Criminal Psychology - Hans Gross (list of e readers .TXT) 📗

taking care not to suggest oneself and thus to cause agreement of several testimonies which were really different but only appeared to look contradictory on account of the effect of subconscious perceptions. The very best thing is to take the testimony as it comes, without alteration, and later on, when there is a great deal of material and the matter has grown clearer, to test the stuff carefully and to see whether the less intelligent persons gave different testimonies through lack of capacity in expression, or because they really had perceived different things and had different things to say.

 

This is important when the witnesses examined are experts in the matter in which they are examined. I am convinced that the belief that such people must be the best witnesses, is false, at least as a generalization. Benneke (loco cit.), has also made similar observations. “The chemist who perceives a chemical process, the connoisseur a picture, the musician a symphony, perceive them with more vigorous attention than the layman, but the actual attention may be greater with the latter.” For our own affair, it is enough to know that the judgment of the expert will naturally be better than that of the layman; his apprehension, however, is as a rule one-sided, not so far-reaching and less uncolored. It is natural that every expert, especially when he takes his work seriously, should find most interest in that side of an event with which his <p 230>

profession deals. Oversight of legally important matters is, therefore, almost inevitable. I remember how an eager young doctor was once witness of an assault with intent to kill. He had seen how in an inn the criminal had for some time threatened his victim with a heavy porcelain match-tray. “The os parietale may here be broken,” the doctor thought, and while he was thinking of the surgical consequences of such a blow, the thing was done and the doctor had not seen how the blow was delivered, whether a knife had been drawn by the victim, etc. Similarly, during an examination concerning breaking open the drawer of a table, the worst witness was the cabinet-maker. The latter was so much interested in the foreign manner in which the portions of the drawer had been cemented and in the curious wood, that he had nothing to say about the legally important question of how the break was made, what the impression of the damaging tool was, etc. Most of us have had such experiences with expert witnesses, and most of us have also observed that they often give false evidence because they treat the event in terms of their own interest and are convinced that things must happen according to the principles of their trades.

However the event shapes itself, they model it and alter it so much that it finally implies their own apprehension.

 

“Subconscious perceptions,” somewhat altered, play another r<o^>le, according to Exner, in so-called orientation. If anybody is able to orient himself, i. e., know where he is at any time and keep in mind the general direction, it is important to be aware of the fact when he serves as witness, for his information will, in consequence, take a different form and assume a different value. Exner says of himself, that he knows at each moment of his climb of the Marcus’ tower in what direction he goes. As for me, once I have turned around, I am lost. Our perceptions of location and their value would be very different if we had to testify concerning relations of places, in court. But hardly anybody will assure the court that in general he orients himself well or ill.

 

As Exner says, “If, when walking, I suddenly stop in front of a house to look at it, I am definitely in possession, also, of the feeling of its distance from where I left the road—the unconscious perception of the road beyond is here at work.” It might, indeed, be compared with pure subconsciousness in which series of processes occur without our knowing it.

 

But local orientation does not end with the feeling for place.

It is at work even in the cases of small memories of location, e. g., <p 231>

in learning things by heart, in knowing on what page and on what line anything is printed, in finding unobserved things, etc. These questions of perception-orientation are important, for there are people all of whose perceptions are closely related to their sense of location. Much may be learned from such people by use of this specialty of theirs, while oversight thereof may render them hopeless as witnesses. How far this goes with some people—as a rule people with a sense of location are the more intelligent—I saw some time ago when the Germanist Bernhardt Seuffert told me that when he did not know how anything is spelled he imagined its appearance, and when that did not help he wrote both the forms between which he was vacillating and then knew which one was the correct one. When I asked him whether the chirographic image appeared printed or written and in what type, he replied significantly enough, “As my writing-teacher wrote it.” He definitely localized the image on his writing book of many years ago and read it off in his mind. Such specialties must be remembered in examining witnesses.

 

In conclusion, there is a word to say concerning Cattell’s[1]

investigations of the time required for apprehension. The better a man knows the language the more rapidly can he repeat and read its words. It is for this reason that we believe that foreigners speak more rapidly than we. Cattell finds this so indubitable, that he wants to use speed as a test in the examinations in foreign languages.

 

[1] J. M. Cattell: <U:>ber die Zeit der Erkennung u. Benemlung von Schrift etc. (in Wundt’s: Philosophischen Studien II, 1883).

