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
From the girl's long stories to us we may derive the following
points of interest. Before her confession she was very emotional
on the subject of her little sister. She dwelled much upon her
dreams of the child, but proved self-contradictory about the
matter of her death, as well as about her own history. Even then
she began telling us what a bad girl she herself was in various
ways. She said, ``I did not see Laura die, but I guess they did
burn her up because her finger tips were all gone and her hands
were all swollen up. Ma said she would burn her up if she did
not quit wetting the bed. Yes, I used to worry about Laura
awful. She always had been the trouble. I would have been a
good girl if it had not been for her. I used to worry so fierce
that I could not help from stealing and then when I stole I was
scared to go back to my jobs. I had to have money and so I made
good money by going with these fellows. I used to feel fierce
about the money I took from my mother and used to put it back and
then would say, `No, I just must have it.' ''
This girl had been working at different factories and homes since
her mother's trial. She confessed to thieving from stores. The
stealing she had done at home was, it seems, long before the
death of the little child. Libby made much of her mental states
and of her dream-life in talking to us. ``I like to go to nickel
shows. I saw a sad piece once and if I feel sad now I think
about it and it makes me want to go to my mother. I have a funny
feeling about going home. I don't know what it is. At night I
dream about it and something keeps telling me to go home. I want
to go to an institution now and learn to do fancy work and to be
good, and then I want to go home.''
Libby told us enough about her first father for us to know he had
had a terrifically bad influence upon her. She also long
associated with bad companions who instructed her thoroughly in
the ways of immorality. She described attacks in which she felt
weak and thought she was going to fall, but never did. (The
young child in the family who had epilepsy was no relation
whatever to her.) She knew that her mother had long been living
with her step-father in common-law relationship, but insisted on
what was undoubtedly the truth, namely, that they were temperate
and very respectable people. Libby never gave us any explanation
for her testimony against her mother, but acknowledged that she
herself had been delinquent earlier.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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