Criminal Psychology; a manual for judges, practitioners, and students Part 6

When anger does not lead to rage against oneself, the next lower stage is laughter.[2] With regard to this point, Darwin calls attention to the fact that laughter often conceals other mental conditions than those it essentially stands for-anger, rage, pain, perplexity, modesty and shame; when it conceals anger it is anger against oneself, a form of scorn. This same wooden, dry laughter is significant, and when it arises from the perception that the accused no longer sees his way out, it is not easily to be confused with another form of laughter. One gets the impression that the laugher is trying to tell himself, "That is what you get for being bad and foolis.h.!.+"

Section 16. (3) Cruelty.

Under this caption must be placed certain conditions that may under given circ.u.mstances be important. Although apparently without any relations to each other they have the common property of being external manifestations of mental processes.

[1] K. von Reichenbach: Der sensitive Mensch. Cotta 1854.

[2] e. f. H. Bergson: Le Rire. Paris 1900.

In many cases they are explanations which may arise from the observation of the mutative relations between cruelty, bloodthirstiness, and sensuality. With regard to this older authors like Mitch.e.l.l,[1] Blumroder,[2] Friedreich,[3] have brought examples which are still of no little worth. They speak of cases in which many people, not alone men, use the irritation developed by greater or lesser cruelty for s.e.xual purposes: the torturing of animals, biting, pinching, choking the partner, etc. Nowadays this is called sadism.[4] Certain girls narrate their fear of some of their visitors who make them suffer unendurably, especially at the point of extreme pa.s.sion, by biting, pressing, and choking. This fact may have some value in criminology. On the one hand, certain crimes can be explained only by means of s.e.xual cruelty, and on the other, knowledge of his habits with this regard may, again, help toward the conviction of a criminal. I recall only the case of Ballogh-Steiner in Vienna, a case in which a prost.i.tute was stifled. The police were at that time hunting a man who was known in the quarter as "chicken-man," because he would always bring with him two fowls which he would choke during the o.r.g.a.s.m. It was rightly inferred that a man who did that sort of thing was capable under similar circ.u.mstances of killing a human being. Therefore it will be well, in the examination of a person accused of a cruel crime, not to neglect the question of his s.e.xual habits; or better still, to be sure to inquire particularly whether the whole situation of the crime was not s.e.xual in nature.[5]

In this connection, deeds that lead to cruelty and murder often involve forms of epilepsy. It ought therefore always to be a practice to consult a physician concerning the accused, for cruelty, l.u.s.t, and psychic disorders are often enough closely related. About this matter Lombroso is famous for the wealth of material he presents.

Section 17. (4) Nostalgia.

The question of home-sickness is of essential significance and must not be undervalued. It has been much studied and the notion has been reached that children mainly (in particular during the period of p.u.b.erty), and idiotic and weak persons, suffer much from home-sickness, and try to combat the oppressive feeling of dejection

[1] Mitch.e.l.l: ber die Mitleidenschaft der Geschlechtsteile mit dem Kopfe. Vienna 1804.

[2] Blumrder: ber das Irresein. Leipzig 1836.

[3] J. B. Friedreich: Gerichtliche Psychologie. Regensburg 1832.

[4] Cf. N

[5] Schrenck-Notzing: Ztschrft. f. Hypnotismus, VII, 121; VIII, 40, 275; IX, 98.

