Tom the Enigma? A Clinic Teacher’s Report
The Psychological Clinic Copyright, 1017, by Llghtnor Witmer, Editor. Vol. X, No. 8 January 15, 1917
- Author:
Sarah Warfield Parker, B.A., .
Bath, N. Y.
Nothing would afford Tom keener satisfaction than to knowthat he baffles diagnosis. He is a droll enigma. In the fifteen years of his life he has consciously exerted himself to play that role effectively and he has succeeded. In all probability Tom is a high grade imbecile. He thoroughly enjoys appearing at times much less than that, at times much more than that. If he is an imbecile, he is an extraordinarily intelligent one; if he is normal he directs his intelligence in extraordinarily eccentric directions. At his best, when his face is bronzed, his cheeks flushed with healthy color, when his brown eyes are keen, and his hair neatly smoothed, when he holds himself erect, proud of his well-cut suit and of his smart white tie, he looks like a handsome normal boy. But there was no greater difference between Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde than there is between this Tom and the Tom we see all too frequently. It is not only that his hair is rumpled, his skin pallid, his eyes lusterless and drowsy, but the human intelligence seems to die out of his face, leaving behind the gross animal. He yawns, lolls wearily, swinging his loose body. His arms become flexed at the elbow, the hands dangle weakly from the wrists; his knees knock together, and his feet cross one over the other so that in walking his legs intertwine, throwing him to the ground. The first boy looks like a normal youth of intelligence and refinement; the last, like an idioimbecile. Which is Tom? Like many other good people, Tom finds that to be subject to fits adds distinctly to one’s personality. Moreover the situation itself appeals to him. If one has a keen sense of humor it is indeed not altogether uninteresting to see how other people will behave in such an emergency. His mother particularly has for years played up admirably, with marked excitement and interest in these attacks. An attack of the “wiggles,” as the mother calls it, overtook Tom on the road one day. He required the support of two able-bodied adults to assist him home, but with his arm on the shoulder of each, walked down the hall quite normally with an expression of frank satisfaction.
One of his supporters remarked, “He’s perfectly contented as long as he can victimize some one.” Tom accepted it as a compliment, “Yes,” he retorted, “you just ought to see how I victimize my family.”
Just as the coxcomb in Tom yielded to his pleasure in victimizing his adult associates by simulated fits, so his very real pride in his wit and drollery and in his fund of information yielded to a perverse enjoyment in shamming stupidity. It pandered to his private sense of superiority to see an adult making a fool of herself by teaching him something he already knew; to see his mother patiently showing him how to suck lemonade through a straw while he pretended to be unable to do anything but blow bubbles into the glass?surely there was fun in that. In attempting, therefore, to draw from him reactions which would indicate his mental status, one had to beware of sham stupidity. Such a mental analysis is in this case peculiarly necessary to determine whether his serious retardation in school subjects is due to a defect of mind or to a defect of character.
In the three elementary processes of mind?attention, imagination, and memory?there appears to be no serious defect. Tom’s keen observation gives evidence that his analytic concentration of attention is excellent?that he sees not a confused whole, but minute parts. Provided that he is interested, that the end justifies the means, there is no limit to his perseverance at a task. He will spend hours over a large jig-saw puzzle or a drawing. His persistent concentration is excellent when he is constructing anything useful to himself?a sling shot or a wooden sword. To be sure, this perseverance is nil where he is bored and uninterested, but such active refusal of attention is indicative of something quite other than a defect of the attention process itself. The distribution of attention, too, is quite as satisfactory as its concentration. Imagination depends primarily on acuity of perception and secondarily upon these qualities of attention. Tom has no defect of hearing, no serious defect of vision other than color blindness of the red-green type. He confuses violet with blue, orange with yellow, and red, green, brown, and gray with each other. He is hugely proud of this defect?a defect which of course makes his visual images abnormal in respect to color but which can have no effect upon imagination as a function of mental activity. In fact, the intensity of his visual images of form and position is high. He reproduces from memory images, complicated designs with the design blocks. In writing the longer words in his spelling lesson it interests him to put a dot just where he thinks the word will end. It is surprising to see how accurate this mental measurement of space is. Tom likes to draw; he draws railroad trains from memory, reproducing the shape of the engine cab, the cylinders under the cars, the windows, and the ventilators above?all somewhat out of proportion, but nevertheless indicating an accurate visual image of the object drawn. Tom’s auditory imagery, though not so intense, is adequate for ordinary use. He recognizes tunes but does not reproduce them very well. He responds quickly to auditory verbal stimuli, though not as quickly as to the same stimuli in visual presentation. That is to say, he remembers more of a story that he has read than of one he has heard, and learns more quickly a jingle which he sees in print than one that some one else repeats. Motor imagery proves adequate for his daily performances. Acuity of the sense organs, attention to stimuli and sensitivity of cerebral cells he has, therefore, in a degree sufficient to determine normal intensity of images.
