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

and painlessly than to shoot a stag badly, and even the most accurate shot requires less training than the correct slaughter of an ox. Moreover, it requires much more courage to finish a wild ox than to destroy a tame and kindly pheasant. But usage, once and for all, has assumed this essential distinction between men, and frequently this distinction is effective in criminal law, without our really seeing how or why. The situation is similar in the difference between cheating in a horse trade and cheating about other commodities. It occurs in the distinction between two duellists fighting according to rule and two peasant lads brawling with the handles of their picks according to agreement. It recurs again in the violation of the law by somebody “nobly inspired with champagne,” as against its violation by some “mere” drunkard. But usage has a favoring, excusing intent for the first series, and an accusing, rejecting intent for the latter series. The different points of view from which various events are seen are the consequence of the varieties of the usage which first distinguished the viewpoints from one another.

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There is, moreover, a certain dishonesty in speaking and in listening where the speaker knows that the hearer is hearing a different matter, and the hearer knows that the speaker is speaking a different matter. As Steinthal[1] has said, “While the speaker speaks about things that he does not believe, and the reality of which he takes no stock in, his auditor, at the same time, knows right well what the former has said; he understands correctly and does not blame the speaker for having expressed himself altogether unintelligibly.”

This occurs very frequently in daily routine, without causing much difficulty in human intercourse, but it ought, for this reason, to occur inversely in our conversation with witnesses and accused. I know that the manner of speaking just described is frequently used when a witness wants to clothe some definite suspicion without expressing it explicitly. In such cases, e. g., the examiner as well as the witness believes that X is the criminal. For some reason, perhaps because X is a close relation of the witness or of “the man higher up,” neither of them, judge nor witness, wishes to utter the truth openly, and so they feel round the subject for an interminable time. If now, both think the same thing, there results at most only a loss of time, but no other misfortune. When, however, each thinks of a different object, e. g., each thinks of another criminal, but each believes mistakenly that he agrees with the other, their separating without having made explicit what they think, may lead to harmful misunderstandings. If the examiner then believes that the witness agrees with him and proceeds upon this only apparently certain basis, the case may become very bad. The results are the same when a confession is discussed with a suspect, i. e., when the judge thinks that the suspect would like to confess, but only suggests confession, while the latter has never even thought of it. The one thing alone our work permits of is open and clear speaking; any confused form of expression is evil.

 

[1] Cf. Zeitschrift fur V<o:>lkeranthropologie. Vol. XIX. 1889. “Wie denkt das yolk <u:>ber die Sprache?”

 

Nevertheless, confusions often occur involuntarily, and as they can not be avoided they must be understood. Thus, it is characteristic to understand something unknown in terms of some known example, i. e., the Romans who first saw an elephant, called it “bos lucani.” Similarly “wood-dog” = wolf; “sea-cat” = monkey, etc. These are forms of common usage, but every individual is accustomed to make such identifications whenever he meets with any strange object. He speaks, therefore, to some degree in images, <p 299>

and if his auditor is not aware of the fact he can not understand him.

His speaking so may be discovered by seeking out clearly whether and what things were new and foreign to the speaker. When this is learned it may be assumed that he will express himself in images when considering the unfamiliar object. Then it will not be difficult to discover the nature and source of the images.

 

Similar difficulties arise with the usage of foreign terms. It is of course familiar that their incorrect use is not confined to the uneducated. I have in mind particularly the weakening of the meaning in our own language. The foreign word, according to Volkmar, gets its significance by robbing the homonymous native word of its definiteness and freshness, and is therefore sought out by all persons who are unwilling to call things by their right names.

The “_triste_ position” is far from being so sad as the “sad” position.

I should like to know how a great many people could speak, if they were not permitted to say malheur, m<e’>chant, perfide, etc.—words by means of which they reduce the values of the terms at least a degree in intensity of meaning. The reason for the use of these words is not always the unwillingness of the speaker to make use of the right term, but really because it is necessary to indicate various degrees of intensity for the same thing without making use of attributes or other extensions of the term. Thus the foreign word is in some degree introduced as a technical expression. The direction in which the native word weakens, however, taken as that is intended by the individual who uses its substitute, is in no sense universally fixated. The matter is entirely one of individual usage and must be examined afresh in each particular case.