 

The time used in order to identify a single letter is a quarter of a second, the time to pronounce it one-tenth of a second. Colors and pictures require noticeably more, not because they are not recognized, but because it is necessary to think what the right name is.

We are much more accustomed to reading words.

 

These observations might be carried a step further. The more definitely an event to be described is conceived, the clearer the deduction and the more certain the memory of it, the more rapidly may it be reproduced. It follows that, setting aside individual idiosyncrasies, the rapidity of speech of a witness will be of importance when we want to know how much he has thought on a question and is certain what he is going to say. It is conceivable that a person who is trying to remember the event accurately will speak slowly and stutteringly, or at least with hesitation at the moment. The same will occur if he tries to conceive of various <p 232>

possibilities, to eliminate some, and to avoid contradiction and improbability. If, however, the witness is convinced and believes truly what he is telling, so that he may go over it in his mind easily and without interruption, he will tell his story as quickly as he can.

This may indeed be observed in public speakers, even judges, prosecutors, and defense; if anyone of them is not clear with regard to the case he represents, or not convinced of its correctness, he will speak slowly; if the situation is reversed he will speak rapidly. Court and other public stenographers confirm this observation.

 

Topic 3. IMAGINATION.

Section 45.

 

The things witnesses tell us have formerly existed in their imaginations, and the *how of this existence determines in a large degree the quale of what they offer us. Hence, the nature of imagination must be of interest to us, and the more so, as we need not concern ourselves with the relation between being and imagination. It may be that things may exist in forms quite different from those in which we know them, perhaps even in unknowable forms. The idealist, according to some authorities, has set this possibility aside and given a scientific reply to those who raised it.

 

So far as we lawyers are concerned, the “scientific reply” does not matter. We are interested in the reliability of the imagination and in its identification with what we assume to exist and to occur. Some writers hold that sensory objects are in sense-perception both external and internal, external with regard to each other, and internal with regard to consciousness. Attention is called to the fact that the distinction between image and object constitutes no part of the act of perception. But those who remark this fact assume that the act does contain an image. According to St. Augustine the image serves as the knowledge of the object; according to Erdmann the object is the image objectified.

 

Of great importance is the substitutional adequacy of images.

E. g., I imagine my absent dog, Bismarck’s dog, whom I know only pictorially, and finally, the dog of Alcibiades, whose appearance is known only by the fact that he was pretty and that his master had cut off his tail. In this case, the representative value of these images will be definite, for everybody knows that I can imagine my own dog very correctly, that the image of Bismarck’s beast will also be comparatively good inasmuch as this animal has been fre-

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quently pictured and described, while the image of Alcibiades’ dog will want much in the way of reliability—although I have imagined this historic animal quite vividly since boyhood. When, therefore, I speak of any one of these three animals everybody will be able properly to value the correctness of my images because he knows their conditions.

When we speak with a witness, however, we rarely know the conditions under which he has obtained his images, and we learn them only from him. Now it happens that the description offered by the witness adds another image, i. e., our own image of the matter, and this, and that of the witness, have to be placed in specific relation to each other. Out of the individual images of all concerned an image should be provided which implies the image of the represented event. Images can be compared only with images, or images are only pictures of images.[1]

 

[1] Cf. Windelband: “Pr<a:>ludien.”

 

The difficulty of this transmutation lies fundamentally in the nature of representation. Representation can never be identical with its object. Helmholtz has made this most clear: “Our visions and representations are effects; objects seen and represented have worked on our nervous system and on our consciousness. The nature of each effect depends necessarily upon the nature of its cause, and the nature of the individual upon whom the cause was at work.

To demand an image which should absolutely reproduce its object and therefore be absolutely true, would be to demand an effect which should be absolutely independent of the nature of that object on which the effect is caused. And this is an obvious contradiction.”

 

What the difference between image and object consists of, whether it is merely formal or material, how much it matters, has not yet been scientifically proved and may never be so. We have to assume only that the validity of this distinction is universally known, and that everybody possesses an innate corrective with which he assigns proper place to image and object, i. e., he knows approximately the distinction between them. The difficulty lies in the fact that not all people possess an identical standard, and that upon the creation of the latter practically all human qualities exert an influence.

This variety in standards, again, is double-edged. On the one side it depends on the essence of image and of object, on the other it depends on