with the law or pressing difficulties with private persons. In all the records accumulated during these examinations and investigations, no authentic symptom of an orthodox mental disorder is noted. True enough, there are statements by wives and other interested parties about spells and opinions by the laity, such as the following which was quoted by his attorney on one occasion to shield him from the consequences of theft:
I had occasion to be in Dayton, Ohio, recently and talked to the people running the… Loan Company at… Street, having stopped there for about an hour between trains en route for Chicago. I was informed by these gentlemen that he had wheels in his head.
Statements such as the above, opinions that he is “undoubtedly goofy,” that he does not behave like a man in his proper senses, etc., abound in the ponderous stack of letters, medical histories, social service reports, records of court trials, and other material that has accumulated in this man’s wake. One who reads his strange and prolix story, and, even more, one who knows the hero personally is only too ready to fall into the vernacular and agree. Nevertheless, it was equally true on reviewing his record at the time of his new admission that no symptom impressing a psychiatrist had been manifested and that many groups of psychiatrists had, after careful study, continued to find him free of psychosis or psychoneurosis, in other words, sane and responsible for his conduct and even without the mitigating circumstance of a milder mental illness.
Once during this period he had been sent to prison in a southern state for forgeries a little more ambitious than his routine practice. At the instigation of his second and legal wife, who consistently flew to his aid (despite her chagrin at the patient’s having meanwhile consummated two bigamous marriages), well-meaning officers of a veterans’ organization became interested and took up the cudgels.
The patient, wearying sharply of prison, had for some time been talking on all occasions about a blow on the head which he had sustained while in service. This alleged incident, though absent from his military records, had cropped up frequently but not regularly during his hospitalizations. Sometimes the blow, which he had sustained accidentally from the butt of a gun that a companion was breaching, had merely left him dizzy for a moment. Again it had knocked him unconscious for a short period and necessitated several days’ rest in his tent.
Max now became more specific about his wartime injury and explained that he had suffered a severe concussion, lying out stark and unconscious for some eight or nine hours. Attorneys pointed out his many periods of treatment in psychiatric hospitals. The governor soon agreed to parole him into the custody of a federal hospital in Mississippi.
During his present hospitalization he was for several weeks happily adjusted on the admission ward, busy doing small favors for the physician, congenial with all the personnel, helpful and kindly toward psychotic patients. He was alert, quick-witted, nimble with his hands, entirely free from delusions, hallucinations, or any of the broader personality changes found in the ordinary psychoses. He was by no means “nervous,” even in the lay sense, and showed no emotional instability or signs of ungovernable impulse. Rather than an excess of anxiety, he showed the reverse, apparently finding little or nothing in his present situation or in all his past difficulties to cause worry or uneasiness.
As the time passed he began, however, to grow restive. He became somewhat condescending toward the physician, frequently referring to himself as a man of superior education and culture and boasting that he had studied for years at Heidelberg.
Shortly before the time set for him to come before the staff he demanded his discharge. This was denied. He now became involved in frequent altercations with attendants and sometimes fought desultorily with other patients. These fights always started over trifles, and Max’s egotism and fractiousness raised the issue. He never attacked others suddenly or incomprehensibly as does a psychotic person motivated by delusions or prompted by hallucinations. The causes of his quarrels were readily understandable and were always found to be similar to those which move such types as the familiar schoolboy bully. Usually his adversaries were patients also disposed to quarrel. No signs of towering rage appeared or even of impulses too strong to be controlled by a very meager desire to refrain.
He always took care not to challenge an antagonist who might get the upper hand. During this period he talked much of his past glories as a pugilist, describing himself as former featherweight champion of all the army camps in the United States. The desire to show off appeared to be a strong motive behind many of his fights. As will be brought out later, he was indeed, a skillful boxer. These stories were not delusion but the exaggeration and falsifying, sometimes unconscious or half-conscious, that are often seen in sane people and not infrequently in those who are able, intelligent, and highly successful.{§§}
He was often caught sowing the seeds of discontent among other patients whom he encouraged to break rules, to oppose attendants, and to demand discharges. He made small thefts from time to time. This trend culminated in his kicking out an iron grill during the night and leaving the hospital. He took with him two psychotic patients, and numerous others testified that he had tried to persuade them to leave also.
The next afternoon he was returned to the hospital by the police after being arrested in the midst of a brawl that he had caused by cheating at a game of chance in a low dive. He had taken a few beers but was shrewd, alert, and well in command of his body and his faculties.
He now insisted on his discharge from the hospital against advice and was brought before the medical staff. The diagnosis of psychopathic personality was again made. In his demands to be released he arrogantly maintained that he had been pardoned outright by the governor of the state which had imprisoned him, pointed out vehemently that he was sound in mind and body, and expressed strong indignation at being confined unjustly in what he referred to as a “nut house.” It was then pointed out to him that he was not pardoned but merely paroled and told that if discharged at present he would be returned to the penitentiary.
Here his wrath began to subside at once and marvelously. Hastily but with some subtlety, his tone changed, and he began to find points in common with the advice he had been receiving from the staff. He left the room in a cordial frame of mind, tossing friendly and fairly clever quips back at the physicians, nearly all of whom he had known during some of his many admissions to various hospitals.
About ten days later he was pardoned outright by the governor and almost immediately took legal action which got him discharged against medical advice.
Many similar adventures had occupied his time prior to the recent admission. Some of these had resulted in his being sent, as in the episode above, to psychiatric hospitals from which he promptly obtained his release by legal action. Others had led him to jail and to the police barracks dozens of times for charges not sufficiently serious for him to utilize the expedient of psychiatric hospitalization as a means of escape.
A series of troubles had led to his reaching the hospital on this last occasion. As mentioned previously, he had many years ago divorced his first wife and remarried. The second legal spouse continued to play an important part in his career. As the proprietress or Madame of a local brothel generally conceded to be the most orderly and, perhaps in a certain sense, the most respectable institution of its sort in the city, she was constantly embarrassed by the actions of her husband. Though enjoying a good part of the revenue from this ever-lucrative business, Max troubled himself little to maintain the dignity of the house.
In fact, he went out of his way, it seemed, to complicate matters for his wife. If not through his daily and nightly brawls or uproars in various low grogshops, dancehalls, “juke-joints,” etc., then by putting slugs into slot machines or serving as fence in some petty thieving racket, he brought the police in search of him down on the House of Joy which maintained him.
Though satisfactory understandings existed between this institution and the law, policemen suddenly appearing at the door and trooping through the hallways
