Studies in Forensic Psychiatry Part 17

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 cla.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 was detected leaving the house, which brought about his arrest. Patient states that such acts on his part were not unusual, that he not infrequently left a robbery incomplete upon thinking of his mother.

On admission to this hospital the patient made a normal impression. He gave a coherent and clear account of his past life, was apparently quite frank and truthful and endeavored to cooperate with the examiner to the best of his ability. He was clearly oriented, free from frank delusions and hallucinations, but said in explanation of his stealing habits that it is the influence of G.o.d that makes him steal, because he has been so successful at it, and because he has always given one-fourth of his income from stealing to charity. (He rationalizes very efficiently in this manner.) He likewise stated that frequently in the night before he commits an offense he dreams of a man leading him and instructing him what to do. He used to think that it was a representative of G.o.d whom he saw in the dream, but since he has had the talk with Dr. H., who told him that it was only the devil who tempts him to do these things, he has changed his mind about it. Special intelligence tests revealed no defect, and his stock of information was commensurate with his educational advantages. He was well informed on current events and readily adapted himself to his new surroundings.

Physical examination showed him to be a fairly well developed colored male, slight acneiform eruption over back, slight asymmetry of head, ears close set to head, lobules attached, palate high arched. There was likewise present a slight depression in right supra-clavicular region, lung over this area slightly impaired. Heart sounds slightly roughened, urine and Wa.s.sermann with blood serum negative.

During his sojourn here his conduct has been exemplary. He worked steadily in Howard Hall workroom and occupied his leisure time in reading and playing musical instruments, two of which he knows how to manipulate fairly well. It is significant that as far as known the patient has not evidenced any tendency to steal since here, although during the first few days of his sojourn here he experienced the sensations which usually accompany his stealing escapades. A carefully kept record of his dreams, in which matter the patient apparently cooperated to the best of his ability, likewise failed to reveal any of the pre-stealing dreams mentioned above.

_a.n.a.lysis._--The suggestive points in the patient's history are the repeated commission of a similar offense, namely, stealing, notwithstanding the frequent punishment received, the stealing when he actually had no necessity for it, being at times when he stole well supplied with money, the stealing of objects for which he had no use and which he could not convert into money, as stated in the Reform School Records, the patient's belief in his destiny as a thief and the methods he employed in atoning for his conduct, such as giving one-fourth to charity, and lastly the peculiar physical and mental sensations which accompanied the act of stealing. The inquiry was conducted along these lines. In the first interview the patient could throw very little light on his difficulties. He stated that he had tried repeatedly to quit stealing, that he realized he was causing his parents a great deal of anxiety on account of his habits, and bringing a good deal of trouble on himself, that he genuinely regretted his past acts and that he believed he could possibly abstain in the future from stealing. Later interviews revealed, as has already been stated, that his first theft was committed upon his father, when he stole ten cents, and it was upon this occasion that he first experienced the peculiar bodily and mental sensations. He describes these in his own words as follows, "I begin to feel giddy and restless and feel as if I have to do something. This feeling becomes gradually more marked until I feel compelled to enter a house and steal.

While stealing I become quite excited, involuntarily, begin to pant, perspire and breathe rapidly as if I had run a race; this increases in intensity and then I feel as if I have to go to the closet and empty my bowels. After it's all over I feel exhausted and relieved." The feeling of exhaustion and relief was in a later interview spontaneously described by him as being like that one experiences after coitus. In the early days of his career he used to go to the closet in response to the a.n.a.l sensations, but he never had to actually evacuate his bowels so that of late he does not do this any more. At first he had those sensations only when stealing from his father, later also when stealing from his mother, and finally he would experience them whenever he stole.

It is of interest to note here his att.i.tude towards his father. In the early stages of the a.n.a.lysis he staunchly maintained that he loved his father very much, that he honored him and felt very sorry for all the troubles he was causing him, but further inquiry revealed positively the fact that he showed a decided preference for his mother, that the latter always took his part when he was punished by his father, that he felt extremely angry at his father on a number of occasions in the past because the latter punished him often, but it was only after the a.n.a.lysis and proper insight on the part of the patient into the following dream that he admitted that he had sometimes wished his father dead. He dreamed on February 4th that his father had died, that he could see his father in a coffin, and his mother, sister and brothers weeping.

"I awoke before I could finish the dream." The first attempts with the patient at a.n.a.lyzing this dream produced quite an upset, a good deal of emotionalism and tears, especially when it was suggested to him that the dream might express a wish. In an interview on February 15th he said that he no longer thought that the above suggestion was such an impossibility, that perhaps there was a good deal of truth in it, although he is certain that consciously he had never entertained such ideas in reference to his father. There was no affective manifestation in connection with this statement.

