Читать книгу The Mask of Sanity - Hervey M. Cleckley - Страница 16

This young man, twenty-one years of age, does not look at all like a criminal type or a shifty delinquent. In fact, he stands out in remarkable contrast to the kind of patient suggested by such a term as constitutional inferiority. He does not fit satisfactorily into the sort of picture that emerges from early descriptions of people generally inadequate and often showing physical stigmata of “degeneracy” or ordinary defectiveness.106, 225

Tom looks and is in robust physical health. His manner and appearance are pleasing. In his face a prospective employer would be likely to see strong indications of character as well as high incentive and ability. He is well informed, alert, and entirely at ease, exhibiting a confidence in himself that the observer is likely to consider amply justified. This does not look like the sort of man who will fail or flounder about in the tasks of life but like someone incompatible with all such thoughts.

There is nothing to suggest that he is putting on a bold front or trying to adopt any attitude or manner that will be misleading. Though he knows the examiner has evidence of his almost incredible career, he gives such an impression that it seems for the moment likely he will be able to explain it all away. In his own attitude he has evidently brushed aside so satisfactorily such matters as those to be mentioned that others, also, caught up in the magic of his equanimity, almost share his invulnerable disregard.

Tom has so plainly escaped the ordinary and, one would think, the inevitable consequences of his experience, that, in a sort of contagion, his interviewer is also affected. The effect is to make it seem more plausible to accept the whole detailed reality of a life as dream or illusion than believe that this man could so regard it were it otherwise. With indisputable evidence that a human being has been run over and dismembered by a series of freight trains and the bodily remnants subsequently put through a sausage grinder, any investigator will have definite and vivid preconceptions of what he will behold. The evidence itself bleaches, suddenly and automatically, if one is confronted by the intact victim, whole, smiling, immaculate, unscarred, without a scratch. What happened to the anatomical unit in this allusion scarcely seems more drastic than what, as a social unit, the patient before me had experienced.

This poised young man’s immediate problem was serious but not monumental. His family and legal authorities were in hope that if some psychiatric disorder could be discovered in him he might escape a jail sentence for stealing. Despite many years of disappointment the family still sought some remedy, some treatment or handling, that might bring about favorable changes in the patient’s behavior. Those concerned with the legal aspects of the immediate problem had dealt with this man often in the past and saw in his conduct indications of something more than, and something different from, an ordinary or sane antisocial scheme of existence. His high intelligence made it difficult for them to account for what he did on that basis.

Evidence of his maladjustment became distinct in childhood. He appeared to be a reliable and manly fellow but could never be counted upon to keep at any task or to give a straight account of any situation. He was frequently truant from school. No advice or persuasion influenced him in his acts, despite his excellent response in all discussions. Though he was generously provided for, he stole some of his father’s chickens from time to time, selling them at stores downtown. Pieces of table silver would be missed. These were sometimes recovered from those to whom he had sold them for a pittance or swapped them for odds and ends which seemed to hold no particular interest or value for him. He resented and seemed eager to avoid punishment, but no modification in his behavior resulted from it. He did not seem wild or particularly impulsive, a victim of high temper or uncontrollable drives. There was nothing to indicate he was subject to unusually strong temptations, lured by definite plans for high adventure and exciting revolt.

Often when truant from high school classes Tom wandered more or less aimlessly, sometimes shooting at a Negro’s chickens, setting fire to a rural privy around the outskirts of town, or perhaps loitering about a cigar store or a pool room, reading the comics, throwing rocks at squirrels in a park, perpetrating small thefts or swindles. He often charged things in stores to his father, stole cigarettes, candy, cigars, etc., which he sometime gave away freely to slight acquaintances or other idlers he encountered. Though many wasteful, inopportune, and punishable deeds were correctly attributed to him, these apparently were only a small fraction of his actual achievement along this line.

He lied so plausibly and with such utter equanimity, devised such ingenious alibis or simply denied all responsibility with such convincing appearances of candor that for many years his real career was poorly estimated. Among typical exploits with which he is credited stand these: prankish defecation into the stringed intricacies of the school piano; the removal from his uncle’s automobile of a carburettor for which he got 75 cents; the selling of his father’s overcoat to a passing buyer of scrap materials.

Though he often fell in with groups or small gangs, he never for long identified himself with others in a common cause. In the more outlandish and serious outcroppings of group mischief he sometimes played a prominent role. With several others he broke into a summer cottage on a nearby lake, stole a few articles, overturned all the furniture, threw rugs, dishes, etc., out of the window. He and a few more teen-age boys on another expedition smashed headlights and windshields on several automobiles, punctured a number of tires, and rolled one car down a slope, leaving it slightly battered and bogged in a ditch.