No greater defect can be found in the associability of these images. The association of images in sequence?that is, memory span, is if anything, something above normal. Binet accepts seven digits as a normal span for a fifteen year old child. Tom’s span is eight digits with an occasional success in repeating nine. More complex association does not seem to trouble him. He has the capacity to link images by logical relation as well as by sequence in time. The Woodworth and Wells Logical Relation Association Tests1 found Tom accurate and fairly ready in his responses. In the series of Twenty Easiest Opposites nineteen reactions were given correctly; in the series of forty opposites thirty-six were correct. Tom is quick to see a joke, to appreciate a pun. His capacity for manipulating the images formed shows every evidence of being normal. The elasticity of his mind is an important asset. Tom should learn readily, for his memory, too, is good. He is sensitive to impressions; so that his threshold of sensibility is low. He can repeat the main facts in his history lesson after a single reading. He can learn a vocabulary of twelve Latin words in ten minutes. Whatever he learns he retains well. The Latin words, once learned, are not forgotten. The facts which he has picked up here and there, though incomplete and badly organized, form a permanent fund of information. He has read a great deal, and remembers the titles, authors, characters, scenes, and incidents over a fairly long period. He enjoys the role of narrator and keeps by him a store of fairy tales to entertain the children, of anecdotes to 1 Woodworth, R. S., and Wells, F. L. Association Tests. Pschol. Rev. Monog. Sup. No. 57,1911. amuse his older companions. This memory is not wholly verbal or mechanical. To be sure, Tom’s most accurate memory is for words but those words are to him rich in connotation, full of meaning that he has gathered, not from definition, but from reading and experience. A number of his own definitions of words, chosen from a single week’s work, will show how meaningful is his vocabulary. Canyon?”A gash in the rocks like the Grand Canyon of the Colorado out west.”
Avalanche?”When things get to going so fast down the side of a hill that you can’t stop it and things are buried.” Tyrant?”A bad king.” Advantage?”When you get a chance to do something to a man you don’t like.” Eccentric?”Queer. Why don’t you pronounce it essentric?” Ambassador?”A man at a king’s court.” Dense?”Do you mean dense darkness or dense in your studies?” Climate?”If somebody from up here goes south and it’s too hot, he says, ‘ I guess I’ll go back home. This climate isn’t good.’” Imitation?”When you copy another gink’s writing.” Muscle?”Do you mean the shell or the thing in your arm?” Divide?He illustrated the concept by drawing his two hands together down the middle of the desk, then separating them to right and left. Swindler?”A man who swindles gets things that don’t belong to him, without permission.” Journal?”A paper you read.” Tenement?”A dirty house in New York.” One day, when I gave him the word “vote,” Tom flashed back the question, “Are you a suffragette?” “I believe in suffrage,” I answered. His retort was instant, “Then you can’t teach me.” There is, I think, no question that words stand for ideas and images in Tom’s mind?that they are symbols of a somewhat rich mental content. Although in repeating stories he retains much of the vocabulary of the original, the relation of incident to incident, frequent variation of phrasing, and understanding comment bespeak his comprehension of the story. The only serious incapacity in the comprehension of meaning seems to be Tom’s extraordinary inability to appreciate time and space. A trip of two hours he declares to have been shorter than a trip of half an hour; his voyage across the Atlantic to have taken no longer than a journey by train from New York to Philadelphia. He estimated a house standing on a hill a quarter of a mile or more across the valley to be “about a foot away.” How much of this apparent ignorance is willful perversity one cannot tell. It was sufficiently convincing, at least, to impel his father and mother to take him to Europe to teach him distance. Even this spectacular pedagogic method failed.
