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
The question put to us was concerning her mentality. She came of
a Slavic peasant family, had been in this country only 6 years,
and her relatives spoke only Slavic. She had been to school but
a very short time, either in the old country or here. Because of
the language difficulty, the giving of many tests, such as those
in the upper years of the Binet system, could be regarded as most
unfair. However, the simpler language tests she did fairly well,
especially those where she could understand the commonsense
questions. In regard to her acquirement of English, she has done
better than her relatives, who continue to live in a neighborhood
where their own Slavic dialect is spoken. When it came to
dealing reasoningly with concrete situations, such as those
presented by our performance tests, this young woman did
comparatively well--quite above the grade of the feebleminded.
Our diagnosis, then, was that she could best be regarded as poor
in ability or possibly subnormal as compared with our general
population, but as correlated with her peasant type she was
probably normal.
From the standpoint of aberration one could find no evidences of
anything but eroticism and a constant tendency to deviate from
the truth. About the affair of the abortion she showed herself
unexpectedly shrewd, maintaining that she had had to work very
hard carrying stones when a new silo was being built on the farm,
and at her next menstrual period she had flowed for a week or so,
and that was all there was to it, except that she had been
suffering from pains continually since. (The charitable
organization knew she had visited the office of a notorious
abortionist.) She smiled much in a silly way when in the company
of men; she proved herself easily led. Taking it altogether,
there was no reason for considering her insane, or as being in
any way a psychopathic personality. She showed no stigmata of
degeneracy.
There was no opportunity to get a satisfactory family history.
Many of the relatives were still in the old country. A sister
and brothers have been known in the neighborhood where this girl
lived, and are said to appear quite normal in their simple ways
of living. They are of the peasant type and good laborers, but
given to occasional indulgence in feasting with alcoholic
embellishments. From the sister we learned that this girl had
passed through a sickly childhood and had been most irregularly
brought up on account of the illnesses of her mother. She was
not known as a liar when younger. Her short school record showed
nothing of value for diagnosis. What happened to this girl was
no great exception; among these people, we know from their own
accounts, free and easy sex relationships are common. We are
advised that it was long ago known that this girl was going with
bad companions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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