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
In reviewing the results of tests the only peculiarities to be
noted are a definite weakness displayed in the powers of mental
representation and analysis (she failed on Test X, usually
readily done at 12 years), and a rather undue amount of
suggestibility and inaccuracy in response to the ``Aussage'' test
(Test VI). The latter, naturally-to-be-supposed important test
in a case where lying was a characteristic, showed a result that
belonged to the imaginative, inaccurate, and partially
suggestible type. Many details of the picture were recalled
correctly, but a few were manufactured to order, and 4 out of 7
suggestions were accepted.
About the general diagnosis of mentality there could be no doubt;
the girl had fair ability, but there had been poor educational
advantages on account of extremely defective vision. No signs of
mental aberration were discovered.
Our attempt to try to help Emma decide why she got into so much
difficulty resulted in a most convincing discovery of beginnings.
We found a keynote to the situation in asking her about the
companionship which the mother had said she had broken up. It
seems that Emma had for a year, quite clandestinely, been
familiar with this family. She apparently now desired to reveal
the results of the acquaintance. Long ago the older sister, at
present in a Reform School, boasted of her escapades with boys.
Emma states that she herself never talked of these topics with
her mother, who had said that girls who don't do such things
should not talk about them. But Tessie, the younger sister of
the delinquent girl, says many bad words about boys. These words
and ideas about them bother Emma much. They come up in her mind,
``sometimes at night and sometimes in the day.'' She even dreams
much about them and about boys. ``I seen the girls do bad things
with boys. It is in the dream, it was in the house, in the front
room on the floor.'' Emma says she never saw it in reality, but
Tessie had boys in their front room when she went there, and then
came running out when she heard Emma coming. She wonders just
what Tessie does. Boys never bother Emma, but all these ideas
bother her. ``Then I think that the boys are going to do it to
me.'' In school she cannot study for this reason. ``Sure, when
I start to study it comes up. I just think about what she tells
me, Tessie. She tells me she liked to do these things with
boys.''
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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