Crime -- United States; Criminals -- United States
The more material powers of the mind of the criminal frequently elude the
examiner and tools which can be too "systematic." This, because the
examiner faces cards which the examined instinctively employ every means
at their command to euchre. Also, if his limited scope of criminological
vision causes him to over-emphasize present emphasis, and to bolt the
way-backward trail of his subject, the examiner will remain as half blind
to the basic reasons for a given criminal.
Cardinal causes for the criminal commonly hark back to remote ancestors.
And so, for example, one unacquainted with the early history of the
Sicilian people, the events of which changed so many of that people from
trustful, mutually helpful sons of the soil, into dagger-thrusting
brigands, lunging for the hearts of their blood brothers, has no call to
classify the alien Sicilian-Italian who makes America his base of
operations. That is essentially so, because the period from bib to puberty
is the most impressionable after-birth period, during which a lad will
tend to take on much that will aggravate congenital predisposition;
predisposition the more fateful for the reason that it lurks in the
unconscious, and there constantly presses upon its victim for expression.
Hence, psycho-physical research that does not cover the whole field of
motive and motion, is comparatively valueless. By the same token, the
investigator who is casehardened with technical lore, will be very likely
to miscall the turn, especially on the alien and near-alien criminal.
Above all else, the psychiatrist must measure the criminal with an
absolutely open mind, attuned alike to individual and racial
determination; attuned, also, to his own definitions, such as that psychic
contagion is "transfer of nervous disease by imitation"; and attuned to
the fact that the mode of operating employed with Awasco, the
sunny-hearted, comparatively ingenuous "Wop," anxious to help, won't do at
all with Hungarian Zynthner the sullen, who is evasive, suspicious, and
resentful alike of authority and the personal touch, because he still
bristles over hurts visited upon him and his by thick-lipped Hapsburgs.
Mental searching of the latter class of criminals usually yields next to
nothing that is specifically of capital importance. For want of the
master-key to the situation, the operator leaves the tested laughing up
their sleeves over having fundamentally over-reached the tester. Needless
to add, the master-key is mostly shaped of the metal of foreign soil, and
unlocks the far-removed circumstance.
First off, the really expert examiner will seek to win the undivided
attention, full confidence, and voluntary coöperation of his man, who is
to be led only by judicious degrees to the conviction that the questioner
is not a mere cog of a "scientific" machine, the purpose of which is to
bare the subject's soul, regardless of his feelings in the matter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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