with powerful sense stimuli. Hence they are easily led to crime, especially to arson. It is a.s.serted that uneducated people in lonesome, very isolated regions, such as mountain tops, great moors, coast country, are particularly subject to nostalgia. This seems to be true and is explained by the fact that educated people easily find diversion from their sad thoughts and in some degree take a piece of home with them in their more or less international culture. In the same way it is conceivable that inhabitants of a region not particularly individualized do not so easily notice differences. Especially he who pa.s.ses from one city to another readily finds himself, but mountain and plain contain so much that is contrary that the feeling of strangeness is overmastering. So then, if the home-sick person is able, he tries to destroy his nostalgia through the noisiest and most exciting pleasures; if he is not, he sets fire to a house or in case of need, kills somebody-in short what he needs is explosive relief. Such events are so numerous that they ought to have considerable attention. Nostalgia should be kept in mind where no proper motive for violence is to be found and where the suspect is a person with the above-mentioned qualities. Then again, if one discovers that the suspect is really suffering from home-sickness, from great home-sickness for his local relations, one has a point from which the criminal may be reached. As a rule such very pitiful individuals are so less likely to deny their crime in the degree in which they feel unhappy that their sorrow is not perceivably increased through arrest. Besides that, the legal procedure to which they are subjected is a not undesired, new and powerful stimulus to them.

When such nostalgiacs confess their deed they never, so far as I know, confess its motive. Apparently they do not know the motive and hence cannot explain the deed. As a rule one hears, "I don't know why, I had to do it." Just where this begins to be abnormal, must be decided by the physician, who must always be consulted when nostalgia is the ground for a crime. Of course it is not impossible that a criminal in order to excite pity should explain his crime as the result of unconquerable home-sickness-but that must always be untrue because, as we have shown, anybody who acts out of home-sickness, does not know it and can not tell it.

Section 18. (5) Reflex Movements.

Reflex actions are also of greater significance than as a rule they are supposed to be. According to Lotze,[1] "reflex actions are not

[1] Lotze: Medizinisehe Psychologie. Leipzig 1852.

limited to habitual and insignificant affairs of the daily life. Even compounded series of actions which enclose the content even of a crime may come to actuality in this way ... in a single moment in which the sufficient opposition of some other emotional condition, the enduring intensity of emotion directed against an obstacle, or the clearness of a moving series of ideas is lacking. The deed may emerge from the image of itself without being caused or accompanied by any resolve of the doer. Hearings of criminals are full of statements which point to such a realization of their crimes, and these are often considered self-exculpating inventions, inasmuch as people fear from their truth a disturbance or upsetting of the notions concerning adjudication and actionability. The mere recognition of that psychological fact alters the conventional judgment but little; the failure in these cases consists in not having prevented that automatic transition of images into actions, a transition essentially natural to our organism which ought, however, like so many other things, to be subjected to power of the will." Reflex movements require closer study.[1] The most numerous and generally known are: dropping the eyelids, coughing, sneezing, swallowing, all involuntary actions against approaching or falling bodies; then again the patellar reflex and the kremaster reflex, etc. Other movements of the same kind were once known and so often practiced that they became involuntary.[2] Hence, for example, the foolish question how a person believed to be disguised can be recognized as man or woman. The well known answer is: let some small object fall on his lap; the woman will spread her limbs apart because she is accustomed to wear a dress in which she catches the object; the man will bring his limbs together because he wears trousers and is able to catch the object only in this way. There are so many such habitual actions that it is difficult to say where actual reflexes end and habits begin. They will be properly distinguished when the first are understood as single detached movements and the last as a continuous, perhaps even unconscious and long-enduring action. When I, for example, while working, take a cigar, cut off the end, light it, smoke, and later am absolutely unaware that I have done this, what has occurred is certainly not a reflex but a habitual action. The latter does not belong to this cla.s.s in which are to be grouped only such as practically bear a defensive character. As examples of how such movements may have criminological significance only one's own

[1] Berz in Gross's Archiv, I, 93.