It may be well to review the points of mental analysis made thus far. Tom appears to be mentally sound in the three elementary processes of acquiring, relating, and retaining impressions?attention, imagination, and memory. The mental content thus established is, with the grave exception of time and distance, normally meaningful and elastic. The faculty of reasoning may well be only a constructive use of this mental content, and these mental capacities. Since Tom has the volitional qualities of initiative and control, we should expect to find him capable of a purposeful manipulation of these capacities. Observation does not indicate that he falls below par even here. He has distinctly a constructive faculty, an appreciation of the relation of part to whole. He shows this concretely in the effective way he puts together large and difficult jig-saw puzzles. He failed on none of the questions involving reason in the Binet test. In a lesson in mathematical geography his teacher asked him how many small circles could be drawn on the earth’s surface, equally distant from the equator. After a few minutes thought Tom answered, “Two, one north and one south.”
His constructive imagination is distinctly active?at least in his drawing. He drew, one morning, a brown horse with a curiously thick body, short thin legs, a minute tail, a flying mane, and a red saddle. He told me that the horse was running away, that the man had been thrown from the saddle, and that the mane blew out because the horse was going so fast. His critical faculty is equally active. He was distinctly dissatisfied with the same horse because of the undue bulk of body and the absence of motion in the hind legs. This purposive use of the ability which we call reason, to attend discriminatingly and to associate constructively percepts and retained images, completes the catalog of mental faculties involved in the learning process. In running through this catalog we find nothing to convince us that Tom is mentally defective. We have still to examine those qualities which come under the general terms?energy and volition.
In Tom’s activity, at least, these qualities stand in close interrelation. His activities certainly show, more often than not, a very low degree of force. Part of this is due to physical weakness; to the feeble muscles of his hands, and the body so quickly subject to muscular fatigue. Part of it is due to indifference. Where the end does not to him reasonably justify the means, he does not choose to exert whatever physical and mental force he has. The same situation holds when we turn to rate of movement. Tom is a fairly fast runner. He can win out against all but one of the children in the school. His reaction to the signal for the race is prompt. A speed test, however, is a distinct bore, and therefore there is no particular reason for his wishing to do it well. In the card sorting test his initial time equalled that of a boy abnormally slow as the effect of hemiplegia. His lack of interest and effort was so marked that no attempt was made to obtain a practice curve. In Woodworth and Wells’ Number Checking Test his time was 157 seconds?that of the hemiplegia patient 185 seconds, of a moron of the same age 85 seconds ; the range of a small number of graduate students tested by Woodworth and Wells, 50 to 100 seconds. In the Courtis Test Tom copied only ten figures in one minute. In the Binet Test, requiring the utterance of at least sixty words in three minutes, he drawled out lazily only forty-seven. Yet his mind does not seem to work with abnormal deliberateness. In the Woodworth and Wells Form Naming Test his record is good.
Range for twelve graduate students tested by Woodworth and Wells 31-60 seconds Tom… 50 ” Moron (15 years) 60 ” Hemiplegic patient (17 years) 80 In repartee Tom’s mind is particularly alert. His brother exclaimed at breakfast, ” I have an idea.” “Keep it. You don’t often get one,” Tom retorted. When he first came into the school we made a consistent effort I to bring Tom down from his complacent superiority. He commented on it as he sat at his desk, “It’s funny, at home my mother thinks I’m the smartest gink there is.” “She can’t know you very well, then,” I remarked. “She’s known me for fourteen years,” he parried quickly. In energy we have found a marked decline in daily performances, a deficiency in force, due in part to physical inability, in part to lack of effort; a slow rate of movement, combined as it is with swift mental reactions, seems to be determined partially at least by lack of interest and failure to erect the volitional element in action. It is curious to find this same quality of volition as a potential factor, particularly strong in Tom. He is not lacking in initiative. The children are, of course, not allowed to leave the school grounds. The second day Tom disappeared at recess. Presently he appeared TOM THE ENIGMA. 