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
We have repeatedly attempted to summarize the mental status and
functionings of this young woman, but our findings on tests and
otherwise have been irregular and diverse. She reached 6th grade
at 14 years, but had been absent much on account of sickness.
When first seen we found that she was already fond of Lytton,
Scott, and Dickens, and that she was a great reader of the daily
newspapers, dwelling much on accidents and tragedies. What we
say about her ability must be based upon the best that she has
demonstrated. Often when seen she has been in some mental state
which has prevented her from doing, or being willing to do, the
best that is in her. She writes a good hand, does long division
promptly, and reads well. Her association and memory processes
have been proved normal, but given a task to do she is prone to
show inhibitory pauses and other phenomena which interfere much
with a satisfactory result. She has some little reputation of
being able to give long, almost verbatim accounts of sermons
which she has heard, but the accuracy of her report we have not
been able to verify. She gave the antonyms of twenty words in
average time of 1.4'', which is a good record. There was one
failure, but that was quite typical. At the end of 20'', which
is beyond the time of failure, she gave ``unhappy'' as the
opposite of ``happy,'' adding that she had thought of that
before, only she did not speak it out. Her tests for psychomotor
control were miserably done. She was rapid in movement, but
absolutely inaccurate and did not follow instructions. However,
we felt that even this did not indicate her full ability, for she
had capably held a position in a millinery establishment where
she was required to show manipulative dexterity. Perhaps the
best statement of her performances is that she demonstrated great
irregularities from time to time, and even at the same
examination in her work on different tests.
On account of her peculiar testimony against herself, her memory
processes and especially her performance on the ``Aussage'' test
the case seemed of great interest. We found, as we stated above,
in various ways that her abilities to remember, when at her best,
were normal, but using the ``Aussage'' picture we obtained only 6
details in free recital; she was sure that was all she saw in the
picture. Then on cross-questioning she mentioned 9 more items
correctly, and gave 8 others much altered from the truth. No
other item was added, but her report on these was almost
illusional in its incorrectness. Of 5 suggestions offered she
accepted 2 of the least important, refusing the others entirely.
This was a remarkably poor result for a girl of her age, but may
not be indicative of her best abilities even on this type of
work. Our final opinion was that she was not clearly subnormal
in native ability.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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