At fourteen or fifteen, having learned to drive, Tom began to steal automobiles with some regularity. Often his intention seemed less that of theft than of heedless misappropriation. A neighbor or friend of the family, going to the garage or to where the car was parked outside an office building, would find it missing. Sometimes the patient would leave the stolen vehicle within a few blocks or miles of the owner, sometimes out on the road where the gasoline had given out. After he had tried to sell a stolen car his father consulted advisers and, on the theory that he might have some specific craving for automobiles, bought one for him as a therapeutic measure. On one occasion while out driving he deliberately parked his own car and, leaving it, stole an inferior model which he left slightly damaged on the outskirts of a village some miles away.

Meanwhile Tom continued to forge his father’s name to small checks and steal change, pocketknives, textbooks, etc., at school. Occasionally, on the pretext of ownership he would sell a dog of a calf belonging to some member of the community. His youth made long terms of imprisonment seem inappropriate, it being felt that this might confirm him in a criminal career or teach him additional and more malignant antisocial techniques. He was ineligible for the state hospital.

Private physicians, scout masters, social workers, were consulted. They talked and worked with him, but to no avail. Listing the deeds for which he became ever more notable does not give an adequate picture of the situation. He did not every day or every week bring attention to himself by major acts of mischief or destructiveness. He was usually polite, often considerate in small, appealing ways and always seemed to have learned his lesson after detection and punishment. He was clever and learned easily. During intervals when his attendance was regular he impressed his teachers as outstanding in ability. Some charm and apparent modesty, as well as his very convincing way of seeming sincere and to have taken resolutions that would count, kept not only the parents but all who encountered him clinging to hope. Teachers, scout masters, the school principal, etc., recognizing that in some very important respects he differed from the ordinary bad or wayward youth, made special efforts to help him and to give him new opportunities to reform or readjust.

When he drove a stolen automobile across a state line he came in contact with federal authorities. In view of his youth and the wonderful impression he made, he was put on probation. Soon afterward he took another automobile and again left it in the adjoining state. It was a very obvious situation. The consequences could not have been entirely overlooked by a person of his excellent shrewdness. He admitted that the considerable risks of getting caught had occurred to him, but felt he had a chance to avoid detection and would take it. No unusual and powerful motive or any special aim could be brought out as an explanation.

Tom was sent to a federal institution in a distant state, where a well-organized program of rehabilitation and guidance was available. He soon impressed authorities at this place with his attitude and in the way he discussed his past mistakes and plans for a different future. He seemed to merit parole status precociously and this was awarded him. It was not long before he began stealing again and thereby lost his freedom.

The impression he made during confinement was so promising that he was pardoned before the expiration of the regular term and he came home confident, buoyant, apparently matured, and thoroughly rehabilitated. Considerable work had been done with him at the institution and he seemed to respond well to psychiatric measures. He found employment in a drydock at a nearby port and talked modestly but convincingly of the course he would now follow, expressing aims and plans few could greatly improve.

His employers found him at first energetic, bright, and apparently enthusiastic about the work. Soon evidence of inexplicable irresponsibility emerged and accumulated. Sometimes he missed several days and brought simple but convincing excuses of illness. As the occasions multiplied, explanations so detailed and elaborate were made that it seemed only facts could have produced them. Later he sometimes left the job, stayed away for hours, and gave no account of his behavior except to say that he did not feel like working at the time.

There seemed to be no cause for dissatisfaction, no discernible change of attitude toward the work. When he chose to apply himself he did better than most. It was plain to the employers that this promising young man was not merely lazy or, in an ordinary way, fretfully restless.

The theft of an automobile brought Tom to jail again. He expressed remorse over his mistake, talked so well, and seemed so genuinely and appropriately motivated and determined that his father, by making heavy financial settlements, secured his release. After a number of relatively petty but annoying activities another theft made it necessary for his family to intervene.

Reliable information indicates that he has been arrested and imprisoned approximately fifty or sixty times. It is estimated that he would have been put in jails or police barracks for short or long periods of detention on approximately 150 other occasions if his family had not made good his small thefts, damages, etc., and paid fines for him.

Sometimes he was arrested for fomenting brawls in low resorts, provoking fights, or for such high-handed and disturbing behavior as to constitute public nuisance. Though not a very regular drinker or one who characteristically drank to sodden confusion or stupefaction, he exhibited unsociable and unprepossessing manners and conduct after taking even a few beers or highballs. In one juke-joint imbroglio he is credited with having struck a fellow reveler on the head with a piece of iron. No serious injuries resulted, though great uproar and spectacular commotion prevailed. Under similar circumstances he was once in, or on the fringes of, an altercation in which gunplay occurred and another man received a minor flesh wound. Meanwhile, he continued to forge his father’s name to checks, often insisted on sleeping through breakfast, obtained loans through ingenious misrepresentations and ran up debts which he simply ignored.

