Dear Sir: I wish to return at once to England to the Cissel Hotel. You told me not to take my wife back after the courts here had granted me a divorce, so I look to you to just please come on here in person and have me released, as the United States Senate has given permission for you to come and release me. I am the young man that rescued you from drowning at River View, and after telling you my case you advised me to get a divorce. The guests from the hotel were wishing for me to return when on here, as also my family.
Please find enclosed check for your expenses and give prompt action.
Very respectfully,
(W. H. M.) Howard Hall,
Washington, D.C.
The check:—
U. S. Treasury,
Pa. Ave. and 15th Street.Washington, D.C., October 1, 1914.
Please pay to King George of England Ten Thousand Dollars for professional services.
$10,000W. H. M.
Thus by the mere stroke of the pen he, a poor mortal accused of murder and indefinitely confined to an institution, succeeds in putting himself in touch with King George, in drawing ad libitum upon the United States Treasury, in ridding himself of the wife whom he accuses of infidelity, and in annihilating old age by styling himself “The young man,” when in reality he is fifty-seven years of age at present.
His belief in these statements is absolutely unshakable, notwithstanding the fact that he retains a clear orientation concerning his immediate environment, and thus has the actual state of his affairs constantly forced to his attention.
His grandiose compensation has such dimensions as to gratify every imaginable wish of his. He came here because he was divorced from his wife, not because of any crime he had committed. He is the son of the supervisor in charge of this building. He owns this institution and built it for a place in which he could count his money. He had forty-six wagon-loads of this. He will live 250 years, because he has taken the severest punishment to secure this. He refuses to assist with the ward work, because he pays $1.50 a day for board and is not supposed to do any work. He was brought here to select a woman for his wife. They brought him a lot of blue-eyed blondes and also a lot of Baltimore and St. Louis beauties, etc.
W. H. M., Owner, Washington Asylum, 5000 Branch Hospitals, five million employees.
Anacostia, D.C., Fri., Nov. 6, 1914.
Dear Mr. President:
I came over here to take out forty-six wagons loaded with greenbacks. I respectfully had it arranged to have the Senate hold me here on account of so much wealth until I thought it safe to return. Please sign this and return it by mail. The Senate ordered me to write it to you, as there is no crime against me.
Washington, D.C., Fri., Nov. 6, 1914.
Dr. W. and Staff Officers of Washington Asylum:
Please allow Mr. W. H. M. to pass out the gate at once free.
Very respectfully,
W. W.
Please don’t delay this one minute.
Thus we see that the entire content of this man’s delusional fabric is intended, first, to serve the purpose of annihilating the painful reality, and, second, to substitute for it a beautiful world in which he finds himself free and young again, enjoying his fabulous riches and many blue-eyed beauties. It is the only compromise possible for him, and the fact that it is nothing but a day-dream does not in the least detract from its compensating possibilities for this individual’s painful reality. This man’s mental disorder has been so obvious ever since its inception that the question of malingering never suggested itself to anyone, and yet the underlying mechanism in this case differs in no particular essential from the cases usually considered as malingerers. In both instances the psychosis represents an attempt to get away from a painful reality by individuals who are quite incapable of meeting such reality face to face.
A more detailed consideration of Freudian psychology, especially such as concerns the subjects of determinism, defense, and compensation, would give one a still clearer insight into the subject under discussion, but to do so would lead us considerably beyond the scope of this paper. From what has been said thus far it will be seen that the mental processes underlying the mental state of malingering differ in no essential from those operative in the human mind generally; that man in his endeavor to reach a satisfactory compromise between the two underlying principles of his conduct,—i.e., that of pleasure and reality,—frequently resorts to his fantasy; that malingering in its broader sense,—i.e., the attempt to evade reality,—is a common mode of reaction in primitive man, the child of today and in the undeveloped mind, in all of these instances signifying an inability to meet stern reality in the face, and that, therefore, malingering, when it does occur, should at least not be looked upon as an aggravating circumstance, which is not infrequently the case when the malingerer happens to be facing a court of law.
That this mode of reaction is at times resorted to by individuals who had always been looked upon as being far from incompetent only proves that under special stress, especially mental stress, man readily sinks to a lower cultural level and resorts to the defensive means common at this level.