CHAPTER 5
“To Classify and Analyze Emotional Persons”
The Mistake of the Machines
“I’ve been reading,” said Flambeau, “of this new psychometric
method they talk about so much, especially in America. You
know what I mean; they put a pulsometer on a man’s wrist and
judge by how his heart goes at the pronunciation of certain
words. What do you think of it?”
“I think it very interesting,” replied Father Brown; “it reminds
me of that interesting idea in the Dark Ages that blood would
flow from a corpse if the murderer touched it.”
“Do you really mean,” demanded his friend, “that you think
the two methods equally valuable?”
“I think them equally valueless,” replied Brown. “Blood flows,
fast or slow, in dead folk or living, for so many more million
reasons than we can ever know.”
—G. K. Chesterton, The Mistake of the Machine (1914)
By the time G. K. Chesterton wrote his Father Brown detective story, “The Mistake of the Machines,” an instrument known as an “electric psychometer” had acquired a notorious reputation in the American press. Newspaper reporters were fascinated by this and other “soul machines,” “truth-compelling machines,” and “machines to cure liars.”1 But none of these devices were lie detectors in the sense that the term has been understood since the 1920s. There were many continuities between the years these instruments attained cultural prominence (1900–20), and the subsequent period when the lie detector achieved widespread fame (1920–50). But there was also one crucial discontinuity: the lie detector’s advocates would disown the notion that still preoccupied the scientists described in this chapter, namely, the born criminal.
The first use of the term “lie detector” appears to have been in Charles Walk’s novel The Yellow Circle (1909).2 As early as 1910, some of the machines described below were being used to detect lies—but not by scientists. It was the authors of pulp magazine stories who explored this new possibility. Before about 1915, criminal science had yet to completely abandon its belief in homo criminalis. The scientists described in this chapter used instruments in the hope that they would reveal deviant pathologies of character. Fiction writers, however, were already describing how the very same instruments could be used to detect guilty secrets from the minds of otherwise normal wrongdoers. This fundamental innovation was made in mass circulation magazines. This under-appreciated art form was entirely at ease with the notion that a criminal was merely someone who had been caught out, either in the act of committing a crime or while remembering it later. The revelation that criminals were normal people remained too disagreeable a proposition for positivist science until after the First World War.
Early in June 1907, a reporter for the Sunday New York Times paid a visit to “the famous alienist,” Dr. McLane Hamilton.3 He had come to investigate a “mysterious little machine” that was beginning to attract “the attention of the experts in mental diseases.” The reporter was somewhat intimidated by the “electric psychometer,” he admitted, despite it being “a simple, innocent looking affair.” “I don’t want the thing tested on me,” he proclaimed, “as he sank, rather nervously into one of the capacious chairs in Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton’s studio.” He then explained the reasons for his unease with the “electric measurer of the soul”: “An infallible detector of crime and insanity is ever an uncomfortable thing to come into contact with, and there was a sort of suggestion of inexorable fate in the various scientific appliances and the enigmatic books that furnished the room that made one almost wish for an era when such things as electric psychometers were unknown.”4 Despite his misgivings, the apprehensive reporter contributed to the growing excitement about the new technologies for analyzing the criminal mind and diagnosing mental disease. “It is barely possible,” his piece began, “that Judges and all the paraphernalia of the criminal courts will become superfluous before the century is over,” their place taken by “this new invention, ‘The Electric Psychometer,’ whose inexorable ‘finger of light’ has already revealed more than one culprit to his baffled accusers.”5 “There are few branches of science that have been developed more radically or more quickly than psychology,” asserted Dr. McLane Hamilton. “The old method of examining into morbid conditions was crude.” An “entire revolution” was held to have brought to the study of the mind “an almost mathematical certainty.” “There is hardly a mental function that cannot be determined by a special apparatus, so that now we are able not only to detect the acuteness of perception and the activity of the senses in individual cases, but to actually gauge the rapidity of thought and the specific association of ideas.”6
Another type of “special apparatus” had recently been developed by a young Swiss physician. The aim of Carl Jung’s investigations was to discover “emotional complexes” in his patients. While his colleague Sigmund Freud had used word association purely as an aid in the diagnosis of unconscious neurotic conditions, Jung’s “ingeniously contrived suggestions” succeeded “in awakening sub-conscious trains of thought which in some cases … caused the patient to make declarations of secret matters, and even confessions of guilt.”7 It had proved its efficiency “in the hands of Jung, its discoverer,” prompting him to “assert his conviction that the system is adequate when employed in the detection of crime.” But without the aid of apparatus, the word association method lacked accuracy and precision. The response time to the stimulus word indicated “the relative quickness of that patient’s intelligence” and the response word itself “the association of ideas which had been aroused,” but there was no method of measuring “the degree or quality of emotion caused by the test word.”8 Jung’s solution was to use the word association method in conjunction with “an instrument of the utmost delicacy,” whose operations had already set the scientific world “agog with curiosity”: the galvanometer.
