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
``Well, I know that I'm a Yankee by birth, on both sides. My
people came from Mayflower stock. I will make my way in the
world, I will succeed, and you'll see, doctor. I will have an
education. As to going back to the Johnsons, I would commit
suicide rather than do that. It was not true that I had a good
education as I told you. They did not treat me well. They can
write as they please and talk about forgiveness for what I have
done, but it is they who were cruel and abusive. Suppose they do
say I'm their child. I know I am not because I was not treated
the same as the others. I was 12 or 13 when I ran away from
them. How could I belong to the family? They are all so much
older than I am.''
Inez now gave us, most curiously, some addresses which opened up
knowledge of her career over several years. But what she told us
about these new people was directly denied by return mail. At
one interview her first words were, ``Do you know now, doctor,
that I was in a State hospital?'' Having made this challenging
statement she went no further, merely involved herself in
contradictions as to the place, and would say nothing more than
that she had once suffered from an attack of nervous prostration.
She absolutely denied items of information about herself which we
had gradually accumulated, and this type of reaction obtained all
the way through our last period of acquaintance with Inez, even
after we had the detailed facts about her early life from her
parents.
Inez never lost an opportunity to impress upon people whom she
did not regard as her equals that she considered herself much of
a lady and quite above housework. On one occasion, when held as
a runaway girl, she had a terrible outbreak of temper simply
because she was asked to clear the dinner table. This was no
momentary affair. Her recalcitrancy was kept up the larger part
of one day, and she made the place almost unbearable that night
by screaming and moaning. Telling me about the incident, she
said it was because she would not allow herself to cater to such
people. ``If a person asks me, I may do things, but nobody can
tell me to. I would not give in. I would not do it.''
To some of us it has seemed highly significant that at moments
which would ordinarily be expected to bring out great emotion
Inez showed almost none. For instance, when going to an
important interview about the disposition of her case, she first
plaintively said she did not know what to say, and then
immediately began to dwell with evident pleasure upon the costume
of the person addressing her. Many normal emotions were seen
expressed, however, and many moral sentiments were undoubtedly
held, but there seemed to be curious displacements upon these
levels of her mental life; there was faulty mental
stratification. Probably the force which caused this is
egocentrism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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