Tom’s mother had over years suffered special anxiety and distress through his unannounced absences. After kissing her goodbye, saying he was going downtown for a Coca-Cola or to a movie, he might not appear for several days or even for a couple of weeks. Instead of his returning, a long-distance telephone call might in the middle of the night arouse the father, who would be entreated to come at once to near-by or distant places where the son had encountered unpleasant complications or, perhaps, restraint by the police.

He expressed particularly heavy penitence for all the worry and sleepless nights he had caused his mother, admitting that he loved her dearly and that nothing about his life so displeased him as having given her even a moment’s distress. He spoke as if with feeling about the patience, generosity, and understanding of his father and seemed to believe the filial bond was unusually fine and satisfactory.

Recently an elderly friend of the family, in town on business, learned something of the situation. This man, whose experience in dealing with other people and their problems was considerable (and very successful), undertook the task of helping the patient. Though he had heard a good deal about past exploits, he could not but feel hopeful after his first talk. A little later he took the patient with him on an automobile ride, feeling that in this way he could bring the problem to full discussion by a more natural, informal approach.

The conversation, once begun, developed amazingly. The younger man not only promised to behave from now on in an exemplary fashion, but analyzed and discussed his past in such a way that the older found there was little that could be added. Despite his interest and his experience in such matters, he had seldom if ever encountered a more plausible interpretation of human mistakes and social confusion, of how distortion of aims and maladjustment develop out of the complicated influences and situations of modern living. Even more than the pertinent presentation of cause and effect and the cogent steps proposed for solution, the young man’s appearance of sincerity in all these realizations impressed the older counselor. He spoke as the wisest and most contrite of men would speak and seemed to have a more detailed and deeper understanding of his entire situation than even the most sagacious observer could reach.

The patient talked not only of what he would avoid but discussed plans for work and recreation, for development and progressive maturation. Tom emphasized how his irregular hours, his unforeseen absences, etc., had kept his parents much of the time not sure whether he was dead or alive. Before the ride was over the judicious counselor was encouraged and deeply optimistic. In addition, he was so impressed by points this young man had brought out and by his apparent earnestness and resolution that he felt himself wiser from the experience. Moved and stimulated, he admitted that he had obtained new and valuable viewpoints on life and deeper seriousness. He had been stimulated to review his own patterns of behavior and to seek a better and more progressive plan of self-expression. In this frame of mind he bade the patient good night, letting him out of the car at the front gate of the parents’ home.

The patient did not even enter the house. After going in the gate, he walked through the grounds, went out by a back entrance, and was not heard from that night. He was not, in fact, heard from for a week. News then came of his being in jail again at a near-by town where he had forged, stolen trifles, run up debts, and carried out other behavior familiar to all who knew him.

This young man has, apparently, never formed any substantial attachment for another person. Sexually he has been desultorily promiscuous under a wide variety of circumstances. A year or two earlier he married a girl who had achieved considerable local recognition as a prostitute and as one whose fee was moderate. He had previously shared her offerings during an evening (on a commercial basis) with friends or with brief acquaintances among whom he found himself. He soon left the bride and never showed signs of shame or chagrin about the character of the woman he had espoused or any responsibility toward her.

During the war Tom maintained over some months an off-hand relation with the wife of a man in combat overseas. When in town he ate at her house, sometimes slept there with her, but was as heedless of her and her feelings as of his parents. She apparently suffered some anxiety when, after making plans and promises to do something special with her, he disappeared and she heard nothing from him until he called her from another city (reversing the charges) to chat casually and sometimes to speak eloquent words of endearment. Sometimes he took precautions to deceive her about his sporadic sex relations with other women; sometimes he forgot or did not bother.

On returning from his trips during the war he sometimes told interesting stories of having been for a time in the Navy, narrating with vivid and lifelike plausibility action in which he had participated and which led to the destruction of a German submarine off Jamaica or the pursuit of a raiding warship off the coast of Greenland. Again he would talk at length about his experiences transporting airplanes from Miami to Havana, or accidents leading to hospitalization and operation and diverse adventures with nurses, other patients, interns, etc. Once, during a stag-party discussion of venereal disease, he even fabricated an account of having caught one or more of these unenviable maladies and enlightened his listeners about treatments he had received, drugs, dosage, and complications.

None of these fraudulent stories had a real element of delusion. When really caught in the lie about any of them and confronted with definite proof, he often laughed and passed it off as a sort of joke.

After these events and many others similar in general but differing in detail, Tom seemed modestly pleased with himself, effortlessly confident of the future. He gave the impression of a young man fresh and unhardened, in no respect brutalized or worn by his past experiences. He seemed, also, a poised fellow, one who would make his decisions not in hot-headed haste but calmly, whether these were prompted by immediate whim or by intentions he had much time to entertain.