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
About three years after our first study of Annie, the father
himself brought a complaint against her of untruthfulness and
general unreliability. This was at one of the times when he was
complaining bitterly of other people. It seems he had lately
tried to restrain her from leaving the house and she had cut his
head open with an umbrella. It was evident she had started
downhill again, and she was placed in a Rescue Home. She now
repeatedly told people she was pregnant and made charges against
some man, but these soon fell through because a little detective
work showed she was corresponding with a boy and had very likely
been immoral with him and others. She was then making an attempt
to lead a dual life, maintaining she wanted to save some of the
unfortunates with whom she was placed, while at the same time
entering into various escapades with them and others. At this
period a suicidal attempt was reported, but we never had
satisfactory proof of the genuineness of this. Annie was now
regarded as being excessively delinquent.
A few months afterwards, when the young woman was in one of her
better moods and wished to do well, we made a few vocational
tests on her. We found her quite unfit for the position of
telephone operator which had been suggested for her. Psychomotor
control appeared then decidedly defective. However, there was
great improvement on work done on intellectual tests two or three
years previously. Although she had developed physically (she now
was a particularly good looking young woman) we felt she was
quite unfit for work which demanded steady effort. One trouble
all along was the fact that she did not wear her glasses. We
advised then, as we had advised at first, a quiet country life
for Annie and the other members of the family. The constant
stimulus of city conditions was too much for them.
Again our advice was not taken and some months later the father
came to us with the story of extreme poverty, some recent attacks
of unconsciousness on his part, separation from his third wife,
and the information that Annie was about to become a chorus girl.
Even a final consideration of the general diagnosis in this case
which has been so long observed by us does not seem to justify
our including it among our border-line mental types. Application
of the term constitutional inferiority seems a priori warranted
by the family history and yet we have no proof that her physical
and mental conditions as enumerated above are not the result of
her many early illnesses and the excessively erratic
environmental conditions, rather than of causes which existed at
birth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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