Part 40

In these cases it is usual for the so-called secondary personality to assert itself at moments of intense excitement, especially if they have been preceded by days of worry and fatigue and nights of disturbed rest. The secondary personality is not a complete personality, but is a manifestation of the original ego with the memory for past events as a tabula rasa. It is well known that the memory is one of the intellectual faculties most dependent on physical conditions. It is the lowest in the scale of mental qualities and is shared to a very large degree by the animals. Injuries to the head not infrequently produce lacunae in the memory. These lacunae often have very striking limitations. It is not an unusual thing to find that old people remember events of their very early childhood better than things that have happened within a few years. Still more interesting is the fact that languages learned in youth may continue to be easily used, when those that were learned later in life, though perhaps known better than the previously studied languages, are forgotten.

It has often been noted that people who suffer from apoplexy may have peculiar affections of their memory. This may include such striking peculiarities as the forgetting of the uses of things, though their names are retained, or more commonly, the forgetting of names while the knowledge of uses remains. The one form of memory disturbance is called "Word Amnesia;" the other is called "Apraxia." It is on {264} record that a person suffering from a hemorrhage in the brain has lost completely the use of a language acquired later in life, though the memory of the native language, long since fallen into disuse, was perfectly retained. One apoplectic woman patient who had left Germany before she was ten years of age, and who had lived in America until she was fifty, forgot absolutely the English she knew so well and had to set herself to work to learn it over again, though her German came back to her very naturally. These are wonderful peculiarities of memory-pathology that show how much this faculty is dependent on the physical basis of mind and upon the cellular constituents of the brain.

It is not surprising, then, to find that lapses of memory may occur and that, as a consequence, so many of the facts that ordinarily enable us to identify ourselves as particular persons may be in abeyance. That apparently a secondary personality asserts itself,--though not in the sense that there is ever another ego present, another mind or another will,--practically all experts in psychology and nervous diseases are now ready to concede. There are, however, involved in this question a number of important problems of responsibility that have not as yet been entirely worked out, and with regard to which prudent persons are withholding their judgment. Each case must be studied entirely on its own merits, with a leaning in favour of the criminal or patient, in case there are evidences in past life of serious disturbances of mentality, though only of very temporary nature, or if there is a strong nervous or mental heredity.

The notion of the possibility of a secondary personality asserting itself is a much older idea than it is usually thought to be. When Stevenson wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the immediate widespread popularity of the book was not due to recent psychological studies on dual personality and popular interest in a rare but striking mental phenomenon, but rather to the traditional feeling, long existent, of the possibility of two personalities in almost any individual. The other law in his members, of which St. Paul speaks, is an expression of this feeling, and its recognition was not original with him since it is after all a phenomenon at least as old {265} as the existence of conscience. It is one of the basic ideas in religious feeling. Nearly everyone has something of the consciousness that there is in him possibilities for evil that somehow he escapes, and yet the escape is not entirely due to his own will power. There is here the mystery of temptation, of free will and of grace as the drama of conscience works itself out in every human being. At times the evil inclination seems to get beyond the power of the will and a period of irresponsibility sets in. Needless to say, the adjudication of how much may be due to the habitual neglect of repression of lower instincts is extremely difficult, and this constitutes the problem which the alienist must try to solve. In the meantime there is need in many mysterious cases where secondary personality may play a role, of the exercise of a larger Christian charity than that hitherto practised. Pretenders may succeed in deceiving only too often, but in the past not a few innocent individuals have been held to a responsibility for actions for which they were not quite accountable.

JAMES J. WALSH.

{266}

XXIV

IMPULSE AND RESPONSIBILITY

Not unlike that condition which develops as the result of so-called psychic epilepsy, in which patients perform apparently voluntary acts, while the mind is really clouded by an epileptic attack, are those states in which, as the result of a more or less blind impulse, acts are performed for which the responsibility of the individual is at least dubious. Modern experts in nervous and mental diseases have sometimes spoken of these states as obsessions. This term is adopted from the older writers on mysticism who used it to designate states of mind in which an individual was under the influence of some spirit, though his intellectual and volitional state was not as completely under the subjection of this spirit as in the condition of possession.

It seems clear to the modern student of these obscure conditions that the old mystics and the modern alienists practically talk about the same state of affairs when using this term. As the result of obsession, mystical writers would have conceded that responsibility is not quite complete, though it is not entirely done away with. The modern alienist is just as sure of the diminution of responsibility, though he considers it due to the fact that for some physical reason the will is not able to act or prevent action as it is under normal conditions. The will is sometimes spoken of by certain of these modern psychologists as mainly an inhibitory faculty, that is, a faculty which prevents certain reflex acts from taking place, though permitting one set of reflexes to have its way. Under the influence of an obsession or, as the French call it, une idee obsedante, this inhibition is not {267} exercised and as a result an action is accomplished which the agent may very shortly afterwards regret exceedingly.

