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

a long time the inexplicability of love and sexual impulse were offered as excuses, but these otherwise mighty factors had to be assigned such remarkable and self-contradictory aspects that only one confusion was added to another and called explanation. Now suppose we try to explain them by means of the maternal instinct. Section 69. (e) Submerged Sexual Factors.

The criminal psychologist finds difficulties where hidden impulses are at work without seeming to have any relation to their results. In such cases the starting-point for explanation is sought in the wrong direction. I say starting-point, because “motive” must be conscious, and “ground” might be misunderstood. We know of countless criminal cases which we face powerless because we do indeed know the criminal but are unable to explain the causal connection between him and the crime, or because, again, we do not know the criminal, and judge from the facts that we might have gotten a clew if we had understood the psychological development of the crime. If we seek for “grounds,” we may possibly think of so many of them as never to approach the right one; if we seek motives, we may be far misled because we are able only to bring the criminal into connection with his success, a matter which he must have had in mind from the beginning. It is ever easy for us when motive and crime are in open connection: greed, theft; revenge, arson; jealousy, murder; etc. In these cases the whole business of examination is an example in arithmetic, possibly difficult, but fundamental. When, however, from the deed to its last traceable grounds, even to the attitude of the criminal, a connected series may be discovered and yet no explanation is forthcoming, then the business of interpretation has reached its end; we begin to feel about in the dark. If we find nothing, the situation is comparatively good, but it is exceedingly bad in the numerous cases in which we believe ourselves to have sighted and pursued the proper solution.

Such a hidden source or starting-point of very numerous crimes is sex. That it often works invisibly is due to the sense of shame. Therefore it is more frequent in women. The hidden sexual starting-point plays its part in the little insignificant lie of an unimportant woman witness, as well as in the poisoning of a husband for the sake of a paramour still to be won. It sails everywhere under a false flag; nobody permits the passion to show in itself; it must receive another name, even in the mind of the woman whom it dominates.

The first of the forms which the sexual impulse takes is false piety, religiosity. This is something ancient. Friedreich points to the connection between religious activity and the sexual organization, and cites many stories about saints, like that of the nun Blanbekin, of whom it was said, “eam scire desiderasse cum lacrimis, et moerore maximo, ubinam esset praeputium Christi.” The holy Veronica Juliani, in memory of the lamb of God, took a lamb to bed with her and nursed it at her breast. Similarly suggestive things are told of St. Catherine of Genoa, of St. Armela, of St. Elizabeth, of the Child Jesus, etc. Reinhard says correctly that sweet memories are frequently nothing more or less than outbursts of hidden passion and attacks of sensual love. Seume is mistaken in his assertion that mysticism lies mainly in weakness of the nerves and colic—it lies a span deeper.

The use of this fact is simple. We must discover whether a woman is morally pure or sensual, etc. This is important, not only in violations of morality, but in every violation of law. The answers we receive to questions on this matter are almost without exception worthless or untrue, because the object of the question is not open to view, is difficult to observe, and is kept hidden from even the nearest. Our purpose is, therefore, best attained by directing the question to religious activity, religiosity, and similar traits. These are not only easy to perceive, but are openly exhibited because of their nature. Whoever assumes piety, does so for the sake of other people, therefore does not hide it. If religious extravagance can be reliably confirmed by witnesses, it will rarely be a mistake to assume inclination to more or less stifled sexual pleasure.

Examples of the relationship are known to every one of us, but I want to cite two out of my own experience as types. In one of them the question turned on the fact that a somewhat old, unmarried woman had appropriated certain rather large trust sums and had presented them to her servant. At first every suspicion of the influence of sex was set aside. Only the discovery of the fact that in her ostentatious piety she had set up an altar in her house, and compelled her servant to pray at it in her company, called attention to the deep interest of this very moral maiden in her servant.

The second case dealt with the poisoning of an old, impotent husband by his young wife. The latter was not suspected by anybody, but at her examination drew suspicion to herself by her unctuous, pious appearance. She was permitted to express herself at length on religious themes and showed so very great a love of saints and religious secrets that it was impossible to doubt that a glowing sensuality must be concealed underneath this religious ash. Adultery could not be proved, she must have for one reason or another avoided it, and that her impotent husband was unsatisfactory was now indubitable. The supposition that she wanted to get rid of him in order to marry somebody else was now inevitable; and as this somebody else was looked for and discovered, the adduction of evidence of her guilt was no longer difficult.

