Rebel Without a Cause
Page 1
Copyright © 1971 Mrs. Robert Lindner
First Other Press Edition 2003
E-book ISBN: 978-1-59051-720-8
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means. electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Lindner, Robert Mitchell, 1914—1956.
Rebel without a cause : the story of a criminal psychopath / by Robert M. Lindner.
p. cm.
Previously published: New York: Grune & Stratton, 1944.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-59051-024-0
1. Antisocial personality disorders—Case studies. 2. Hypnotism—Therapeutic use—Case studies. 3. Psychoanalysis—Case studies. 4. Criminal psychology—Case studies. I. Title.
RC555.L553 2002
616. 85′82—dc21
2002029306
v3.1
TO
JOHNNIE
WHO KNEW IT ALL THE TIME
AND TO
HAROLD
WHO IS NOT AFRAID
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
THE PROBLEM: CRIMINAL PSYCHOPATHY
I. Psychological Aspects
II. Physiological Aspects
III. Sociological Aspects
IV. Political Aspects
THE METHOD: HYPNOANALYSIS
I. History and Characteristics
II. Technique
THE RESULTS
The Formal Case History
The First Hour
The Second Hour
The Third Hour
The Fourth Hour
The Fifth Hour
The Sixth Hour
The Seventh Hour
The Eighth Hour
The Ninth Hour
The Tenth Hour
The Eleventh Hour
The Twelfth Hour
The Thirteenth Hour
The Fourteenth Hour
The Fifteenth Hour
The Sixteenth Hour
The Seventeenth Hour
The Eighteenth Hour
The Nineteenth Hour
The Twentieth Hour
The Twenty-first Hour
The Twenty-second Hour
The Twenty-third Hour
The Twenty-fourth Hour
The Twenty-fifth Hour
The Twenty-sixth Hour
The Twenty-seventh Hour
The Twenty-eighth Hour
The Twenty-ninth Hour
The Thirtieth Hour
The Thirty-first Hour
The Thirty-second Hour
The Thirty-third Hour
The Thirty-fourth Hour
The Thirty-fifth Hour
The Thirty-sixth Hour
The Thirty-seventh Hour
The Thirty-eighth Hour
The Thirty-ninth Hour
The Fortieth Hour
The Forty-first Hour
The Forty-second Hour
The Forty-third Hour
The Forty-fourth Hour
The Forty-fifth Hour
The Forty-sixth Hour
SUMMARY
I. Hypnoanalytic Therapy
II. Conclusions
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
Theodore Roosevelt, on his first inspection of prisons, is said to have remarked that those fortresses of steel and stone were built to guard against the escape of but a small percentage of the inmates; and that it is absurd, cruel and wasteful to compel perhaps 80 or 90 per cent of the prison group to suffer the robotizing influences of prison incarceration because of the fear that 10 or 20 per cent might escape.
Among those likely to escape are the most puzzling and recalcitrant criminals, the group known as the “psychopathic personalities” or “constitutional psychopathic inferiors.” Studies in various prisons, reformatories and jails usually disclose that this class comprises some 15 to 20 per cent of the inmate population. They bedevil the administration for other prisoners and the directive personnel. They are among the ring-leaders in planning escapades. They resort to assaults upon guards and fellow-prisoners. They are, in a nutshell, the truly dangerous, “hard-boiled,” “wise guy” and least reformable offenders.
While the indicia of the psychopathic personality frequently overlap various “borderline” conditions of true psychotic and psychoneurotic groups, the psychopath, as a composite “type,” can be distinguished from the person sliding into or clambering out of a “true psychotic” state by the long and tough persistence of his anti-social attitude and behavior and the absence of hallucinations, delusions, manic flight of ideas, confusion, disorientation and other dramatic signs of psychoses.*
Penologists and prison psychiatrists usually content themselves with demanding that psychopaths be “segregated” so that the program for the rest of the inmates may proceed more smoothly. Dr. Robert Lindner, the author of this book, is one of the first prison workers in the world to go beyond such a program of temporary convenience and probe skillfully and with illuminative insight into the psyche of the most recalcitrant among criminals.
Although we are not competent to pass a technical judgment upon the method of “hypnoanalysis,” so vividly illustrated in this book (a telescoped psychoanalytic technique employed by the author in analyzing and reconstructing the mental life of a psychopath), we nevertheless venture to suggest that his work marks a significant milestone on the rough and failure-strewn road of Criminology; for it indicates that it is possible to bridge the crucial gap between the outer and inner life of offenders and trace the intricate process whereby the stuff of environment is selected and “introjected,” psychologically masticated and digested, and absorbed into the pre-existing dynamic system of the mind to influence future attitude and propel subsequent behavior.
Long ago, Samuel Butler wisely observed that “a life will be successful or not, according as the power of accomodation is equal or unequal to the strain of fusing and adjusting internal and external changes.” It is this delicate yet crucial process that Dr. Lindner has so convincingly delineated. In this respect he has taken a step well ahead of the great majority of contemporary criminologists. Whether attributing major causal force to environmental factors or placing most stress on hereditary disposition, or (as in the case of Lombroso) on hereditary predestination to a life of crime, they fail to describe the subtle and deep-stirring interplay of emotion and experience involved in generating antisocial attitude and behavior.