There is no doubt that impulsions or impulsive ideas may push an individual into the performance of an action which his reason condemns. Uncontrollable anger is a well recognised example of this. Impulses of other kinds may exercise just as tyrannic a sway, though it is harder to recognise the elements that make up the mental condition in other cases. Of course it may well be said that man must control his impulses. It is, however, just such impulses as can not be controlled that lessen responsibility and sometimes seem entirely to destroy it. It would, without doubt, be very easy to advance the uncontrollable impulse as an excuse for many criminal actions. In fact, the discussion of responsibility and its limitation by impulse would seem to be open to so many abuses as to make it advisable, in the present indefinite state of our knowledge, to put the subject aside entirely. The argument, however, from the abuse of the thing, does not hold, and an effort must be made to get at the truth concerning certain mental conditions which modify responsibility.

It is generally conceded that no two men are free in quite the same way with regard to the actions which they may or may not perform. Allurements that are almost compelling for some individuals, for others have no influence at all. Some men are so under the influence of anger that irritation may easily lead them to the commission of acts for which they will be subsequently supremely sorry. This may even be the case to such an extent as to endanger their lives, yet they are not able to control themselves. Many men suffering from degeneration of the arteries of the heart have been warned, like John Hunter more than a century ago, of the extreme danger of a fit of anger, yet, like John Hunter, have succumbed to bursts of anger, notwithstanding the warning, because someone irritated them beyond their rather limited powers of endurance.

It is extremely difficult ever to come to any proper appreciation of the responsibility of a given individual from a {268} single act. Preceding acts, however, may very well give evidence of the state of mind and the tendencies to disequilibrium which may make an apparently normal individual irresponsible under trying circumstances. The only way to render this clear is to illustrate such conditions by a concrete case.

Not many years ago one of the large cities of this country was shocked, for one twenty-four hours at least, by the news that a business man had shot his partners and himself, while at a consultation in which the affairs of the partnership were being settled up, after legal dissolution had taken place. The man in question had paid some debts of the firm with his own personal checks, and without taking proper legal recognisance for the moneys paid. When the partnership had been dissolved his partners insisted that instead of obtaining credit for these payments he should, on the contrary, pay his share of these debts once more as a partner. The state of the evidence was such that his lawyers told him it would be useless to take the case before the court at all; there was nothing to do but pay the unjust demands. He went to the meeting of his partners with a certified check for the amount of their claims in his pocket. As he took out his pocket-book to pass it over to them he seems to have realised very poignantly the fact that he was paying money that he knew he did not owe, and that his partners knew he did not owe, and that they were evidently taking advantage of a legal quibble in order to cheat him. Evidently it was an extremely trying situation. It was too much for his mental balance and he took a revolver from his pocket, shot both his partners dead, and then shot himself.

Taken by itself it is extremely difficult to say anything about the responsibility of a man who commits an act like this. In ordinary life he was known as a clever business man; to his friends he was known to be rather irascible and impatient, but a fairly good fellow. He was known to have what is called an awful temper; he had, however, never committed any violent act before. It is possible, of course, that a man should give way to a fit of anger for the beginning of which he is responsible, and then do violence {269} much greater than he would justify himself for in calmer moments.

There was another occurrence in the man's life that seemed to throw informing light on his mental condition. When he first came to live in the large city in which he died he began paying attention to a young woman, and the young woman was informed by a friend that he probably had a wife living. The young woman investigated this by putting the question directly to him. He denied it at once, wanted to know the name of her informant, and finally laughed the whole matter out of her mind. Within a week after his marriage to her, while on their wedding tour, he was arrested, charged with bigamy at the instance of his first wife, and it became evident at once that the charge was well substantiated.

Here is a man, then, who twice at least in life, when put in the presence of trying conditions, goes on to do the irretrievable, though the act is eminently irrational.

With regard to the murder and suicide it is said that he had talked to friends of shooting the scoundrels who were cheating him, but had been persuaded of the utter foolishness of any such idea. He had apparently given it up entirely. Notwithstanding this, he went to the last conference with his former partners with a loaded revolver, as well as the certified check for the amount of their claim. In the case of his bigamous marriage, notwithstanding the warning that his second fiancee's questions must have been, he followed out his preconceived idea of marrying her, though he must have realised in saner moments that discovery of his double dealing was inevitable. In a word, he was a man who, becoming dominated by an idea, an obsession it may be called, to do something, could not get away from the sphere of its influence even though it might be made very clear to him it was eminently irrational to follow out the idea.