[2] E. Schultze. Zeitschrift fr Philosophie u. P

experience may be cited because it is so difficult to put oneself at the point of view of another. I want to consider two such examples. One evening I pa.s.sed through an unfrequented street and came upon an inn just at the moment that an intoxicated fellow was thrown out, and directly upon me. At the very instant I hit the poor fellow a hard blow on the ear. I regretted the deed immediately, the more so as the a.s.saulted man bemoaned his misfortune, "inside they throw him out, outside they box his ears." Suppose that I had at that time burst the man's ear-drum or otherwise damaged him heavily. It would have been a criminal matter and I doubt whether anybody would have believed that it was a "reflex action," though I was then, as to-day, convinced that the action was reflex. I didn't in the least know what was going to happen to me and what I should do. I simply noticed that something unfriendly was approaching and I met it with a defensive action in the form of an uppercut on the ear. What properly occurred I knew only when I heard the blow and felt the concussion of my hand. Something similar happened to me when I was a student. I had gone into the country hunting before dawn, when some one hundred paces from the house, right opposite me a great ball rolled down a narrow way. Without knowing what it was or why I did it I hit at the ball heavily with an alpenstock I carried in my hand, and the thing emerged as two fighting tomcats with teeth fixed in each other. One of them was my beloved possession, so that I keenly regretted the deed, but even here I had not acted consciously; I had simply smashed away because something unknown was approaching me. If I had then done the greatest damage I could not have been held responsible- *if my explanation were allowed; but *that it would have been allowed I do not believe in this case, either.

A closer examination of reflex action requires consideration of certain properties, which in themselves cannot easily have criminal significance, but which tend to make that significance clearer. One is the circ.u.mstance that there are reflexes which work while you sleep. That we do not excrete during sleep depends on the fact that the faeces pressing in the large intestine generates a reflexive action of the constrictors of the r.e.c.t.u.m. They can be brought to relax only through especially powerful pressure or through the voluntary relaxation of one's own constrictors.

The second suggestive circ.u.mstance is the fact that even habitual reflexes may under certain conditions, especially when a particularly weighty different impression comes at the same time, *not

take place. It is a reflex, for example, to withdraw the hand when it feels pain, in spite of the fact that one is so absorbed with another matter as to be unaware of the whole process; but if interest in this other matter is so sufficiently fixed as to make one forget, as the saying goes, the whole outer world, the outer impression of pain must have been very intense in order to awaken its proper reflex. The attention may, however, not be disturbed at all and yet the reflex may fail. If we suppose that a reflex action is one brought about through the excitement of an afferent sensory nerve which receives the stimulation and brings it to the center from which the excitement is transferred to the motor series (Landois[1]), we exclude the activity of the brain. But this exclusion deals only with conscious activity and the direct transition through the reflex center can happen successfully only because the brain has been consciously at work innumerable times, so that it is coperating in the later cases also without our knowing it. When, however, the brain is brought into play through some other particularly intense stimuli, it is unable to contribute that unconscious coperation and hence the reflex action is not performed. On this point I have, I believe, an instructive and evidential example. One of my maids opened a match-box pasted with paper at the corner by tearing the paper along the length of the box with her thumb-nail. Apparently the box was over-filled or the action was too rapidly made, for the matches flamed up explosively and the whole box was set on fire. What was notable was the fact that the girl threw the box away neither consciously nor instinctively; she shrieked with fright and kept the box in her hand. At her cry my son rushed in from *another room, and only after he had shouted as loudly as possible, "Throw it away, drop it," did she do so. She had kept the burning thing in her hand long enough to permit my son to pa.s.s from one room into another, and her wound was so serious that it needed medical treatment for weeks. When asked why she kept the burning box in her hand in spite of really very terrible pain she simply declared that "she didn't think of it," though she added that when she was told to throw the thing away it just occurred to her that that would be the wisest of all things to do. What happened then was obviously this: fear and pain so completely absorbed the activity of the brain that it was not only impossible for it consciously to do the right thing, it was even unable to a.s.sist in the unconscious execution of the reflex.

[1] L. Landois: Lehrbuch der Physiologie des Mensehen. Vienna 1892.