215 coming through the bushes at the foot of the hill with Sen, the collie, close at his heels. “The other ginks told me Sen could swim,” he commented, in his droll deliberate voice, ” I don’t see any signs of it. I took him down to the pond and threw some sticks in, but he wouldn’t go in.” One infers from this persistent curiosity and keen observation, a mind that is spontaneously active. At the end of the first day I spent with Tom I made a list of the questions I remembered from the day’s conversation. The list filled three large sheets of paper. I select a few of them as suggestive of his exploring, active mind: Where does the hall go that’s by my room? Where is John going with that shovel? Why do you call the dog Sen when his name is Senator? What are you writing down? Why does Sen jump up on me and wind his leg around mine and try to trip me up? Where were you born? What does P. B. & W. R. R. stand for? Which track do west bound trains go on? Then why does that sign say to east bound trains when it points west? Is this station a house too? Which room is the dining room? May I climb the fence and make an inspection? How long would it take a man to clean this car? How long would it take two men? Do Angora cats come from Angora? How does the smoke get through the smoke stack? Why does the smoke come down to the track when we go through a tunnel? How much bigger is this car than a box car? How early do children go to bed in sleeping trains? Don’t you think there’s too much smoke in this station for comfort? Why don’t they keep the car tracks clean in Philadelphia? How far south would you have to go to get out of the United States? Provided Tom is interested, he never has to be prodded to either mental or physical activity. He acts, too, upon his own idea, not upon someone else’s suggestion. He is. therefore, a leader, admired and obeyed by the younger children. Tom’s control is as strong as his initiative. He is able to direct his action so as to give a desired impression, to fool if he wishes his teachers, his parents, or his companions. He is a boy of his word. From observation and analysis of Tom I should conclude, that in the most precise significance of the term, he is intelligent. The day that he ruined his garter to make a good sling shot is not the only time he has shown his resourcefulness, his invention. The resources, that is, the mental capacities within which the invention is operative do not appear, from our survey, to be particularly below those of a normal boy. With this evidence of his intelligence and his active will, the low level of Tom’s performances, this extreme inefficiency in the operations of daily life, is surprising. His performance level is so low that up to the age of fourteen he has been kept successively in private institutions for the training of quite low grade feebleminded children. In these institutions, Tom has received excellent physiological training. There he has learned to handle the Seguin and Montessori material for sense training, to write a tremulous script. He reads as well as any fifteen year old boy, but pronounces his sentences in a monotone, without expression or respect for punctuation. Occasionally, when his pride is touched, Tom can quite effectively correct this defect in elocution. He has learned to spell as well as an average boy. It is only necessary for him to see a word several times in reading for it to become fixed in his mind. He has learned to count, and to perceive number.
Beyond that he can do nothing in arithmetic. He has either had no training in fundamental processes or has failed to profit by such training. He knows no grammar. Whatever history and geography he knows he has gathered from his reading and from the conversation of his younger brothers. How wide that information is, how interspersed with gaps and misconceptions, how unorganized, one sees in swift examination of Tom:
Q. What is an island? A. A body of land entirely surrounded by water. Q. What is a peninsula? A. A body of land that juts out into the water. Q. What is a continent? A. A big piece of land. Q. What continents do you know? A. America and Asia. Q. What is an ocean? A. A large body of water on the earth’s surface, Q. Where is the North Pole? A. At the top of the map. Q. The South Pole? TOM THE ENIGMA. 217 A. At the bottom of the map. Q. What ocean is at the South Pole? A. Antarctic. Q. What ocean is at the North Pole? A. Arctic. Q. Between Europe and America? A. Atlantic. Q. Between Asia and America? A. Pacific. Q. South of Asia? A. Oh, there’s a lot of seas and things there?the Indian Ocean and the Adriatic Sea. Q. What is the equator? A. The boundary between the United States and Mexico? Q. WTiere is the Adriatic Sea? A. Don’t know. Q. Where is London? A. England. Q. Where is Paris? A. France. Q. Where is Berlin? A. Germany. Q. Where is Rome? A. Greece. Q. Where is Athens? A. Greece. Q. Tell me a city in Spain. A. Don’t know any. Q. What mountains are in Switzerland? A. Alps. Q. What mountains are in Italy? A. Don’t know any. I’ve never been there. There are some other mountains in Switzerland, the Adirondacks. Q. Where are the Adirondacks? A. New York State. Q. Where’s Mont Blanc? A. In the Alps. Q. Yes, but in what part? A. In the foot hills. Q. Where is Niagara Falls? A. In the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Q. In what state is it? A. Nigara State. 218 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. Q. In what state do you live? A. New York. Q. In what country do you live? A. United States. Q. On what continent do you live? A. North America. Q. Do you live in Canada? A. No. Q. Is Canada in America? A. Yes. Q. In North or South America? A. South America.
