Criminal Psychology by Hans Gross (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

of the victim asserted with certainty that she had recognized the son of a neighbor among the thieves. In both cases there were serious legal steps taken against the suspects, and in both cases the children finally admitted, after much thinking, that they had possibly dreamed the whole matter of their complaints.

The character-mark of such cases is the fact that the children do not make their assertions immediately, but after one or two nights have passed. Hence, whenever this occurs one must entertain at least the suspicion that reality and dreams have been confused.

Similarly, Taine narrates that Baillarger once dreamed that he had been made director of a certain journal, and believed it so definitely that he told it to a number of people. Then there is the familiar dream of Julius Scaliger. Leibnitz writes that Scaliger had praised in verse the famous men of Verona. In dream he saw a certain Brugnolus who complained that he had been forgotten. Later Scaliger’s son Joseph discovered that there really had been a Brugnolus who had distinguished himself as grammarian and critic. Obviously Scaliger senior had once known, and had completely forgotten about him. In this case the dream had been just a refreshing of the memory. Such a dream may be of importance, but is unreliable and must be dealt with carefully.

To get at a point of departure concerning the nature of the sleep and the dreams of any given person, we may classify them with reference to the following propositions:[345] 1. The vividness of dreams increases with their frequency. 2. The lighter the sleep the more frequent the dreams. 3. Women sleep less profoundly than men and hence dream more. 4. With increasing age dreams become rarer and sleep less profound. 5. Who sleeps lightly needs less sleep. 6. The feminine need of sleep is greater. I might add with regard to the last point that the fact that women are better able to endure nursing children or invalids constitutes only an apparent contradiction of this point. The need of sleep is not decreased, but the goodwill and the joy of sacrifice is greater in woman than in man.

The extraordinary things people do in half-dream and in sleep are numerously exemplified by Jessen. Most of them are taken from the older literature, but are quite reliable. A comparison indicates that such somnambulistic conduct occurs most frequently among the younger, more powerful, over-strained people, who, e.g., have not slept for two successive nights, and then have been awakened from deep sleep. It is remarkable that they often act intelligently under such circumstances—that the physician writes the proper prescription or the factory superintendent gives the proper orders, but neither knows anything about it later on. Criminalistically their significance lies on the one hand in the fact that they can be investigated with regard to their correctness; and on the other that they occur to people who had no reason to falsify. If a defendant tells about some such experience, we lack the means and the power to make an accurate examination of the matter, and tend for this reason to disbelieve him. Moreover, his very position throws doubt upon his statements. But this is just the ground for a careful study of similar occurrences in trustworthy people.[346] All authorities agree that actions during sleepiness[347] occur almost always in the first deep sleep, disturbed by dreams, of over-fatigued, strong individuals.

An important circumstance is the phenomenon cited by Jessen and others—the capacity of some people to fall calmly asleep in spite of tremendous excitement. Thus, Napoleon fell into deep sleep during the most critical moment at Leipzig. This capacity is sometimes cited as evidence of innocence. But it is not convincing.

We have yet to mention the peculiar illusions of the phenomena of movement which occur just before falling asleep. Panum tells how he once inhaled ether, and then observed, lying in bed, how the pictures on the wall went further and further back, came forward and withdrew, again and again. Similar things happen to sleepy people. Thus, the preacher in church seems progressively to withdraw and return. The criminalistic significance of such illusions may be in the observation of movements by people who are falling asleep, e.g., of thieves who seemed to be approaching the witnesses’ beds, though standing still.

That sleeping people may be influenced in definite ways is indubitable. Cases are mentioned in which sleepers could be made to believe any story; they would dream of it, and later on believe it. There is in this connection the story of the officer who acquired the love of a young girl in this fashion; the girl had shown definite distaste for him at first, but after he had told her during her sleep, in her mother’s presence, of his love and loyalty, she began in the course of time to return it. It is a fact that certain of our burglars believe similar things, and carry them out in most cases with the assistance of red light, to which they assign hypnotic power. They claim that with a lantern with red glass they are able to do anything in the room containing a sleeping individual, and can intensify his sleep by letting the red light fall on his face, and speaking to him softly. Curiously enough this is corroborated by a custom of our mountain lads. They cover a lantern with a red cloth and go with it to the window of a sleeping girl. It is asserted that when the red light falls on the latter’s face and it is suggested to her softly to go along, she does so. Then a pointed stone is placed in the girl’s way, she steps on it, it wakes her up, and the crude practical joke is finished. It would be interesting, at least, to get some scientific information concerning these cited effects of red light upon sleeping people.

