網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

14 Includes sense of being an "unwanted child" (often justified).

15 Castration-type.

16 Including female relatives or guardians acting in that capacity.

17 Chiefly jealousy of infant children; but includes one instance of jealousy of a petted older brother
dating from time he was crippled.

18 The child being actually illegitimate or a step-child.

19 Repressed experiences only; unrepressed experiences are not included.

20 Includes one pubescent girl with morbid fear of pregnancy.

21 By obscene words or stories heard; or obscene pictures or conduct witnessed.

is none1. Apart altogether from the varying background of bad heredity, bad environment, and bad physique, each at times quite independent of the rest, the psychological defects are themselves most diversesometimes intellectual, sometimes temperamental, in some cases congenital, in others acquired. The criminal is far from constituting a homogeneous psychological class.

(A) INTELLECTUAL FACTORS.

States of general intellectual weakness are, beyond question, of great importance in the causation of crime. Mental deficiency, together with natural dulness not amounting to definite deficiency, stands among the commonest of all the major factors. Of the delinquent boys nearly 10 per cent. owe their delinquency primarily to one or other of these conditions; and, in a further 25 per cent., dulness or deficiency appears as a subordinate factor. Nevertheless, the defectives alone form no very large proportion; and the coefficient of association is much higher between crime and educational backwardness than between crime and mere deficiency. Specific intellectual disabilities seem quite unimportant; indeed, they are perhaps as often the consequence as the cause of youthful laxity.

The totals for intellectual abnormalities are, with the present groups, slightly higher among the male delinquents than among the female. Had the majority been, not school cases, but after-school cases, the incidence of intellectual deficiency, like that of intellectual dulness, would doubtless have fallen more heavily upon the girls. And it is suggestive that, in almost every feminine case where dulness or deficiency was the predominating factor, the girl was an adolescent, and the offence a sexual misdemeanour. In comparing the effects of intellectual weakness among the boys and girls respectively, a difference emerges similar to that remarked in the case of physical weakness. The dull, the defective, and the backward

1 If there is any central factor underlying criminality, it is neither simple nor inborn. Examined by the usual statistical procedure, criminal tendencies appear to be correlated positively one with another, and the table of coefficients shows some approximation to a hierarchy. But any central factor that may be thus implied must be a highly composite one, and dependent quite as much upon environmental influences as upon innate, and quite as much upon extrinsic factors as upon psychological.

2 For a fuller discussion of the connection between intellectual weakness and delinquency, see Mental and Scholastic Tests, pp. 184-190; and Psyche, loc. cit. Vol. II. No. 3, pp. 233–243. It is to be noted that the average association coefficient (Table IV) for the intellectual conditions enumerated in the detailed table (Table VIII) is reduced by the negative correlation between delinquency and the presence of supernormal intelligence.

boys suffer largely by being unfitted for their work; the dull girls, by offering less resistance to their own emotional impulses and less opposition to the corrupt persuasions of others. The difference, however, is only one of degree. Instances of either type are to be found among both

sexes.

(B) EMOTIONAL FACTORS.

The various factors which I have broadly termed emotional1 are by far the most numerous of all (Table VIII). Viewed, too, in the light of 1 A note is needed to indicate very briefly how the elusive task of temperamental assessment was approached.

The strength of the specific instincts and emotions was estimated according to the standard-deviation scale described in my report on the Distribution of Educational Abilities (p. 50). To secure as high a degree of comparability as was possible with different assessors, the several grades were defined in two ways; first, abstractly, in terms of the percentages to be expected for each grade out of a random group of a hundred; secondly, and more concretely, in terms of typical individuals picked out as borderline specimens, upon lines now familiar from the American Army rating-scales.

[ocr errors]

The highest grade in the five-fold scale-the "A" or +2 S.D." group was originally defined as including all who diverged above a line drawn at +1·5 S.D., approximately 7 per cent. of the total distribution. But, in dealing with delinquents, it was found useful to split this (and other) grades into two, by the use of plus and minus signs: thus all who diverged above +2.0 S.D. (that is, in a normal distribution, the highest 2-3 per cent.) were marked "A+," the remainder of this grade (those between +1.5 and +2.0 S.D.) being marked "A-." The cases enumerated in Table VIII (B. 16.) as suffering an excessive development of a specific instinct or emotion, consist of those marked "A+" for that particular quality -of those, that is to say, who deviate above the average of their group by more than twice the standard deviation.

The diagnosis of instability or temperamental deficiency was founded partly upon the average of the gradings for the separate emotions, and partly upon a distinct assessment. A "temperamental defective" was defined as one who, without being also intellectually defective, exhibited from birth or from an early age, the same degree of control over his instincts and emotions generally, as would be exhibited by an average child of half his chronological age or less, or (in the case of an adult) by an average child under eight; this roughly coincides with those marked, for general emotionality, "A+" (above +2.0 S.D.), after those defective in general intelligence (a large proportion) have been eliminated. An "unstable" was defined as one who, in the middle of his school career, would appear retarded in the development of emotional control by about two years, or, more generally, retarded at every age by over 15 per cent. of his chronological age; this group broadly corresponds with those marked “A –” (above +1·5 S.D.) for general emotionality. Special precautions, however, were needful to avoid missing the repressed or sensitive types of instability, whose feelings are often so masked that to a first superficial glance they appear unemotional and even phlegmatic. It would seem that, in general proportions, these two groups-the unstable and the temperamentally deficient roughly correspond, upon the emotional side, to the two groups designated, on the intellectual side, respectively as dull and as defective.