This fact suggests that the sole activity of the spinal cord does not suffice for reflexes, since if it did, those would occur even when the brain is otherwise profoundly engaged. As they do not so occur the brain also must be in play. Now this distinction is not indifferent for us; for if we hold that the brain acts during reflexes we have to grant the possibility of degrees in its action. Thus where brain activity is in question, the problem of responsibility also arises, and we must hold that wherever a reflex may be accepted as the cause of a crime the subject of the degree of punishment must be taken exceptionally into account. It is further to be noted that as a matter of official consideration the problem of the presence of reflexes ought to be studied, since it rarely occurs that a man says, "It was purely a reflex action." He says, perhaps, "I don't know how it happened," or, "I couldn't do otherwise," or he denies the whole event because he really was not aware how it happened. That the questions are here difficult, both with regard to the taking of evidence, and with regard to the judgment of guilt, is obvious,- and it is therefore indifferent whether we speak of deficiency in inhibition-centers or of ill-will[1] and malice.

Section 19. (6) Dress.

It is easy to write a book on the significance of a man's clothes as the expression of his inner state. It is said that the character of a woman is to be known from her shoe, but actually the matter reaches far beyond the shoe, to every bit of clothing, whether of one s.e.x or the other. The penologist has more opportunity than any one else to observe how people dress, to take notes concerning the wearer, and finally to correct his impressions by means of the examination. In this matter one may lay down certain axioms. If we see a man whose coat is so patched that the original material is no longer visible but the coat nowhere shows a hole; if his s.h.i.+rt is made of the very coa.r.s.est and equally patched material but is clean; and if his shoes are very bad but are whole and well polished, we should consider him and his wife as honest people, without ever making an error. We certainly see very little wisdom in our modern painfully attired "sports," we suspect the suggestively dressed woman of some little disloyalty to her husband, and we certainly expect no low inclinations from the lady dressed with intelligent, simple respectability. If a man's general appearance is correct it

[1] Cf. H. Gross's Archiv, II, 140; III, 350; VII, 155; VIII, 198.

indicates refinement and attention to particular things. Anybody who considers this question finds daily new information and new and reliable inferences. Anyway, everybody has a different viewpoint in this matter, a single specific detail being convincing to one, to another only when taken in connection with something else, and to a third when connected with still a third phenomenon. It may be objected that at least detailed and prolonged observations are necessary before inferences should be drawn from the way of dressing, inasmuch as a pa.s.sing inclination, economic conditions, etc., may exert no little influence by compelling an individual to a specific choice in dress. Such influence is not particularly deep. A person subject to a particular inclination may be sufficiently self-exhibiting under given circ.u.mstances, and that he was compelled by his situation to dress in one way rather than another is equally self-evident. Has anybody seen an honest farm hand wearing a worn-out evening coat? He may wear a most threadbare, out-worn sheep-skin, but a dress-coat he certainly would not buy, even if he could get it cheap, nor would he take it as a gift. He leaves such clothes to others whose shabby elegance shows at a glance what they are. Consider how characteristic are the clothes of discharged soldiers, of hunters, of officials, etc. Who fails to recognize the dress of a real clerical, of democrats, of conservative-aristocrats? Their dress is everywhere as well defined as the clothing of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and Americans, formed not by climatic conditions but by national character in a specific and quite unalterable way. Conceit, carelessness, cleanliness, greasiness, anxiety, indifference, respectability, the desire to attract attention and to be original, all these and innumerable similar and related qualities express themselves nowhere so powerfully and indubitably as in the way people wear their clothes. And not all the clothes together; many a time a single item of dress betrays a character.

Section 20. (7) Physiognomy and Related Subjects.

The science of physiognomy belongs to those disciplines which show a decided variability in their value. In cla.s.sical times it was set much store by, and Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras were keenly interested in its doctrines. Later on it was forgotten, was studied in pa.s.sing when Baptista Porta wrote a book about human physiognomy, and finally, when the works of Lavater