How captious it is to prove direct passion and to attach reasonable suspicion thereto, and how necessary it is, first of all, to establish what the concealing material is, is shown in a remark of Kraus,[265] who asserts that the wife never affects to be passionate with her husband; her desire is to seduce him and she could not desire that if she were not passionate. This assertion is only correct in general. It is not, however, true that woman has no reason for affectation, for there are enough cases in which some woman, rendered with child by a poor man, desires to seduce a man of wealth in order to get a wealthy father for her child. In such and similar cases, the woman could make use of every trick of seduction without needing to be in the least passionately disposed.

Another important form of submerged sexuality is ennui. Nobody can say what ennui is, and everybody knows it most accurately. Nobody would say that it is burdensome, and yet everybody knows, again, that a large group of evil deeds spring from ennui. It is not the same as idleness; I may be idle without being bored, and I may be bored although I am busy. At best, boredom may be called an attitude which the mind is thrown into because of an unsatisfied desire for different things. We speak of a tedious region, a tedious lecture, and tedious company only by way of metonymy—we always mean the emotional state they put us into. The internal condition is determinative, for things that are boresome to one may be very interesting to another. A collection, a library, a lecture, are all tedious and boresome by transposition of the emotional state to the objective content, and in this way the idea of boredom gets a wide scope. We, however, shall speak of boredom as an emotional state. We find it most frequently among girls, young women, and among undeveloped or feminine men as a very significant phenomenon. So found, it is that particular dreamful, happy, or unhappy attitude expressed in desire for something absent, in quiet reproaches concerning the lack of the satisfaction of that desire, with the continually recurring wish for filling out an inner void. The basis of all this is mainly sex. It can not be proved as such mathematically, but experience shows that the emotional attitude occurs only in the presence of sexual energy, that it is lacking when the desires are satisfied, but that otherwise, even the richest and best substitution can offer no satisfaction. It is not daring, therefore, to infer the erotic starting-point. Again we see how the moralizing and training influence of rigidly-required work suppresses all superfluous states which themselves make express demands and might want complete satisfaction.

But everything has its limits, and frequently the gentle, still power of sweet ennui is stronger than the pressure and compulsion of work. When this power is present, it never results in good, rarely in anything indifferent, and frequently forbidden fruit ripens slowly in its shadow. Nobody will assert that ennui is the cause of illicit relations, of seduction, of adultery and all the many sins that depend on it—from petty misappropriations for the sake of the beloved, to the murder of the unloved husband. But ennui is for the criminal psychologist a sign that the woman was unsatisfied with what she had and wanted something else. From wishing to willing, from willing to asking, is not such a great distance. But if we ask the repentant sinner when she began to think of her criminal action we always learn that she suffered from incurable ennui, in which wicked thoughts came and still more wicked plans were hatched. Any experienced criminal psychologist will tell you, when you ask him, whether he has been much subject to mistakes in trying to explain women’s crimes from the starting-point of their ennui. The neighborhood knows of the periods of this ennui, and the sinner thinks that they are almost discovered if she is asked about them. Cherchez la femme, cherchez l’amour; cherchez l’ennui; and hundreds of times you find the solution.

Conceit, too, may be caused by hidden sexuality. We need only to use the word denotatively, for when we speak of the conceit of a scholar, an official, or a soldier, we mean properly the desire for fame, the activity of getting oneself praised and recognized. Conceit proper is only womanish or a property of feminine men, and just as, according to Darwin, the coloration of birds, insects, and even plants serves only the purposes of sexual selection and has, therefore, sexual grounds, so also the conceit of woman has only sexual purpose. She is conceited for men alone even though through the medium of other women. As Lotze wrote in his “Mikrokosmus,” “Everything that calls attention to her person without doing her any harm is instinctively used by woman as a means in sexual conflict.” There is much truth in the terms “means” and “sexual conflict.” The man takes the battle up directly, and if we deal with this subject without frills we may not deny that animals behave just as men do. The males battle directly with each other for the sake of the females, who are compelled to study how to arouse this struggle for their person, and thus hit upon the use of conceit in sexual conflict. That women are conceited does not much matter to us criminal psychologists; we know it and do not need to be told. But the forms in which their conceit expresses itself are important; its consequences and its relation to other conditions are important.

To make use of feminine conceit in the court-room is not an art but an unpermissible trick which might lead too far. Whoever wants to succeed with women, as Madame de Rieux says, “must bring their self-love into play.” And St. Prospère: “Women are to be sought not through their senses—their weakness is in their heart and conceit.” These properties are, however, so powerful that they may easily lead to