By the time Jung was engaged in this research, galvanic phenomena had been observed in clinical patients for over twenty-five years. Romain Vigoroux, a pupil of Duchenne de Boulogne at the Salpétriêre Hospital, apparently made the first observations of psychological factors in relation to electrodermal phenomena in 1879.9 The technique involved using two electrodes to apply an electrical current of about two volts to the body while measuring concomitant electrical changes with a galvanometer. In 1880, while investigating changes of excitability of motor and sensory nerves, A. D. Waller—who would later become the first physiologist to make an electrocardiogram—had observed irregular galvanometric deflections, which he attributed to alterations of contact between the skin and the electrodes.10 In 1888, Charles Féré, a pupil of Charcot, suggested that the deflections were caused by a lowering of the resistance of the body under the influence of emotional states such as those found in hysteria.11 Having applied no external current, in 1890 Jean de (Ivan) Tarchanoff claimed that the phenomenon occurred in all normal persons. In 1897, G. Sticker attributed the perturbations of the galvanic current to the actions of the capillary system of blood vessels.12 “Whoever is from any cause emotionally roused on looking at a picture will react with a definite increase of the current,” he wrote, “whilst whoever is unmoved by the picture, or in whom it arouses no memory, will have no skin excitation.”13 R. Sommer concluded in 1902 that no psychic influence on the phenomenon could be established with certainty.14 Féré’s work was rediscovered in 1904 by E. K. Müller, and Veraguth labelled the phenomenon the “galvano-psychophysical reflex” in 1906, the year in which Jung began his investigations.15 Jung’s association experiments inspired a great deal of work in the field because it suggested that aspects of “mental” life could be revealed by electrodermal responses.
Jung attached the galvanometer to his patient while applying the word association method.16 This combination of hard and soft technologies resulted in the hope that “the suspected c
riminal or the mental pervert who is the subject of investigation” would be betrayed by electric forces so subtle as to be discernible only through the application of a scientific instrument: “Ordinarily invisible, it is this inner, uncontrollable manifestation which impresses itself upon the electric current that is passing through him, the effect of which is quickly shown, to those who are watching the experiment, in the sudden agitation of the moving ray of light and in the irregular, jagged line—the record, it may be, of the man’s guilt—which is rapidly traced on the revolving cylinder.”17 Some words produced no effect upon the “finger of light” of the psychometer. Others, however, struck “some emotional complex deep in the soul of the individual experimented upon” and sent “the light along the scale for a distance of one centimeter up to six, or eight, or more, in proportion to the intensity and actuality of the emotion aroused.” Under this arrangement the boundary between “the suspected criminal” and “the mental pervert” was quite indistinct. Working in the tradition of the clinical experiment,18 Jung used physiological instrumentation to investigate what he called the “emotional complex.”19