 

The striving for abbreviated forms of expression,—extraordinary enough in our gossipy times,—manifests itself in still another direction. On my table, e. g., there is an old family journal, “From Cliff to Sea.” What should the title mean? Obviously the spatial distribution of the subject of its contents and its subscribers—i. e., “round about the whole earth,” or “Concerning all lands and all peoples.” But such titles would be too long; hence, they are synthesized into, “From Cliff to Sea,” without the consideration that cliffs often stand right at the edge of the sea, so that the distance between them may be only the thickness of a hair:—cliff and sea are not local opposites.

 

Or: my son enters and tells me a story about an “old semester.”

By “old semester” he means an old student who has spent many terms, at least more than are required or necessary, at the university.

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As this explanation is too long, the whole complex is contracted into “old semester,” which is comfortable, but unintelligible to all people not associated with the university. These abbreviations are much more numerous than, as a rule, they are supposed to be, and must always be explained if errors are to be avoided. Nor are silent and monosyllabic persons responsible for them; gossipy individuals seek, by the use of them, to exhibit a certain power of speech. Nor is it indifferent to expression when people in an apparently nowise comfortable fashion give approximate circumlocutive figures, e. g., half-a-dozen, four syllables, instead of the monosyllable six; or “the bell in the dome at St. Stephen’s has as many nicks as the year has days,” etc. It must be assumed that these circumlocutive expressions are chosen, either because of the desire to make an assertion general, or because of the desire for some mnemonic aid.

It is necessary to be cautious with such statements, either because, as made, they only “round out” the figures or because the reliability of the aid to memory must first be tested. Finally, it is well-known that foreign words are often changed into senseless words of a similar sound. When such unintelligible words are heard, very loud repeated restatement of the word will help in finding the original.

 

TITLE B. DIFFERENTIATING CONDITIONS OF GIVING TESTIMONY.

 

Topic I. GENERAL DIFFERENCES.

 

(a) Woman.

 

Section 63. (I) General Considerations.[1]

 

[1] For the abnormal see—N<a:>cke: Verbrechen und Wahnsinn beim Weibe Leipzig 1894.

 

One of the most difficult tasks of the criminalist who is engaged in psychological investigation is the judgment of woman. Woman is not only somatically and psychically rather different from man; man never is able wholly and completely to put himself in her place.

In judging a male the criminalist is dealing with his like, made of the same elements as he, even though age, conditions of life, education, and morality are as different as possible. When the criminalist is to judge a graybeard whose years far outnumber his own, he still sees before him something that he may himself become, built as he, but only in a more advanced stage. When he is studying a boy, he knows what he himself felt and thought as boy. For we <p 301>

never completely forget attitudes and judgments, no matter how much time has elapsed—we no longer grasp them en masse, but we do not easily fail to recall how they were constructed. Even when the criminalist is dealing with a girl before puberty he is not without some point of approach for his judgment, since boys and girls are at that period not so essentially different as to prevent the drawing of analogous inferences by the comparison of his own childhood with that of the girl.

 

But to the nature of woman, we men totally lack avenues of approach.

We can find no parallel between women and ourselves, and the greatest mistakes in criminal law were made where the conclusions would have been correct if the woman had been a man.[1] We have always estimated the deeds and statements of women by the same standards as those of men, and we have always been wrong. That woman is different from man is testified to by the anatomist, the physician, the historian, the theologian, the philosopher; every layman sees it for himself. Woman is different in appearance, in manner of observation, of judgment, of sensation, of desire, of efficacy,—but we lawyers punish the crimes of woman as we do those of man, and we count her testimony as we do that of man. The present age is trying to set aside the differences in sex and to level them, but it forgets that the law of causation is valid here also.

Woman and man have different bodies, hence they must have different minds. But even when we understand this, we proceed wrongly in the valuation of woman. We can not attain proper knowledge of her because we men were never women, and women can never tell us the truth because they were never men.

 

[1] H. Marion: Psychologie de la Femme. Paris 1900.

 

Just as a man is unable to discover whether he and his neighbor call the same color red, so, eternally, will the source of the indubitably existent differences in the psychic life of male and female be undiscovered.

But if we can not learn to understand the essence of the problem of the eternal feminine, we may at least study its manifestations and hope to find as much clearness as the difficulty of the subject will permit. An essential, I might say, unscientific experience seems to come to our aid here. In this matter, we trust the real researches, the determinations of scholars, much less than the conviction of the people, which is expressed in maxims, legal differences, usage, and proverbs. We instinctively feel that the popular conception presents the experience of many hundreds of years, experiences of both men and women. So that we may assume that the mistakes of the <p 302>

observations of individuals have corrected each other as far as has been possible, and yield a kind of average result. Now, even if averages are almost always wrong, either because they appear too high or