We do not know whether hypnoanalysis will develop sufficiently to take its place on an equal plane with the now scientifically “respectable,” but until recently much-maligned, technique of psychoanalysis. If it does, it will be a great boon in reducing the time and expense required for the exploration of the tangled webs of the psyche and the hygienic reorientation of the personality. Nor do we know whether, in the majority of the cases in which it is applied, it will go beyond diagnostic dissection to permanent reconstruction of the personality. But we cannot help being impressed with the rich potentialities of the technique so graphically described by Dr. Lindner, as an instrument for getting below the surface of much puzzling criminalistic behavior.
Starting as a pioneer scientific
experiment subject to the critical scrutiny of other investigators, Dr. Lindner’s work will, we hope, stimulate further and more varied experimentation; so that in the years to come, Penology may have the same creative spurt that Psychiatry has only recently experienced through the vitalizing infiltration of Psychoanalysis, the shock therapies, and psychosomatic medicine. Assuredly, any process of diagnosing and treating offenders that is more promising than the almost bankrupt procedures now employed by society is to be given full encouragement.
If hypnoanalysis should be applied more generally in the study and treatment of offenders, it might make an even more significant contribution to the philosophy and techniques of the Criminal Law than to the rehabilitation of numbers of offenders. For it discloses with dramatic clarity the superficiality of an ancient system of symbols and rituals based upon such outworn notions as “guilt,” “criminal intent,” “knowledge of right and wrong,” and the other paraphernalia developed long before the dawn of Biology, Psychiatry and Psychology and but little in advance of primitive law.
The history book of Criminology and Penology is blotted with wreckage of oversimplified conceptions of criminalistic behavior and “cures” for crime. Perhaps Dr. Lindner’s work will turn up a brighter page. At all events, he is to be congratulated upon a courageous and ingenious pioneer endeavor.
His book is not intended for the layman. The psychiatrist and psychologist of any school of thought or therapy, the alert judge of a juvenile or adult criminal court, the thoughtful clergyman, the criminologist of inquiring mind, the penologist who conceives his job in higher terms than as keeper of a zoo for human derelicts, and the educator of vision should find this work instructive and provocative. It is especially to be prescribed as sobering medicine for both the physical anthropologist and the sociologist concerned with criminals.
SHELDON AND ELEANOR GLUECK
Cambridge, Mass.
February, 1944
* The psychopathic personality most nearly approaches the “born criminal type” described so minutely by Lombroso.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
This writer’s concern both with hypnoanalysis and psychopathic personality goes back at least five years to the time when he was first called upon to learn about—and do something about—psychopaths and psychopathic personality. It was in this effort to understand that peculiar variety of behavior that the first experiments with hypnoanalysis were undertaken. Therefore it is fitting that this puzzling disorder should form the vehicle to expound and illustrate a technique which seems to offer certain advantages in the exploration and treatment of psychogenic and behavior disorders.
In preparing the material for publication, the writer was torn between two desires which apparently exerted almost equal weight. He was anxious to offer for discussion and experiment a psychotherapeutic technique of promise especially at a time when it could be used to such advantage in the armed services and on the home front where the strains of living in a period of chaos are reflected in mental casualties. At the same time, he earnestly desired to present the findings of research with a type of personality disorder that is responsible for much of crime and has broad social and even political implications. If this book does both, it will have realized such intentions.
The dedication acknowledges only a fraction of the author’s indebtedness. Many of those persons who worked long and hard to bring to fruition what lies between these covers must remain nameless, although some have borne and bear now identifying numbers. Foremost among those who can be named are Prof. Sheldon Glueck and Dr. Eleanor Glueck, Dr. Bernard Glueck, Dr. Hervey Cleckley, Dr. Milton H. Erickson and Professor Philip L. Harriman—all of whom have been sources of inspiration and encouragement. To the United States Public Health Service which has the vision and daring to encourage research in human behavior is due an obligation that can never be repaid.
Finally, the reader is reminded that all opinions expressed herein are the responsibility of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Service to which he is attached.
ROBERT M. LINDNER
Lewisburg, Pa.
January 1944
THE PROBLEM: CRIMINAL PSYCHOPATHY
I
Man has always sought to understand himself and his universe by the simple mechanics of sorting. The nicety of this operation, its precision and incisiveness, its sterility and keenness, is best understood by modern man who, even in his confusion about himself and his destiny, has invented a myriad of categories, rubrics, classification schemes, statistical techniques and pigeonholes to lend order to the chaos about him. This modern proclivity for sorting is nowhere better demonstrated than in those sciences in which man deals with man—psychology, psychiatry, sociology—where with consummate artistry stiffly parading as diagnostics, the species is dissected and labelled, named and branded, tagged and stamped.