“It is almost like sorcery,” said Professor Frederick Peterson of Columbia University, whose own laboratory was awaiting the delivery of Jung’s “marvelous machine.”20 His allusion to the magical properties of the new technology was echoed by the newspaper reporter who had thought the instrument’s operations reminiscent of “the uncanny movements of a planchette board, whose writing some fifty years ago was thought to be the direct result of a conspiracy on the part of the Evil One.” Trying to make contact with the dead using the Ouija board, however, was but a crude game compared to what could be accomplished with the new machine. “Although the electric psychometer is a new invention,” said Peterson, “it has fortunately gone through a sufficient number of tests to leave no doubt as to its genuine value. It positively does what its discoverer claims it can do, and there thus appears to be no limit to the possible uses to which it may be put in the future wherever the detection of crime or the treatment of mental and nervous diseases engages the attention of mankind.” For Peterson, as for Jung, the detection of crime and the treatment of mental diseases were one of a kind: there was no essential difference between the two projects. At the center of his inquiries Peterson situated specific types of people, as his 1908 article in the British Medical Journal demonstrated. He believed the apparatus was far more accurate for recording physical changes associated with mental function than any already employed, such as the plethysmograph and the pneumograph.21 “Furthermore, its distinctive field seems to be that of recording the effects of emotions upon the organism… . I have given the name ‘electric psychometer’ to the galvanometer thus used.” How such methods might prove useful in attaining knowledge “of hidden matters in the minds of neurasthenics, hysterics, and criminals,” was impossible to foresee; but advocates held that this new and valuable method of exploration in psychology was already “beyond question.”22
Peterson also collaborated with the Wundt-trained Yale psychologist E. W. Scripture, whose enthusiasm for the new psychology of the 1890s had “contained an element of exaggeration and another of egotism,” according to historian of psychology E. G. Boring.23 Scripture’s two popular books, Thinking, Feeling, Doing (1895) and The New Psychology (1897), were both “packed full of pictures of apparatus, graphs and other apt illustrations,” but evidently contained “no argument, no theory, no involved discussion.”24 Scripture’s 1908 paper, “Detection of the Emotions by the Galvanometer,” posited three goals: first, the construction of a self-registering instrument “as complete and handy as a chronoscope”; second, to “definitely settle” the issue of which bodily changes produced which emotional effects; finally, to “classify and analyze emotional persons.”25 “Medical men have so much material with diseased and abnormal minds that we can work most profitably on the pathologic side,” he maintained.
In one of his first papers on the “psychophysical relations of the associative experiment,” Jung described Veraguth’s investigations of the “galvanopsychophysical reflexes.”26 In the course of these experiments, Jung reported, “it was discovered that the action of the galvanometer was not in direct relation with the strength of the irritation, but more especially with the intensity of the resulting psychical feeling tone.”27 Jung was particularly interested in this “psychical feeling tone.” His aim was to use the galvanometer to diagnose pathological “complexes of ideas,” ultimately in the hope of treating dementia praecox—the condition that Eugen Bleuler would rename “schizophrenia” in 1908. The reaction time association experiment, Jung wrote, “is a good means of fathoming and of analyzing the personality.28 According to the opinion of some German authors, this method should be applied for the purpose of tracing the complexes of culpability in criminals who do not confess.”29 Jung’s main concern was evidently the diagnosis of mental pathology, not the unmasking of criminals per se.