There are many such individuals, and only the knowledge of their previous career enables us to desume the responsibility for their acts under trying conditions. That they are not responsible in the ordinary sense in which the logical, timorous mortal is who is at once repelled from such modes {270} of action seems very clear. Their lack of responsibility is manifest, at least to a degree that makes it easy for charity to find excuses for their crimes because of fatal flaws of character, the result of physical defects and faulty training, which make themselves felt especially at the moments that try men's souls.

JAMES J. WALSH.

{271}

XXV

CRIMINOLOGY AND THE HABITUAL CRIMINAL

In recent years no little attention has been devoted to the subject of criminology, and a supposed science of the criminal has been evolved. It has been the claim of a very well known Italian school of mental diseases, whose leader is Professor Lombroso of Turin, that there is a criminal type in humanity, that is, that there is a generic human organisation not difficult of differentiation, at least as a class, the members of which almost necessarily develop criminal proclivities. Even when criminality has not actually occurred, this is thought to be but an accident, and criminal acts may be looked for at any time from these individuals. Lombroso's claims in this matter have met with decided opposition in every country of Europe and also here in America. This opposition has come especially from serious students of abnormal types who have devoted much time to the study of criminals and other supposedly degenerate individuals. Magnan, the very well and widely known French authority on insane peculiarities, especially the so-called criminal monomaniacs, and whose opportunities for careful investigation of such cases in the Asile St. Anne in Paris have been very extensive, utterly rejects the idea of a special physical conformation as characteristic of the criminal.

He is not the only one of the distinguished authorities in mental diseases who is in opposition to Lombroso in this matter. Dr. Emile Laurent, the eminent criminologist of Paris, has shown that the same anomalies which are supposed to characterise criminals are to be found among those who have never committed any criminal act, and that these supposed signs of degeneracy are not sufficient to indicate even {272} that there are criminal tendencies. Manouvrier, the distinguished anthropological authority of the University of Paris, does not hesitate to advance the opinion that he can not find any distinctive difference between criminals and normal men in the extensive studies of the comparative anatomy of the two classes. He admits, however, that environment sometimes leads to the formation of habits which modify the anatomy in certain ways, and that of course traces of hard work, as well as of poor living, can be found in the anatomical conformation of many habitual criminals.

Dr. von Holder, a distinguished German authority on the subject, says that it is impossible to draw any conclusion from cranial asymmetries as to psychical characteristics, and that physical signs of degeneration indicate nothing further than the possible presence of a tendency to psychic degeneration. Dr. Wines, quoted by Draehms in his book on The Criminal, a Scientific Study, says that in a strictly scientific sense, the existence of an anthropological criminal type has not been proved, and it is doubtful whether it ever can be proved. Dr. Arthur McDonald, the well known American specialist in criminology and degeneracy, some of whose work in connection with the National Bureau of Education at Washington has attracted widespread attention, says, in his Abnormal Man: "The study of the criminal can also be the study of a normal man, for most criminals are so by occasion or accident, and differ in no essential respect from other men. Most human beings who are abnormal or defective in any way are much more like than unlike normal individuals."

How much the subject of criminology has been overdone because of the morbid popularity of the idea that many persons are, as it were, forced by their natures into the commission of crime, can best be appreciated from some recent publications with regard to left-handed individuals. A number of supposed observers, much more anxious, evidently, to make out a case for a pet preconceived theory, than to make observations that would add to the present store of truth, have rushed into print. As a result, left-handed persons have been said to be criminals much more commonly than {273} those who habitually use their right hand, and have also been said to be defective in other ways. They were spoken of as weaklings, degenerates, and the like. Statistics even were quoted to show a much larger proportion of criminals than might be expected, according to the normal percentage, between right-handed and left-handed people, among those who use their left hand by preference. As a matter of fact, left-handed people are far from being the weaklings or degenerates they are thus proclaimed; but on the contrary are often magnificent athletes and excellent specimens of normal development. Left-handedness is due to right-brainedness and this is an accident dependent on a diversion of blood supply in an increased amount to this side of the brain in early embryonic life. This question of the criminal and the left-handed individual and their mutual relations is only a good example, then, of how far over zealous advocates of a theory have been led astray in their attempts to bolster it up.

Draehms, whose opinion on the supposed born criminal is worth while quoting, as it is founded on his personal experiences and observations while a resident chaplain of the state prison at San Quentin, California, says: