Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic PsychologyHealy, William
Science
Pathology of Lying, Accusation, and Swindling: A Study in Forensic Psychology
Healy, William
Criminal psychology; Swindlers and swindling
What we discovered in our further studies of Adolf's mental
condition can be told in short. We have retested him over and
over. (When he has been hard up we have given him money to
induce him to do his very best.) There are no contradictions in
our findings at different times. Once, in another city, in
connection with his appearance in court, Adolf was seen by a
psychiatrist who suggested that he was a case of dementia precox,
but nothing in our long observation of him warrants us in such an
opinion. His mental conditions and qualities seem quite
unchanged in type during all the time we have known him, and
instead of any deterioration there has been gradual betterment in
capacities, certainly along the line of adjustment to
environment. His wonderful ability to get out of trouble is
evidence of these powers of adjustment, as is also, perhaps, his
keen sensing of the utility of the shadier sides of politics and
criminal procedure.
In work with numbers Adolf is still very poor. He is unable to
do long division or multiplication, and cannot add together
simple fractions. Addition he does much better, but even at his
best he makes errors in columns where he has to add five
numerals. He now can do simple subtraction such as is required
in making change, but fails on such a problem as how much change
he should get from $20 after buying goods costing $11.37. His
memory span is only six numerals, and these he cannot get
correctly every time.
After numerous attempts to mentally analyze our simple ``Cross
Line Test,'' with much urging and extreme slowness he finally
succeeded at one time in getting it correctly. As stated above,
this is a test that is done with ease usually by normal
individuals 12 years of age. On our ``Code Test,'' requiring
much the same order of ability, but more effort, he entirely
failed. For one thing, he has never known the order of the
alphabet either in English, German, or French. Our ``Pictorial
Completion Test,'' which gauges simple apperceptive abilities, he
failed to do correctly, making three illogical errors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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