are difficulties, but once they are surmounted, the effort to do so is not regretted.

 

It is to be recommended here, also, not to begin one’s studies with murder and robbery, but with the simple cases of the daily life, where there is no danger of making far-reaching mistakes, and where observations may be made much more calmly. Gestures are especially powerful habits and almost everybody makes them, mainly *not indifferent ones. It is amusing to observe a man at the telephone, his free hand making the gestures for both. He clenches his fist threateningly, stretches one finger after another into the air if he is counting something, stamps his foot if he is angry, and puts his finger to his head if he does not understand—in that he behaves as he would if his interlocutor were before him. Such deep-rooted tendencies to gesture hardly ever leave us. The movements also occur when we lie; and inasmuch as a man who is lying at the same time has the idea of the truth either directly or subconsciously before him, it is conceivable that this idea exercises much greater influence on gesture than the probably transitory lie. The question, therefore, is one of intensity, for each gesture requires a powerful impulse and the more energetic is the one that succeeds in causing the gesture. According to Herbert Spencer[1] it is a general and important rule that any sensation which exceeds a definite intensity expresses itself ordinarily in activity of the body. This fact is the more important for us inasmuch as we rarely have to deal with light and with not deep-reaching and superficial sensations. In most cases the sensations in question “exceed a certain intensity,”

so that we are able to perceive a bodily expression at least in the form of a gesture.

 

The old English physician, Charles Bell,[2] is of the opinion, in his cautious way, that what is called the external sign of passion is only the accompanying phenomenon of that spontaneous movement required by the structure, or better, by the situation of the body.

Later this was demonstrated by Darwin and his friends to be the indubitable starting point of all gesticulation:—so, for example, [1] H. Spencer: Essays, Scientific, etc. 2d Series [2] Charles Bell: The Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression. London 1806

and 1847.

 

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the defensive action upon hearing something disgusting, the clenching of the fists in anger; or among wild animals, the baring of the teeth, or the bull’s dropping of the head, etc. In the course of time the various forms of action became largely unintelligible and significatory only after long experience. It became, moreover, differently differentiated with each individual, and hence still more difficult to understand. How far this differentiation may go when it has endured generation after generation and is at last crystallized into a set type, is well known; just as by training the muscles of porters, tumblers or fencers develop in each individual, so the muscles develop in those portions of our body most animated by the mind—in our face and hands, especially, have there occurred through the centuries fixed expressions or types of movement. This has led to the observations of common-sense which speak of raw, animal, passionate or modest faces, and of ordinary, nervous, or spiritual hands; but it has also led to the scientific interpretation of these phenomena which afterwards went shipwreck in the form of Lombroso’s “criminal stigmata,”

inasmuch as an overhasty theory has