to jail.
The jail, George said, was crowded, and the jailor, who knew him to be a good fellow, placed him in a cell on the women’s section of the building. The bars of his cell were about six inches apart and so, according to his story, he was separated from and yet provocatively close to the women prisoners. These, his neighbors, were seven girls ranging in age from fourteen to twenty and awaiting transportation to the women’s reformatory.
He said that at night, when the lights were out, these girls would disrobe and, coming to the bars, would entice him, calling him “Pretty Boy,” “Country Boy,” and otherwise teasing and challenging him until he began to indulge in sexual intercourse with them between the bars in order to make them leave him alone. He says that he continued this practice with each of them every night during the rest of his sojourn there, the transactions taking place always in the dark and through the separating barrier. From one or all of these women he says he caught the gonorrhea which now troubled him.
He appeared to be no little proud of this story which, however, is probably no more accurate than his stories of exemplary behavior and hard work or his frequently expressed intentions to conduct himself like a sensible person. During prolonged observation of him in the hospital he showed himself more prone to drift about street corners and bars, to indulge in petty gambling or theft, to cadge and impose on chance acquaintances, or to raise some puerile and futile clamor than to seek intercourse with one woman, much less with many.
Since this last admission, his story has been the same as before. On recovering from gonorrhea, he was, after being found sane and competent, given freedom of the grounds. He soon left without permission and was found in the hands of the police. Back again on a closed ward he was dissatisfied and with irrefutable arguments pointed out the incongruity of his being assigned to a place among men content to sit all day in silence staring blankly at nothing or who murmured incessantly that their heads were full of gold, radium, and diamonds, that they had no stomachs or intestines, that the Masons were playing on their sexual organs by radio, that they were sickened by the odor of the bells.
It was here, however, that George had to be kept, a perfectly clear minded person, neat, polite, and quick witted, in striking contrast to his fellows, whose lips moved inarticulately as they responded to hallucinatory voices, and some of whom urinated and defecated on themselves, sought to eat dead roaches, etc.
This was not, of course, an ideal environment for him. He was, therefore, replaced on the parole ward time after time, only to prove himself, after periods from a few days to a few weeks, unadoptable. When put on the closed ward among better adjusted cases of schizophrenia or dementia paralytica, men who worked on a farm detail or at woodwork, he took advantage of his situation and escaped. During much of his time in the hospital it has therefore been necessary to keep him among the actively disturbed or badly deteriorated cases where supervision is complete and possibilities of escape are limited.
When last heard from, he was again hospitalized. Opportunities are continually offered him to improve his situation. From time to time parole is restored and occasionally his wife takes him home on furlough. Always, however, he causes trouble for himself and others and always for no discernible purpose.
The last news of him was that he violated his parole by leaving the hospital. After sustaining himself by his customary activities for a week or ten days and staying clear of the police, he again came to grief. With the aim evidently of stealing a hen or a few fryers, or perhaps to evade pursuit, he slipped into a Negro farmer’s chicken house. Having brought along a bottle, and perhaps being delayed by needs to avoid detection, he drank injuriously. Next morning he was found in the coop where he had apparently wallowed and groped through the night. Called by the farmer, attendants brought him to the hospital. Here on a closed ward we find him, among helpless and irrational people, subject to the strict control and attention required for those who cannot direct themselves.
Though he left school after completing the eighth grade, he writes letters which would do credit to a college graduate. In these he insists on having his freedom, stating that his difficulties in the past have been minor and that he is ready and thoroughly able to settle down to an exemplary life. He often stresses the fact that his wife and children need his protection and support. His family history is entirely negative. Parents and grandparents were hard working, sober folk, liked and respected in the little rural community where the present generation lives. One sister and three brothers are leading normal lives there today.
CHAPTER 10. PIERRE
Some of the patients who have been presented give concrete and abundant evidence in their behavior of a serious maladjustment and one of long duration. The diagnosis of psychopathic personality can seldom if ever be made with confidence except on such a record. Many persons at some time in their lives steal, cheat, lie, forge checks, indulge in foolish or destructive conduct, behave regrettably while drinking, and engage in unfortunate or paradoxical sexual activity. It can hardly be denied that some of the most stable and admirable of people have, during the course of achieving maturity, done all these things and worse. One important point that distinguishes the psychopath is his failure to learn and adopt a better and more fulfilling pattern of life. Another and perhaps a more fundamental point, which will be elaborated subsequently, is that psychopaths give a strong impression of lacking the fundamental responses and emotional susceptibility which probably play a dominant part in helping other people avoid this type of maladjustment.
It is, perhaps, worthwhile for us to consider now a patient whose record so far may not establish him beyond question with our group of those clinically disabled, but whose inmost reactions, in so far as one can judge them, strongly indicate that his disorder is the same and that his subsequent career will unmistakably place him.
Not long ago his parents made an appointment for him by mail. They accompanied him from a thriving community in Northern Florida where for the last sixty years the members of this family had been sober and respected citizens. There was a good deal of pride in these people, not a vain or pretentious self-esteem but a modest dignity that seemed to be cherished more as a responsibility than as an ornament.
These parents were truly concerned about their son. A dozen or more letters and reports from school teachers, from the family physician, the rector of the church, the scoutmaster, a high school coach, etc., arrived before the patient. From this material came many facts and opinions. The patient’s remote antecedents had lived in or about Charleston, S. C., in colonial times. They had never been famous for wealth or political influence, but in the Revolutionary War, as well as in the War Between the States, they had played a part which rooted them deeply in sectional traditions of distinction. In Florida, where this branch of the family had moved almost twenty years before the present century, they had established a good name and a sound, unsnobbish sort of prominence. Unlike the fictional Southerners preoccupied with (frequently exaggerated) glories of the past, the———’s had continued to live primarily in the present and to live rather effectively.
One school teacher who had done graduate work in psychology gave a good deal of consideration to this boy’s name, which, as a fair equivalent, we shall give as Pierre. As she pointed out, an Englishman can be called Percival, Jasper, Evelyn or Vivian without much risk, but in the ordinary American community such a name might endanger a boy’s soul. This young man had been christened Pierre ————, probably not as an extravagant gesture toward the exotic or to past glories, but almost as a matter of course. Such given names had been customary among these descendants of early Charleston Huguenots, and the present generation felt nothing conspicuous in what to them was so familiar and commonplace. In these parents speculation probably never arose about how a French name might sound to the fellows who played football in the vacant lot by the gas-house and “rabbitted” sissies with brick-bats. In agreement with his thoughtful teacher’s final conclusion, I am inclined to believe that this name, despite its potential dangers, caused the patient little difficulty.
