Dr. Goring’s book, “The English Convict, a Statistical Study”, appeared in 1913, and is the result of an intense statistical study of 4000 English male convicts, to which the author devoted about twelve years of his life. Dr. Healy’s book, “The Individual Delinquent”, which appeared in the early part of this year, reflects the results of thoroughgoing scientific studies of about 1000 repeated offenders, during the author’s five years’ experience as Director of the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute in connection with the Juvenile Court of Chicago. Numerous reviews of these two books have appeared in medical and criminologic literature, and we shall only touch very minutely upon the difference in the methods of approach to the subject of these two authors as they concern the subject under consideration in this paper. I can do this no better than by quoting from a critical review of Goring’s book by Dr. White,[3] as it happily touches upon our very subject—namely, stealing. “Take the more limited concept of ‘thief’, for example. One man may steal under the influence of the prodromal stage of paresis who has been previously of high moral character. Another man may steal under the excitement of a hypomanic attack; another may steal as the result of moral delinquency; another as the result of high grade mental defect; another under the influence of alcoholic intoxication, and so forth, and so on, and how by any possibility a grouping of these men together can give us any light upon the general concept of ‘thief’ is beyond my power to comprehend.”
When one remembers that the 4000 units with which this really marvelous statistical machinery has worked for twelve long years had nothing more in common than the fact that they were English male convicts—the force of White’s argument becomes quite apparent. I need not state that this view of Goring’s work is not intended to detract one iota from the full measure of credit which this author deserves. His work will stand forever as one of the monumental accomplishments of the twentieth century.
Our views concerning Healy’s contribution to the science of criminology will be reflected in the course of this chapter, which will indicate, I trust, in a way, his mode of approach to the problem, though he may not agree with me concerning the details of my interpretation of the case I am about to report.
Definition.—Like many another I dislike the term “kleptomania” and would much prefer the term “pathological stealing” to denote the condition under consideration. Pathological stealing is not synonymous with excessive stealing as one would gather from the sensational use of the term in the lay press. Neither is Kraepelin’s dictum that Kleptomania is a form of impulsive insanity, necessarily correct. It is obviously, however, a form of abnormally conditioned conduct. Healy’s criterion of Pathological stealing is the fact that the misconduct is disproportionate to any discernible end in view. In spite of risk, the stealing is indulged in, as it were, for its own sake, and not because the objects in themselves are needed or intrinsically desired. This definition at once excludes all cases of stealing from cupidity, or from development of a habit. It furthermore excludes stealing arising from fetichism, pronounced feeblemindedness and mental disease, such as is for instance illustrated in the automatic stealing of the epileptic.
According to Healy, the vast majority of all instances of pathological stealing are those in which individuals, not determinably insane, give way to an abnormally conditioned impulse to steal.
The Psychoanalytic Study of Anti-Social Behavior.—In introducing the term “Psychoanalysis” into this chapter I am fully conscious of the task I have set before me, of writing clearly and convincingly in a work of this nature on that vast and highly important subject which one at once links with this term. To strip it of its highly technical considerations, psychoanalysis is primarily and essentially a study of motives, intended to bring about a better understanding of human conduct. We shall leave out from consideration the very intricate technique which this method of approach to the study of human behavior employs except to indicate the chief source upon which it relies for its information, namely, the individual’s unconscious, that is, that part of the individual’s personality which is outside of the realm of his moment-consciousness, and which is inaccessible either to himself or to the observer except through special methods of investigation. It would be highly desirable, indeed one would say almost imperative, to give a full discussion of the “unconscious” before a proper and sympathetic understanding of what is to follow can be made possible. This, however, is obviously out of the question in a limited chapter like this. Volumes have been written on the subject. I will only ask my readers to agree with me for the sake of gaining proper orientation with reference to the subject under discussion, in the conclusion which I quote from a masterly paper on the “unconscious” by White.[4] “We come thus to the important conclusion that mental life, the mind, is not equivalent and co-equal with consciousness. That, as a matter of fact, the motivating causes of conduct often lie outside of consciousness, and, as we shall see, that consciousness is not the greater but only the lesser expression of the psyche. Consciousness only includes that of which we are aware, while outside of this somewhat restricted region there lies a much wider area in which lie the deeper motives for conduct and which not only operate to control conduct, but also dictates what may and what may not become conscious.” The foundation upon which the method evolved by the psychoanalytic school rests has been aptly summed up by Healy, namely, that for the explanation of all human behavior tendencies we must seek the mental and environmental experiences of early life. One of the chief aids in gaining that knowledge we have in the study of the dream and symbolic life of the individual. The reasons given for our necessarily limited discussion of the unconscious, are likewise true of the dream and symbolism. Both of these subjects would require for a proper elucidation considerably more space than this chapter affords.
Through the dream the unconscious betrays itself;—the dream represents the fulfillment of wishes and cravings which because of psychic and social censorship have become repressed into the unconscious. During sleep these barriers are in abeyance, and the unconscious psyche is given the opportunity for full play, albeit in a disguised and highly symbolic form. The proper interpretation of dreams presupposes a knowledge of the nature of symbolism in the life of man.
When we come now to a consideration of the facts brought to light through the psychoanalytic study of man we are confronted with a still greater difficulty of presentation. There is so much that is of vital importance in this new psychology that we hardly know where to begin. As I am addressing those who are primarily interested for the moment in criminology, I may do well to begin with the subject of psychic determinism. In contrast to the common sentiment of all people in favor of free will in mental processes, the facts elicited by psychoanalysis point to a strict determinism of every psychic process. Psychoanalytic investigations have shown that in mental phenomena there is nothing little, nothing arbitrary, nothing accidental. In his book on the Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud[5] has thrown very convincing light on this subject. Certain apparently insignificant mistakes, such as forgetting, errors of speech, writing and action, etc., are regularly motivated and determined by motives unknown to consciousness. The reason that the motives for such unintentional acts are hidden in the unconscious and can only be revealed by psychoanalysis is to be sought in the fact that these phenomena go back to motives of which consciousness will know nothing, hence were crowded into the unconscious, without, however, having been deprived of every possibility of expressing themselves. Thus we see that no mental phenomenon, and by the same token no part of human behavior, happens fortuitously, but has its specific motive, to a very large extent, in the unconscious.
The question may suggest itself here “why this extensive participation of the unconscious in mental life”, which brings us to a discussion of the principles of resistance and repression.
In speaking of the “unconscious” I purposely left out from consideration the way in which the sum total of its content was separated from the conscious mental life of the individual, in order to bring it in alignment with the discussion of the principles of resistance and repression. The content of the unconscious, broadly speaking, is brought about through the activity of these two principles. If one endeavors to unearth by means of psychoanalysis the pathogenic unconscious mental impulses, or if one endeavors to bring to consciousness some instinctive biologic craving which may be responsible for the individual’s conscious behavior, one regularly encounters a very strong resistance on the part of the patient, a force is regularly betrayed whose object it seems to be to prevent them from becoming conscious and to compel them to remain in the unconscious. This is Freud’s conception of the principle of resistance and from its constant coming to the fore whenever an endeavor is made to penetrate into the unconscious, Freud deducts that the same forces which today oppose as resistance the becoming conscious of the unconscious purposely forgotten, must at one time have accomplished this forgetting and forced the offending pathogenic experience out of consciousness. This mechanism he terms repression. We spoke of an offending pathogenic experience, or in other words what has been termed a psychic trauma. But the same principle holds true of certain instincts which because of their peculiar nature become engaged in a kind of struggle for existence with the ethical, moral and esthetic attributes of the personality and are thrust out of the conscious mental structure as one might say by an act of the will.