Psychopath

“ With a better understanding of psychopathic phenomena, the underlying psychology of criminology becomes more clearly defined. Maladjustment may express itself in an insane outbreak, criminal act, or in an anti-social deed, indeed, in all of them the underlying phenomenon is a psychopathic condition which comes under the realm of abnormal psychology. The large group of criminals SHOULD not be looked upon as a homogenous class, but the individuality of criminal and the type of the delinquent act in reaction to his heredity, mental make-up and environmental influences should be fully considered. ”

“ The neurotic must be made to understand clearly that there is no aristocracy in disease, and that there is no nobility of the specially elect in the world of morbid affections, any more than there is in the domain of physical maladies.
The egocentric character of the psychopathic patient puts him in the position of the savage who takes an animistic, a personal view of the world and of the objects that surround him. Natural forces are regarded as dealing with man and his fate, often conspiring against man. ”

“ In proportion as the neurotic attacks keep on recurring the formed pathological system is gaining in energy and in ease of manifestation. The psychopathic attacks with their symptoms emerge [148] at an ever diminishing intensity of stimulation. The resistance of healthy normal associations is ever on the decrease until a point is reached when all power of resistance is lost. The conscious and subconscious groups which enter into the psychopathic system, forming the neurosis, get control over the patient’s life, and become an uncontrollable, psychopathic obsession. ”

“ How many times has it fallen to my share to soothe and counteract the fear instinct of panic-stricken psychopathic patients! A psychogenetic examination of every case of functional psychosis brings one invariably to the fundamental fear instinct.
Conflicts, repressions, imperfections, sex-complexes, sex-aberrations, and others do not produce psychopathic symptoms or neurotic states. It is only when mental states become associated with an exaggerated impulse of self-preservation and an intensified fear instinct that neurosis arises. ”

“ Few of us are not in some way infirm, or even diseased; and our very infirmities help us unexpectedly. In the psychopathic temperament we have the emotionality which is the sine quâ non of moral perception; we have the intensity and tendency to emphasis which are the essence of practical moral vigor; and we have the love of metaphysics and mysticism which carry one's interests beyond the surface of the sensible world. ”

“ It is evident, that, theoretically, if antecedent conditions have prepared the emotional soil, and if an emotional complex, an intense sentiment, or instinct should be aroused by some stimulus, any one of a number of different possible psychopathic states might ensue, largely through the mechanism of conflict, according, on the one hand, to the degree and extent of the dissociation, inhibition, etc., established, and on the other to the character and systematization of the emotional complex or instinct. ”

“ Psychopathic patients do not hesitate, for the alleviation of their pains, of depression, of insomnia, to take a bath in the early morning and wake up all the other patients. They are entirely absorbed in themselves. Self is the only object of their regard. A clever lawyer, aptly characterized one of my most severe and typical psychopathic cases as “egomaniac.” “When you talk of gravity, ‘I am gravity,’ she claims. Talk of the Trinity: ‘I am the Trinity.’” As a matter of fact every psychopathic patient is an egomaniac. ”

“ Down a vista of decrepit dahlias one sped to the portal, alongside which was a trio of bell-handles, one above the other, showing that the Psychopathic Institution did not occupy the whole even of that modest domicile. I always approach these manifold bells with considerable diffidence, conscious that I must inevitably ring the wrong one; so, on this occasion, I rang none at all, but knocked a faint double knock on the knocker by way of compromise—very faint, indeed, lest I should disturb any patients who were being "psychopathized." ”

“ There is, however, considerable doubt in my mind as to the genuineness of these symptoms; unquestionably genuine is only the psychopathic make-up of this individual, which under stress permitted the development in one instance of a grave psychosis, in another of malingering.
Cases like the foregoing are by no means exceptions in criminal departments of hospitals for the insane. It is on account of this type of prison population that penal institutions furnish us with ten times as many insane as free communities. ”

“ Similarly mysticism, a psychopathic malady of a social character, has its origin in the impulse of self-preservation and the fear instinct, and takes [140] refuge in “love” or in “union” with the Infinite which serves as a rock of protection, security, and salvation from all terrors of life. Psychopathic love is a neurotic fear delusion. There is nothing more deceptive and delusive than psychopathic love,—for it takes its origin in self and fear.
VI. The Principle of Recession
Experiences are blotted out from memory in the course of time. ”

“ Malingering is a form of mental reaction mani fested for the purpose of evading a particularly stressful situation in life, and is resorted to chiefly, if not exclusively, by the mentally abnormal, such as psychopaths, hysterics, and the frankly insane.
3. Malingering and allied traits, viz., lying and deceit, are not always consciously motivated modes of behavior, but are not infrequently determined by motives operative in the subconscious mental life, and accordingly affect to a marked extent the individual’s responsibility for such behavior. ”

“ For statistical purposes the differentiation of the psychopathic personalities has been described by the Association's committee as follows:—
"Under the designation of psychopathic personality is brought together a large group of pathological personalities whose abnormality of makeup is expressed mainly in the character and intensity of their emotional and volitional reactions. To meet the demands of current usage, the term for this group has been shortened from the older one "psychoses with constitutional psychopathic inferiority" with which it is synonymous. ”

“ Since these patients usually have average intelligence, they may have good insight into their short comings. This group of impulsive individuals included about two or three per cent of the psychopathic subjects entering the Munich clinic. Practically all were men. The main characteristic of these psychopathic Conditions lies in the overpowering of the normally regulated will and intelligence by spasmodic impulses. ”