Another dream which he had the night before the preceding dream is, to my mind an extremely important one, reflecting as it does the patient's real conflicts. He dreamed on February 3rd that two of his brothers came over to visit him. They brought a young girl over that he used to keep company with, and told him that if he would marry they could get him out. He replied that he would never marry any girl, and one of his brothers said, "Then you will never get out of this place." They then quarreled, the brother insisting that he just had to marry, but he still refused. The girl plead with him to marry her, saying that she would do a good deal for him, but he still refused. In parting one of his brothers said to him, "Then go to your ruin, we will never do anything for you again." The patient then awoke perspiring and mad as if he had actually been quarreling. Thus the dream reads "Marry and you'll get out of here, otherwise go to your ruin, we will never do anything for you."

In other words, "Lead a heteros.e.xual life and your troubles will be over, continue as you are now, you'll go to ruin." This argument of the unconscious taken together with the group of sensations which patient always experienced when stealing, and which he spontaneously likens to the sensations of a s.e.xual act, and furthermore the quite evident a.n.a.l erotic fixation, already throw a good deal of light upon the patient's difficulties.

He further dreamed one night that his mother got him a situation with a widowed man. His duties were to take care of and keep in good order the man's three horses. One of these horses was a vicious one, the other two were mild. If one were to think of the three horses as of a phallic symbol the significance of this dream at once becomes apparent. The patient a.s.sociated the vicious horse which always tried to bite him with his father. Here, too, it was the mother which comes to his aid.

A number of other dreams recorded by the patient manifest simple wish fulfillment and are of no especial interest.

In his habits the patient was always of a jolly, sociable disposition, enjoyed fun very much and for many years back he had a keen desire to become a detective. In fact if he had any ambition in life at all it was this. On many occasions in the past he played detective; he would track people on many occasions for hours at a time. What is of marked significance is the fact that on a number of occasions when he did this he experienced similar bodily sensations as he did when stealing. The detective sensations were never as intense as those accompanying stealing and never reached the climax. It was only yesterday that the patient told me spontaneously in the course of an interview that he supposed he never reached the climax in his detective experiences because he has never arrested anyone. Thus we see that along with his antisocial sublimation of his a.n.a.l eroticism, the patient attempted a more useful sublimation. Unfortunately the one depended simply upon his exertions and bravado, while the other required for its fulfillment society's recognition of his desire and some ability for detective work.

I am firmly convinced that these two activities of the patient, namely, stealing and detection of crime, are the results of his endeavor at sublimating a totally inacceptable h.o.m.os.e.xual career. On one occasion, and he claims that it is the only one in his life, a fellow prisoner in the Reformatory attempted a s.e.xual a.s.sault upon him. He retaliated by striking the fellow on the head with a chair, for which he was severely punished. While we may rely quite fully upon the information furnished by the patient and upon that obtained from other sources for the purpose of building up our theory of the case, it will not be amiss to take into consideration those points in the patient's conduct while under observation which further substantiate this theory.

We have it from a reformatory official that while at that inst.i.tution the patient frequently stole articles which were of no value whatever to him, that he did not attempt to conceal his thefts, and that when upbraided for his conduct, he stated that he could not help it, etc. At that inst.i.tution he evidently entirely relied upon his stealing sublimation for his s.e.xual gratification. It may be that as yet he had not become conscious of the possibilities of the detective play.

In this hospital he had desires for stealing on two occasions, soon after his admission, but resisted the temptation. Following the manifestation of our active interest in his case, he became more and more confident in his ability to withstand these temptations, and as far as could be judged manifested a genuine desire to reform. Of course the biologic s.e.x difficulty is still present, its demands are probably just as insistent as ever, and having rejected, for the present at least, the possibility of expression through the stealing channel, he resorts to the only other channel he knows of, detective play. In line with this he handed me one morning (March 30, 1915) a note which stated that some information had come into his possession which he thought would be of very great value to me, and requested a private interview. After cautioning me as to the method of procedure he a.s.sured me that he did this piece of detective work solely because he felt very grateful for our effort to help him out of his troubles. We must note the meticulous manner in which he carried out the entire procedure. For some time past he had been in the habit of handing me each morning a uniformly folded sheet of paper containing the dreams of the previous night. On that morning he had two of these folded sheets in his vest pocket but handed me only the above mentioned note, because he says he feared that I would read only the one containing the dream and miss the other. During the interview which followed as result of the above note, he handed over to me a bunch of pet.i.tions written by a famous litigant in the criminal department, which were to have been delivered by the patient to his relatives with the object of getting them to their final destination.

Aside from the fact that the author of these pet.i.tions is by no means a simpleton, or very credulous, it must have taken a good deal of ingenuity and skill on the part of the patient to gain this fellow's confidence, knowing as I do that the latter has a special grudge against the patient because they are the only two in the Howard Hall Department who enjoy some special privileges in common, such as attending chapel and amus.e.m.e.nts, etc.