In his next paper, a collaboration with Peterson, Jung hoped to compare the galvanometric and pneumographic curves, simultaneously recorded under the influence of various stimuli. The goal was a comparison between normal and insane individuals.30 Jung’s experimental group consisted of patients suffering from epilepsy, dementia praecox, general paralysis, chronic alcoholism, and senile dementia.31 “The galvanic reaction depends on the attention to the stimulus,” he concluded, “and the ability to associate it with other previous occurrences. This association may be conscious but is usually subconscious.”32 But the researchers found the work frustrating due to “nervous tension,” the “forced and artificial situation of the test,” and other “inexplicable influences at work.” Nor were they impressed with their abilities to decipher the relationship “between the galvanometric and pneumographic curves.” A “surprising divergence between the influences at work upon them” produced inconsistencies. With resignation, they reported having studied hundreds of different curves, carefully measuring the length and duration of each inspiration, without managing to decipher any regular relationship or reliable correspondence between them.33 Their aim was not to ascertain guilt but rather to document “the emotions of the subconscious, roused up by questions or words that strike into the buried complexes of the soul.”34
Less than three months after the New York Times had reported on Jung’s experiments, the newspaper carried a sensational article headlined “Invents Machines for ‘Cure of Liars’ / Prof. Munsterberg Experiments to Reduce Knowledge of Truth to Exact Science / Way to Detect Criminals.”35 “Hugo Munsterberg of Harvard University has just crowned the achievements of a life devoted to psychological research by the invention of several little machines to record the emotions and reveal the secrets of the human mind.” One scientist called them “Truth-compelling machines,” another “Machines to cure liars.” Because it was held that Münsterberg had reduced a knowledge of the truth “to an exact science,” claims were made that in a few years “no innocent person will be kept in jail, nor, on the other hand, will any guilty person cheat the demands of justice.”36 Münsterberg was not averse to making similarly sensational statements himself. “To deny that the experimental psychologist has possibilities of determining the truth-telling powers” he told the Times reporter, “is as absurd as to deny that the chemical expert can find out whether there is arsenic in the stomach.” In comparing the experimental psychologist to the chemical expert, Münsterberg was placing psychological knowledge on a par with chemistry. But the existence of so many apparently different “truth-compelling machines” suggested that “the truth” could be obtained through a variety of means. Designed to record the “involuntary writings of the suspect,” the automatograph, for example, consisted of a wooden sling suspended from the ceiling upon which rested the suspect’s arm. The “pneumograph” recorded variations in breathing caused by emotional suggestions, while the “sphygmagraph” recorded the action of the heart. The last instrument, probably a galvanometer, “employ[ed] electricity in the for
m of an instrument somewhat resembling the recording telephone.”
Münsterberg’s work was sufficiently well known for it to be satirized in the press. A reporter from the New York Times described a visit he had apparently made to “Prof. Hugo Monsterwork” at his home to see his “machine for distinguishing true statements from false.” Monsterwork enthused about his “great invention … the wonder of the age” that he had discussed at a recent meeting of the “German-American Metaphysical, Dabbledabble and Subsequent Beer Society.” Some of the other marvels on display at “Villa Psyche” were “liar-detecting machines” such as the “Fibbograph” and the “Mendaxophone,” and other more specialized devices such as the “Ancestrophone,” the “Courtesycometer,” and the “Pie-crustograph.”37 Münsterberg responded to the criticism by accusing the newspapers of having a deluded fascination with invention: “All these instruments of registration have belonged for decades to the ordinary equipment of every psychological laboratory,” he explained. “It was therefore a sad commentary when, recently, scores of American papers told their readers that I invented the sphygmograph, the automatograph, and the plethysmograph last summer—they might just as well have added that I invented the telegraph last spring. To recent years belongs only the application of these instruments to the study of feelings and emotions.”38
Münsterberg’s interpretations of the various tests demonstrated that he was committed to a personological theory of criminal types: “The emotional retardation of suspicious associations, characteristic of the average criminal, was, as expected, entirely lacking in this wholesale murderer. That does not mean that he lacks feeling; my experiments showed the opposite. To be sure, his sensitiveness for pain was, as with most criminals, much below the average.”39 Münsterberg believed in “average criminals” who had specific mental and physical characteristics, evidenced in his commitment to a Lombrosoian discourse of criminal difference. Münsterberg’s machines were not lie detectors. They were “machines for the cure of liars,” “truth-compelling machines,” or even “scientific crime detectors” according to Scientific American,40 but they did not detect lies in the normal person. Münsterberg had even said, “The word lie is not in my lexicon.”41 He was defending himself against accusations of mendacity, but the target of Münsterberg’s researches was not the lie, but the personological notion of the morbid “complex of ideas” as indicative of a deeper psychopathology.
The Truth Machine Page 13