“ There is of course no special affinity between crankiness as such and superior intellect,7 for most psychopaths have feeble intellects, and superior intellects more commonly have normal nervous systems. But the psychopathic temperament, whatever be the intellect with which it finds itself paired, often brings with it ardor and excitability of character. The cranky person has extraordinary emotional susceptibility. He is liable to fixed ideas and obsessions. ”

“ Frequently impulsive tendencies are noted. In some instances psychopathic traits are very striking. Excitable, unstable, impulsive, quarrelsome and antisocial types appear as well as liars and swindlers. ”

“ Where the mental malfunctioning follows a sufficiently definite line, we may formulate a definite psychotic entity, as the manic-depressive or the hysterical states. The experimental side of the dynamic psychopathology is therefore distinct from the academic psychology in that it is essentially grounded in the measurement of the reaction's adequacy or fitness. ”

“ The pronounced mental disturbances or psychoses which develop in psychopathic personalities and bring about their commitment are varied in their clinical form and are usually of an episodic character. Most frequent are attacks of irritability, excitement, depression, paranoid episodes, transient confused states, etc. ”

“ The type of behavior disorder, the social reactions, the trends of interests, etc., which psychopathic personalities may show give special features to many cases, e.g., criminal traits, moral deficiency, tramp life, sexual perversions and various temperamental peculiarities. ”

“ Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject to diversified temptations, and to the greatest possible degree if we are decidedly psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the straightening out and unifying of the inner self. The higher and the lower feelings, the useful and the erring impulses, begin by being a comparative chaos within us—they must end by forming a stable system of functions in right subordination. ”

“ The second volume treats of epileptics, and discusses, among other things, their ergography, psychology, graphology, and anomalies of the field of vision. The studies on criminals of passion are supplemented by observations on suicides and political offenders, those on the insane include [Pg 290] investigations of their age, psychology, sex, tattooing, heredity, and the difference between insane and ordinary criminals with respect to the motives that prompt their crimes, and the manner in which these are carried out, thus furnishing a new theory of sexual psychopathy. ”

“ Of 185 admissions covering a period of three years the principal psychoses represented were dementia praecox, forty-one per cent, constitutional psychopathic inferiority, nineteen per cent, manic-depressive psychoses, eight, mental deficiency, nine, alcoholic psychoses, five, paranoid conditions, four per cent, etc.
Experience has shown that the defective criminal classes are not suitable cases for either penal institutions or hospitals for the insane. ”

“ Consequently, I have sought to make use of only those principles which are now so well established as to become rather generally accepted commonplaces of psychopathology.
All analysis reveals the fact that the unconscious of the individual is concerned primarily with himself. This is true in the psychosis, and always in dreams. Freud says:
Every dream is absolutely egotistical ”

“ But one would commit a serious error if on this account he would consider the man normal mentally. From child hood on this man has manifested traits of character which are absolutely psychopathic in nature. ”

“ As a rule alcohol is a factor in these cases. The relations between the sexes are characterized by jealousy and quarreling. The women are particularly likely to have delusions of infidelity. Genuine hysterical attacks occur in a certain number of cases. They often see visions and may have dizzy spells or syncopes. Somnambulism may occur. Nervous symptoms often appear—headaches, unpleasant dreams, palpitations, tremors, increased reflexes, tics, etc. The excitable cases constituted nearly one-third of the psychopaths admitted at Kraepelin's clinic. Sixty per cent of these were women. ”

“ The recognition, the diagnosis, and the preservation of psychopathic individuals account for the apparent increase of neurotics in civilized communities. ”

“ It is possible that there are a series of other forms of psychopathic personality that belong here. In the first subgroup, that of the profligate, the most marked characteristic is the strong tendency to unlimited squandering. The natural result of the sort of life. these people lead is an accumulation .of enormous debts. A very unfavorable influence on the fate of these patients is exerted by lack of perserverance. ”

“ That he should have reacted to his daughter’s injury with murder is quite in line with his general inability and incompetency for proper adjustment, and the development of a mental disorder which has kept him in an institution for the past twelve years and will in all probability keep him there the rest of his life, in reaction to the committed murder, further emphasizes the general vulnerability of his nervous system. Let us see how he attempts to adjust himself to the situation; how he faces reality in his psychosis.
He does just what primitive man has done and what the child of today does. ”

“ In the first place, we must remember that the mental disorder, if it belongs to the group we are discussing here, is the result of a criminal act, and following in its wake, and that therefore the plea of insanity as an excuse for the deed must manifestly be excluded. But may not this type of reaction furnish us an index to the original personality of the culprit? In other words, should we consider an individual absolutely normal, if, in reaction to some stressful situation, he breaks down mentally and develops a psychosis? ”

“ Likewise, the man who possesses the homicidal [Pg 283] mania may be cautious and quiet—to the ordinary observer a normal citizen. But the aura of insanity is around him; he lives and moves and deceives, and hides from the outside world the words that come to him day or night—the words that arise not in the voice of a living man, but in his own diseased mind. The sufferer says nothing of the voices that tell him he is persecuted—that the world's hands are against him. ”

“ To-day we can say that the pathological images dominate the interests of the patient so completely, because they are simply derivatives of the most important questions that used to occupy the person when normal—what in insanity is now an incomprehensible maze of symptoms, used to be fields of vital interest to the former personality. I will cite as an example a patient who was twenty years in the asylum. She was always a puzzle to the physicians, for the absurdity of her delusions exceeded anything that the boldest imagination could create. ”