This compulsion of attending chapel, as he puts it, with a negro, has been the litigant's chief grievance during the past two months, and he has accordingly expressed himself in some very choice language when speaking of the patient. Nevertheless the patient has succeeded in gaining his full confidence, and the interest and pleasure which the patient manifested in detailing to me his mode of procedure in accomplishing this is really very striking. It was during this interview that he stated, "I suppose the reason I never reached the climax when playing detective is because I have never arrested anyone. This is the work I would like to do, Doctor, I hope some day I'll be able to get a job with some detective agency."

I regret to have to omit many interesting details from the a.n.a.lysis of this case. To me the a.n.a.lysis of this case has been a revelation. For a number of years past I have been intensely interested in the problem of recidivism, and although I have had many opportunities to study the recidivist, and have seen a number of very interesting cases, the histories of a few of whom I have reported several years ago, I have always felt that I had never touched the real specific cause of a life of recidivism in a given individual. Why a man, an apparently intelligent man, and many of them are far from suffering from a purely intellectual defect, should choose a career of crime and in spite of repeated penalties should keep on recurring to it, has always been an unsolved mystery to me. I have been especially perplexed about those cases which repeatedly committed the same crime, and although in some instances an apparently plausible explanation was found in an existing psychosis, or strong psychopathic make-up, these explanations were in many instances unsatisfactory.

Let us see what the repeated commission of theft means to the individual whose history we have just reported. We have seen that his own explanation of that series of physical and mental phenomena which always accompanied the act of stealing were not only very much akin to the physical and mental state which accompanies the act of s.e.xual congress, but were actually recognized as such by the man himself. In other words the motive and instinctive prompting which led this man to the act of stealing were the same which lead normal men to the act of s.e.xual congress. It would be inconceivable without further explanation why this colored boy should repeatedly resort to stealing as a means of s.e.xual gratification in spite of the trials and tribulations which this carried with it, when he had all the opportunities to gratify this desire in a natural heteros.e.xual manner, as others of his race have no difficulty at all in doing.

The answer lies in the type of s.e.xual gratification which his stealing supplied. We have mentioned the a.n.a.l sensations, the feeling as though there was something in the r.e.c.t.u.m of which he had to rid himself, and which for years led him to run to the toilet soon after the commission of a theft. To one versed in the psychology and manifestations of the s.e.x instinct this can only mean one thing, namely, that we are dealing here with a h.o.m.os.e.xual whose erotic receptors were concentrated in the a.n.a.l region, with an a.n.a.l-erotic.

The possibility of a full, happy, satisfied existence for this individual lies in the gratification of this biologic, instinctive, and perverse s.e.x-craving. It is the intense revulsion, the protest of his whole personality against such mode of s.e.x-expression which brought about the habitual stealing in this individual. So soon as he discovered that the emotional accompaniment of the act of stealing served to gratify this biologic s.e.x-craving he clung to it with the tenacity which characterized his life of recidivism. In other words, the process of sublimation of which we spoke took an asocial turn in this individual, with the resultant pathological stealing.

It would lead us far beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the problem of the genesis of h.o.m.o-s.e.xuality, and we shall not attempt it.

The impression which I desire to make is that in this case of pathological stealing we are dealing with a form of asocial behavior which has its roots in a mighty instinctive, biologic craving, which demands gratification at any cost.

Furthermore, because of the nature of this etiologic factor the chances for reformation are very poor, which prognosis has already been justified by the subsequent career of this patient. He is at present again under arrest for grand larceny and housebreaking.

It would be premature to draw any general conclusions from this study, or to promulgate any general principles of treatment. All that the chapter is intended for is to stimulate further interest in criminologists for research along these lines.

REFERENCES

[1] GORING. C.: "The English Convict." His Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1913. pp. 440.

[2] HEALY, W.: "The Individual Delinquent." Little, Brown, & Company, Boston, 1915.

[3] WHITE, W.: "The English Convict." A review in _Journal of Am. Ins.

Crim. Law and Criminology_, vol. v.

[4] WHITE, W.: "The Unconscious." _The Psychoa.n.a.lytic Review_, vol. II, No. 1.

[5] FREUD, W.: "Psychopathology of Everyday Life." English Translation by BRILL. The Macmillan Co., 1914.

[6] HITSCHMANN, E.: "Freud's Theories of the Neuroses." English translation by C. R. PAYNE. Nervous and Mental Dis. Monograph Series, No. 17, 1913.

[7] ELLIS, H.: "s.e.xual Problems." Modern Treatment of Nervous and Mental Diseases. Edited by White and Jelliffe, Lea and Febiger. Philadelphia and New York, 1913.

[8] STEKEL, W.: "The s.e.xual Root of Kleptomania." _Zeitschrift f.

s.e.xualwissenschaft._ George H. Wigand, Leipzig. English Abstract by ALBRECHT, in _Journ. Am. Inst. Crim. Law and Criminology_, vol. 2, p. 239.