Psychologically, temperamental deficiency is simply an extreme degree of inborn emotional instability; socially, it comprehends all those who, upon temperamental grounds, need supervision or custodial care for their own protection or for that of others; clinically, just as the intellectually defective comprise a small proportion of definitely pathological

the average association-coefficients (Table IV), delinquency depends much more closely upon emotional conditions than upon intellectual conditions, although it is the intellectual status of the delinquent that has hitherto monopolised the main interest of criminal psychology. The correlation is greatest in the case of specific instincts and emotions. For these the calculated coefficient is among the highest in the table. For the more general emotional conditions, and for the presence of defective or undesirable interests, it is also significantly large. For the influence of repressed complexes no statistical assessment can be offered, since no analysis of such mechanisms was attempted with the non-delinquents. It will be noted, however, that there are, among the delinquents, three times as many "repressed" personalities (often neurotic or psychoneurotic) as among the law-abiding children.

The total figures for major factors of the several kinds (Table II) reveal at once the high predominance both of general emotionality, on the one hand, and of specific instincts and emotions, on the other. Specific instinctive tendencies-chiefly those of sex, anger, wandering, acquisitiveness, and suggestibility1-and general emotionality-chiefly in the form of instability, either adolescent or inborn-together constitute nearly one quarter of the major factors among the boys and nearly one-third among the girls. If to these we add all instances where the major factor was a repressed emotional complex, we have accounted for the principal causes among nearly one-half of the entire delinquent group.

The totals for all factors, principal and subordinate (Table II), exhibit emotional conditions as more prevalent among the delinquent girls than among the delinquent boys. This difference, however, springs mainly from the greater frequency of general instability and of repressed complexes among the girls. On the other hand, the delinquent boys seem characterised rather by defective or undesirable interests, and by the over-development of specific instincts. In these respects sex-differences

types, so also a prolonged study will at length disclose that many of the temperamentally defective are undoubtedly "psychopathic,"- -a term by which I understand congenital cases of borderline or incipient insanity, the line between amentia and dementia, being, in my view, far less rigid, at any rate upon the temperamental side, than is commonly assumed. The "neurotic" (those suffering from one or other of the recognised neuroses) fall, with this classification, under "repressed unstables." A few constitutionally excitable children, popularly dubbed “hysterical," have been grouped under the uninhibited or “unrepressed" type.

1 Suggestibility itself is perhaps not strictly classifiable as an instinct, but in children at any rate it seems chiefly to arise from a well-recognised instinct, namely, that of submissiveness. The transference of emotion from a complex, however, usually operates as well.

of a somewhat similar nature are to be discerned among the normals. As to particular instincts and emotions, the delinquent girls are marked by an inborn liability to outbreaks of sex and bad temper; the delinquent boys by an excessive liveliness of the migratory, the acquisitive, and the self-assertive instincts. In both sexes a disproportionate percentage of the delinquents seem singularly insusceptible to the inhibitory feelings— pain1, sorrow, fear2, and affection.

COMPLEXES.

Repressed complexes are perhaps not so much themselves the causes of crime, as part of the mental machinery through which the ulterior causes operate. I have classed them as principal factors whenever the delinquency was at length cleared up by a protracted analysis, or whenever the child showed a visible amendment after removal from a source of current conflict. Many of the "complexes" are indeed complex; and that in the highest degree. Their varying elements and distinguishable aspects are exceedingly numerous; and each is recorded separately under a separate heading in the table. Thus, though the cases analysed are few, the total entries are considerable. In spite of this, the figures shown for the frequency of such mechanisms still yield, in all probability, a gross under-estimate. Analytic treatment could only be undertaken when there seemed a reasonable likelihood that it might issue in a practical benefit, or at least cast a gleam of theoretical light upon the genesis of the moral trouble; and even then, from the exigencies of my work, it was impossible to push home the analysis in every case with ideal completeness. With the delinquent boys, in particular, this mode of approach proved difficult and slow; and here, most of all, the percentages may be too slender.

Complexes similar to those discovered among delinquents and neurotics could, with sufficient exploration, be discovered among normals. Indeed, in spite of all the thorough work by the various psycho-analytic schools, it still remains something of a mystery why complexes, apparently identical, should produce abnormal symptoms in one person and

1 The seeming insusceptibility to pain often amounts, in these self-offered little martyrs, to a definite and perverse pleasure in pain (masochism). Pain, like every sensory stimulus, is in a mild degree pleasurable to all. But, with some, the borderline between pleasant and unpleasant pain is abnormally high; and even an intense smarting is welcomed as delightfully pungent. The bearing of this upon corporal punishment is too obvious to be indicated.

2 Many of the younger delinquents, however, are not fearless, but timid (see Table); and so by nature secretive.

« 上一頁繼續 »