O. Mönnigshoff and F. Piesbergen[348] have thrown some light on the profoundness of sleep—why, e.g., a person hears a thing today and not at another time; why one is awakened and another not; why one is apparently deaf to very loud noise, etc. These authorities found that the profundity of sleep culminates in the third quarter of the second hour. Sleep intensifies and grows deeper until the second quarter of the second hour. In the second and third quarters of that hour, the intensification is rapid and significant, and then it decreases just as rapidly, until the second quarter of the third hour. At that point sleep becomes less and less profound until morning, in the second half of the fifth hour. At this moment the intensity of sleep begins again to increase, but in contrast with the first increase is very light and takes a long time. Sleep, then, reaches its culmination in one hour out of five and a half; from that culmination-point it decreases until it reaches the general level of sleep.

Section 111. (b) Intoxication.

Apart from the pathological conditions of intoxication, especially the great intolerance toward alcohol,[349] which are the proper subjects for the physician, there is a large group of the stigmata of intoxication which are so various that they require a more accurate study than usual of their causes and effects. As a rule, people are satisfied to determine the degree of intoxication by the answers to a few stereotyped questions: Did the man wabble while walking? Was he able to run? Could he talk coherently? Did he know his name? Did he recognize you? Did he show great strength? An affirmative answer to these questions from two witnesses has been enough to convict a man.[350]

As a rule, this conviction is justified, and it is proper to say that if a person is still sufficiently in control of himself to do all these things he must be considered capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong. But this is not always the case. I do not say that irrationality through drink must always obtain when the drunkard is unable to remember what happened while he was drunk. His inability is not determinative, because the circumstances following a deed have no reflex effect. Even if after the deed a person is ignorant of what he has done it is still possible that he was aware of its nature while committing it, and this possibility is the determinative factor. But the knowledge of what is being done does not in itself make the doer responsible, for if the drunkard beats the policeman he knows that he is fighting somebody; he could not do so without knowing it, and what excuses him is the fact that while he was drunk, he was not aware that he was fighting a policeman, that so far as he is capable of judgment at all, he judges himself to be opposed to some illegal enemy, against whom he must defend himself.

If it be said in opposition that a drunkard is not responsible if he does, when drunk, what he would not do when sober, this again would be an exaggeration. Why, is shown by the many insults, the many revelations of secrets, the many new friendships of slight intoxication. These would not have occurred if the drunkard had been sober, and yet nobody would say that they had occurred during a state of irresponsibility.

Hence, we can say only that intoxication excuses when an action either follows directly and solely as the reflex expression of an impulse, or when the drunkard is so confused about the nature of his object that he thinks himself justified in his conduct. Hence, the legal expressions (e.g., “complete drunkenness” of Austrian criminal law, and “unconsciousness” of the German imperial criminal statute book) will in practice be pushed one degree higher up than ordinary usage intends. For complete intoxication or drunkenness into loss of consciousness usually means that condition in which the individual lies stiff on the ground. But in this condition he can not do anything, and is incapable of committing a crime. It must follow that the statutes could not have been thinking of this, but of the condition in which the individual is still active and able to commit crimes by the use of his limbs, but absolutely without the control of those limbs.

If we compare innumerable stories that are told, with verbal reliability, about drunkards, or those that are readable in daily papers, police news, and in legal texts, we find groups in which a drunkard makes his bed on a wintry night on a snow bank, undresses himself, carefully folds his clothes beside him, and runs away at the approach of a policeman, climbs over a fence and runs so fast that he can not be caught. Such a man certainly has not only the use of his organs, but also uses them with comparative correctness in undressing, folding his clothes, and in running away. If now somebody should pass the drunkard’s lair and if he should think that a burglar is in his house and should wound the passer-by, who would believe the drunkard when he tells this story?

In the street there is frequent opportunity of observing some of the arrests of drunkards who fight with fists and feet and teeth, and often have to be taken to the police station in a wheel-barrow. Now if the man has had the misfortune of recognizing the policeman in his first opposition, and of giving his own name properly, we say that he has “shown definite signs of responsibility,” and we sentence him. But in most cases it was merely the instantaneous illumination of his cindery mind (which was, perhaps, stimulated to the recognition of the policeman and the pronunciation of his name by the latter’s rather bearish remarks)