Studies in Forensic Psychiatry - Bernard Glueck (grave mercy .TXT) 📗

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 analysis of this case. To me the analysis 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 sexual 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 sexual congress. It would be inconceivable without further explanation why this colored boy should repeatedly resort to stealing as a means of sexual 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 heterosexual manner, as others of his race have no difficulty at all in doing.

The answer lies in the type of sexual gratification which his stealing supplied. We have mentioned the anal sensations, the feeling as though there was something in the rectum 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 sex instinct this can only mean one thing, namely, that we are dealing here with a homosexual whose erotic receptors were concentrated in the anal region, with an anal-erotic.

The possibility of a full, happy, satisfied existence for this individual lies in the gratification of this biologic, instinctive, and perverse sex-craving. It is the intense revulsion, the protest of his whole personality against such mode of sex-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 sex-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 homo-sexuality, 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.