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

title="{308}"> and also with a determining trait of woman. For example, the saying, “On forbidden ground woman is cautious and man keen,” may, under some circumstances, be of great importance in a criminal case, particularly when it is necessary to fix the sex of the criminal. If the crime was cautiously committed a woman may be inferred, and if swiftly, a man. But that maxim is deficient in two respects. Man and woman deal in the way described, not only in forbidden fields, but generally. Again, such characteristics may be said to be ordinary but in no wise regulative: there are enough cases in which the woman was much keener than the man and the man much more cautious than the woman.

The greatest danger of false conceptions lies in the attribution of an unproved peculiarity to woman, by means of some beautifully expressed, and hence, apparently true, proverb. Consider the well known maxim: Man forgives a beautiful woman everything, woman nothing. Taken in itself the thing is true; we find it in the gossip of the ball-room, and in the most dreadful of criminal cases. Men are inclined to reduce the conduct of a beautiful sinner to the mildest and least offensive terms, while her own sex judge her the more harshly in the degree of her beauty and the number of its partisans. Now it might be easy in an attempt to draw the following consequences from the correctness of this proposition: Men are generally inclined to forgive in kindness, women are the unforgiving creatures. This inference would be altogether unjustified, for the maxim only incidentally has woman for its subject; it might as well read: Woman forgives a handsome man everything, man nothing. What we have at work here is the not particularly remarkable fact that envy plays a great rôle in life.

Another difficulty in making use of popular truths in our own observations, lies in their being expressed in more or less definite images. If you say, for example, “Man begs with words, woman with glances,” you have a proposition that might be of use in many criminal cases, inasmuch as things frequently depend on the demonstration that there was or was not an amour between two people (murder of a husband, relation of the widow with a suspect).

Now, of course, the judge could not see how they conversed together, how he spoke stormily and she turned her eyes away. But suppose that the judge has gotten hold of some letters—then if he makes use of the maxim, he will observe that the man becomes more explicit than the woman, who, up to a certain limit, remains ashamed. So if the man speaks very definitely in his letters, there is no evidence contradictory to the inference of their relationship, even though nothing similar is to be found in her letters. The thing may be expressed in another maxim: What he wants is in the lines; what she wants between the lines.

The great difficulty of distinguishing between man and woman is mentioned in “Levana oder Erziehungslehre,” by Jean Paul, who says, “A woman can not love her child and the four continents of the world at the same time. A man can.” But who has ever seen a man love four continents? “He loves the concept, she the appearance, the particular.” What lawyer understands this? And this? “So long as woman loves, she loves continuously, but man has lucid intervals.” This fact has been otherwise expressed by Grabbe, who says: “For man the world is his heart, for woman her heart is the world.” And what are we to learn from this? That the love of woman is greater and fills her life more? Certainly not. We only see that man has more to do than woman, and this prevents him from depending on his impressions, so that he can not allow himself to be completely captured by even his intense inclinations. Hence the old proverb: Every new affection makes man more foolish and woman wiser, meaning that man is held back from his work and effectiveness by every inclination, while woman, each time, gathers new experiences in life. Of course, man also gets a few of these, but he has other and more valuable opportunities of getting them, while woman, who has not his position in the midst of life, must gather her experiences where she may.

Hence, it remains best to stick to simple, sober discoveries which may be described without literary glamour, and which admit of no exception. Such is the statement by Friedreich[254]: “Woman is more excitable, more volatile and movable spiritually, than man; the mind dominates the latter, the emotions the former. Man thinks more, woman senses more.” These ungarnished, clear words, which offer nothing new, still contain as much as may be said and explained. We may perhaps supplement them with an expression of Heusinger’s, “Women have much reproductive but little productive imaginative power. Hence, there are good landscape and portrait painters among women, but as long as women have painted there has not been any great woman-painter of history. They make poems, romances, and sonnets, but not one of them has written a good tragedy.” This expression shows that the imaginative power of woman is really more reproductive than productive, and it may be so observed in crimes and in the testimony of witnesses.