Among those categories by which man describes his fellow-man is one that has served as a miscellany for many decades. It is only half-understood and less than half-appreciated. It is a Pandora’s box, brimful with the makings for a malignant social and political scourge. The name of this category is psychopathic personality. Its half-understood nature, evidenced by the multitude of terms by which it has been and is called—constitutional psychopathic inferiority, moral imbecility, semantic dementia, moral insanity, sociopathy, anethopathy, moral mania, egopathy, tropopathy, etc.—is further attested to by the contradictory multiplicity of its signs and symptoms. All those characteristics which, by any count, may be considered the negative of qualities suitable for current civilized communal living, have at one time or another been assigned to the individual called ‘psychopath.’ And, in truth, there is no other way in which he can be described except by reference to the social order in which he happens to exist. Those searchers of the soul—psychiatrists and psychologists—have wasted much fine paper in vain attempts to attach a single group of signs to the disorder, unfortunately neglecting to extend their scientific objectivity to the proposition that psychopathic behavior is relative to the culture in which it flourishes and can be measured by no other rule than that of the prevailing ethic and morality. So in a society where total abstinence is mandatory—as among the Brahmins of India—a sign of psychopathy would be inebriation: and, among the prostitute priestesses of Astarte, the persistent continence of a beauteous devotee consecrated to the distribution of erotic favors would indicate a psychopathic trend. In short, psychopathy is a disorder of behavior which affects the relationship of an individual to the social setting.
Symptomatologically, then, the description of psychopathy derives from the consideration of the culture in which it appears and to which it is relative. Considered in this light, the psychopath, like Johnstone’s rogue-elephant, is a rebel, a religious dis-obeyer of prevailing codes and standards. Moreover, clinical experience with such individuals makes it appear that the psychopath is a rebel without a cause, an agitator without a slogan, a revolutionary without a program: in other words, his rebelliousness is aimed to achieve goals satisfactory to himself alone; he is incapable of exertions for the sake of others. All his efforts, hidden under no matter what guise, represent investments designed to satisfy his immediate wishes and desires.
Now the wish for immediate satisfaction is an infantile characteristic. Unlike more or less matured adults, the child cannot wait upon suitable circumstances for the fulfillment of its needs. Where the adult can postpone luncheon for a few hours, the infant expresses hunger-frustration by crying or other perhaps more aggressive techniques. In the early stages of development, when a need of the organism is apprehended it is followed instantly by the type of behavior expressive of the need. The psychopath, like the child, cannot delay the pleasures of gratification; and this trait is one of his underlying, universal characteristics. He cannot wait upon erotic gratification which convention demands should be preceded by the chase before the kill: he must rape. He cannot wait upon the development of prestige in society: his egoistic
ambitions lead him to leap into headlines by daring performances. Like a red thread the predominance of this mechanism for immediate satisfaction runs through the history of every psychopath. It explains not only his behavior but also the violent nature of his acts.
Beyond the wish for instantaneous gratification, psychopathic behavior may be compared with infancy in other ways. As a matter of fact, psychopathy is, in essence, a prolongation of infantile patterns and habits into the stage of physiological adultism. The random behavior betrayed in typically psychopathic nomadism, the inability to marshal the requisite determination for the achievement of specific goals of a socially acceptable order—these reflect to a startling degree the loose, undetermined, easily-detoured and almost purposeless conduct of the very young child.
One of the foundation-stones of living rests upon the ability of the psychologically balanced adult to point his behavior toward an object or event and then to attain to this ‘goal’ by regulated, planned, orderly, logical procedures. No matter what the attractions on display in the peep-shows off the midway; no matter what the barriers to be side-stepped, a sequential, sometimes unclear but always relatively pertinent path marks the average adult’s progress toward an accepted goal. Some investigators have, indeed, given this phenomenon prominence in the hierarchy of psychological activities. The fact that the dynamics are often interfered with by influences not under the control of the performing organism, or that the goal changes and surrogates are found to be equally acceptable, alters not one whit the importance of this deterministic attribute of adult life. Actually, this peculiar glue-like perseveration is one of the most amazing of all human capabilities. Into its functional channel flow the streams of memory and thinking, of anticipating and doing. Is it no less remarkable because it is so common that, when I have a letter to mail, I may stop to chat with friends on the way to the post-office, notice an interesting bill-board and decide to attend the evening’s performance, purchase a newspaper and discuss the weather with the news-vendor, window-shop, and then all unconcernedly and without effort deposit my letter in the post-box on my way home? But with the psychopath as with the infant, determined progress toward a goal—unless it is a selfish one capable of immediate realization by a sharply accented spurt of activity—, the dynamic binding together of actional strands, is lacking. As a consequence he is characteristically aimless, choosing ambitions only within the range of the horizon or impossible of attainment, assuming one task merely to put it aside for another, mistaking each attractive by-path for the promised land. He does not develop skills suited to the farm or office or factory although he may, by nature, be endowed amply with manipulative abilities. In this, again, there is a strong suggestion of the child. Like the play-pattern of the very young, he shows an intensiveness, even a brilliance, at the outset of work; but the performance rapidly falls apart into a fitful type of behavior; and what was once interesting and fascinating now disintegrates into repetitious drabness. The limen of satiety is low with the psychopath as with the playing child, and boredom follows rapidly after but a few possibilities of the task or job have been exhausted. A perpetual need for the renewal of energy-outlets is a hall-mark of the disorder.