and the closely related ones of Gall appeared, the science came for a short time into the foreground. Lavater's well known monograph[1] excited great attention in his day and brought its author enthusiastic admiration. How much Goethe was interested in it is indicated in the popular book by Von der h.e.l.len and the exchange of letters between Goethe and Lavater. If Lavater had not brought the matter into relation with his mystical and apodictic manner, if he had made more observations and fewer a.s.sertions, his fame would have endured longer and he would have been of some use to the science; as it was it soon slipped from people's minds and they turned to the notorious phrenology of Gall. Gall, who to some degree had worked with his friend Spurzheim, committed the same error in his works[2] as Lavater, inasmuch as he lost himself in theories without scientific basis, so that much that was indubitably correct and indicative in his teaching was simply overlooked. His meaning was twice validated, once when B. v. Cotta[3] and R. R. Noel[4] studied it intensively and justly a.s.signed him a considerable worth; the second time when Lombroso and his school invented the doctrine of criminal stigmata, the best of which rests on the postulates of the much-scorned and only now studied Dr. Gall. The great physiologist J. Mller declared: "Concerning the general possibility of the principles of Gall's system no a priori objections can be made." Only recently were the important problems of physiognomy, if we except the remarkable work by Schack,[5] scientifically dealt with. The most important and significant book is Darwin's,[6] then the system of Piderit[7] and Carus's "Symbolik,"[8] all of them being based upon the earlier fundamental work of the excellent English anatomist and surgeon, Bell.[9] Other works of importance are those of LeBrun, Reich, Mantegazza, Dr. d.u.c.h.enne, Skraup, Magnus, Gessmann, Schebest, Engel, Schneider, K. Michel, Wundt, C. Lange, Giraudet, A. Mosso, A. Baer, Wiener, Lotze, Waitz, Lelut, Monro, Heusinger, Herbart, Comte, Meynert, Goltz, Hughes,

[1] J. K. Lavater: Physiognomische Fragmente zur Befrderung des Menschenkentniss und Mensehenliebe. Leipzig 1775.

[2] F. J. Gall: Introduction au Cours du Physiologie du Cerveau. Paris 1808. Recherehes sur la systme nerveux. Paris 1809.

[3] B. v. Cotta: Geschichte u. Wesen der Phrenologie. Dresden 1838.

[4] R. R. Noel: Die materielle Grundlage des Seelenbens. Leipzig 1874.

[5] S. Sehack: Physiognomisehe Studien. Jena 1890.

[6] Darwin: Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals.

[7] Th. Piderit: Wissensehaftliches System der Mimik und Physiognomik. Detmold 1867.

[8] Carus: Symbolik der Menschlichen Gestalt. Leipzig 1858.

[9] C. Bell: Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression. London 1847.

Bore,[1] etc. The present status of physiognomies is, we must say, a very subordinate one. Phrenology is related to physiognomies as the bony support of the skull to its softer ones, and as a man's physiognomy depends especially upon the conformation of his skull, so physiognomies must deal with the forms of the skull. The doctrine of the movement of physiognomy is mimicry. But physiognomics concerns itself with the features of the face taken in themselves and with the changes which accompany the alterations of consciousness, whereas mimicry deals with the voluntary alterations of expression and gesture which are supposed to externalize internal conditions. Hence, mimicry interests primarily actors, orators, and the ordinary comedians of life. Phrenology remains the research of physicians, anthropologists and psychologists, so that the science of physiognomy as important in itself is left to us lawyers. Its value as a discipline is variously set. Generally it is a.s.serted that much, indeed, fails to be expressed by the face; that what does show, shows according to no fixed rules; that hence, whatever may be read in a face is derivable either instinctively by oneself or not at all. Or, it may be urged, the matter can not be learned.

[1] Le Brun: Conferences sur l'Expression. 1820.

Reich: Die Gestalt des Menschen und deren Beziehung zum Seelenleben.

Heidelberg 1878.

P. Mantegazza. Physiognomik u. Mimik. Leipzig 1890.

d.u.c.h.enne: Mechanismus des Menschlichen Physiognomie. 1862.

Skraup: Katechismus der Mimik. Leipzig 1892.

H. Magnus: Die Sprache der Augen.

Gessmann: Katechismus der Gesichtslesekunst. Berlin 1896.

A. Sehebest: Rede u. Geberde. Leipzig 1861.

Engel: Ideen zu einer Mimik. Berlin 1785.