In crimes, this fact will not be easy to observe in the deed itself, or in the manner of its execution; it will be observable in the nature of the plan used. To say that the plan indicates productive creation would not be to call it original. Originality can not be indicated, without danger of misunderstanding, by means of even a single example; we have simply to cling to the paradigm of Heusinger, and to say, that when the plan of a criminal act appears more independent and more completely worked out, it may be assumed to be of masculine origin; if it seeks support, however, if it is an imitation of what has already happened, if it aims to find outside assistance during its execution, its originator was a woman. This truth goes so far that in the latter case the woman must be fixed upon as the intellectual source of the plan, even though the criminal actually was a man. The converse inference could hardly be held with justice. If a man has thought out a plan which a woman is to execute, its fundamental lines are wiped out and the woman permits the productive aspect of the matter to disappear, or to become so indefinite that any sure conclusion on the subject is impossible.

Our phenomenon is equally important in statements by witnesses. In many a case in which we suppose the whole or a portion of a witness’s testimony to be incorrect, intentionally invented, or involuntarily imagined, we may succeed in extracting a part of the testimony as independent construction, and thus determining what might be incorrect in it. If, when this happens, the witness is a man and his lies show themselves in productive form, and if the witness is a woman and her lies appear to be reproduced, it is possible, at least, that we are being told untruths. The procedure obviously does not in itself contain anything evidential, but it may at least excite suspicion and thus caution, and that, in many cases, is enough. I may say of my own work that I have often gained much advantage from this method. If there were any suspicion that the testimony of a witness, especially the conception of some committed crime, was untrue, I recalled Heusinger, and asked myself “If the thing is untrue, is it a sonnet or a tragedy?” If the answer was “tragedy” and the witness a man, or, if the answer was “sonnet” and the witness a woman, I concluded that everything was possibly invented, and grew quite cautious. If I could come to no conclusion, I was considerably helped by Heusinger’s other proposition, asking myself, “Flower-pictures or historical subjects?” And here again I found something to go by, and the need to be suspicious. I repeat, no evidence is to be attained in this way, but we frequently win when we are warned beforehand.

(3) Sexual Peculiarities. Section 65. (a) General Considerations.

Even if we know that hunger and love are not the only things that sustain impulse, we also know the profound influence that love and all that depends upon it exercise from time immemorial on the course of events. This being generally true, the question of the influence of sex on woman is more important than that of its influence on man, for a large number of profound conditions are at work in the former which are absent in the latter. Hence, it is in no way sufficient to consider only the physiological traits of the somatic life of woman, i.e., menstruation, pregnancy, child-birth, the suckling period, and finally the climacterium. We must study also the possibly still more important psychical conditions which spring from the feminine nature and are developed by the demands of civilization and custom. We must ask what it means to character when an individual is required from the moment puberty begins, to conceal something for a few days every month; what it means when this secrecy is maintained for a long time during pregnancy, at least toward children and the younger people. Nor can it be denied that the custom which demands more self-control in women must exercise a formative influence on their natures. Our views do not permit the woman to show without great indirection whom she hates or whom she likes; nor may she indicate clearly whom she loves, nor must she appear solicitous. Everything must happen indirectly, secretly, and approximately, and if this need is inherited for centuries, it must, as a characteristic, impart a definite expression to the sex. This expression is of great importance to the criminalist; it is often enough to recall these circumstances in order to find explanation for a whole series of phenomena. What differences the modern point of view and modern tendencies will make remains to be seen.

Let us now consider particular characteristics.

Section 66. (b) Menstruation.

We men, in our own life, have no analogy, not even a remote one, to this essentially feminine process. In the mental life of woman it is of greater importance than we are accustomed to suppose. In most cases in which it may be felt that the fact of menstruation influences a crime or a statement of facts, it will be necessary to make use of the court physician, who must report to the judge. The latter absolutely must understand the fact and influence of menstruation. Of course he must also have general knowledge of the whole matter, but he must require the court physician definitely to tell him when the event began and whether any diseased conditions were apparent. Then it is the business of the judge to interpret the physician’s report psychologically—and the judge knows neither more nor less psychology, according to his training, than the physician. Any text-book on physiology will give the important facts about menstruation. It is important for us to know that menses begin, in our climate, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth year, and end between the forty-fifth and the fiftieth year. The periods are normally a solar month—from twenty-seven to twenty-eight days, and the menstruation lasts from three to five days. After its conclusion the sexual impulse, even in otherwise frigid women, is in most cases intensified. It is important, moreover, to note the fact that most women, during their periods, show a not insignificant alteration of their mental lives, often exhibiting states of mind that are otherwise foreign to them.

As in many cases it is impossible without other justification to ask whether menses have begun, it is worth while knowing that most women menstruate, according