Whatever history he has learned he knows as he knows fiction, as he knows classic myths and fairy tales. The boy has an excellent imaginative background for history but no consecutive knowledge. The Binet Test professes to test mental age and not training. Tom does not seem to be very much below the normal fifteen year old boy in mentality yet the six year group in the Binet Tests is the first group in which he can pass all the tests. In the seven year old group he can not count the cost of three two-cent and three one-cent stamps. In the eight-year tests he was a bit uncertain as to the date. In the nine-year tests, he made two errors in reciting the months and failed to make change. In the ten-year test he could not compare weights or combine the three words given into a satisfactory sentence. In the twelve-year group he drawled out only forty-seven words in fifteen minutes. In the fifteen-year tests he failed to repeat the twenty-six syllable sentence and the pictures shown did not interest him enough to draw out the interpretation of which he is capable. This, in exact quantitative measure gives Tom a mental age of nine and a half years. The reason for this low rating seems to be his contant failure in questions of number, and his frequent lack of effort in performing the tests.
If indifference and lack of systematic training are the factors in determining this low level of performance, it seems, superficially at least, that these obstacles can be overcome. It appears on the face of it, that under proper instruction Tom is ready to make rapid progress toward a normal education. But such a judgment fails to reckon with the boy himself. Tom is a unique individual. His intelligence and will are confined to resisting systematic education. He asks only one thing of life?to be permitted to do solely the things that interest him. The boy is keen enough to see that the more things he knows how to do the more work he is “let in for.” The intelligent person will avoid as much responsibility as possible. For fourteen years Tom has been relieved of responsibility and he finds it a very satisfactory mode of life. “I don’t need to learn to make change,” he remarked. ” My mother will always be there to do it for me.” Tom’s position is wholly tenable from a logical point of view. On the basis of avoiding the uninteresting routine of school work and the acquirement of a dangerous efficiency, he sets himself obstinately against systematic training.
Tom is perfectly satisfied with his present acquirements. He already feels superior to every individual whom he has met. The fifth day he was in the school he summed up the mental status of the other children.
“Does Jack know much?” he asked. “Yes, don’t you think so?” I asked in return. “I haven’t seen much that he knows,” Tom remarked. I started a cross examination of my own. “Who do you think knows most in the school?” “I,” Tom answered with calm brevity. “But of the others, I mean?” I continued. “William.” “And after William?” “Jack.” “What do you think about Margaret?” “She doesn’t spell very well.” “Don’t you think she knows other things?” “I haven’t seen what she knows yet.” Tom is quite as confident, though a bit less frank in judging his teachers and examiners. He is satisfied with his superiority and wishes to be left at leisure to play Indian, read, put jig-saw puzzles together, to do what he desires. Tom started his experiment the very day that he came into the school. He tried out those who had him in charge, to see how far he could escape obedience, how much work he could avoid. He made his first stand against the afternoon rest hour. The matron told him to take off his shoes and lie down. Ten minutes later she found him downstairs in a heavier pair of shoes. She sent him up again, only to find him a little later, wandering restlessly about the room. The third time she discovered him on the floor, leaning his head against the bed, kicking his heels in the air. When she commanded him to lie down, his eyes narrowed to tiny slits and he mumbled defiantly, “You bull, bull, bull.” I found him again in the same position on the floor, sullen, muttering, “I’m not tired. I won’t rest.” After a brief parley I got him to his feet. He grabbed a box cover,?
“Now I’ve got something to hammer you over the head with.0 In my indifference I did not seem worth hammering so he dropped the cover. He was finally persuaded as far as the bed. Once there he drew his knees up to his chin and growled, “I won’t lie on my back. I’ll curl up as much as I can.” After further threats to throw the blanket up to the ceiling and to jump out of the window, Tom gave in and lay for a few minutes quietly resting. After three successive days in which he lost out, he gave up his point, and on the fourth, responded with a cheerful, “Sure.” He still avoids the boredom of a real rest by playing sailor or talking to himself.
Another crucial contest was fought on the point of immediate obedience to the call to school. One morning after recess the uncongenial summons interrupted Tom in an interesting project to make a waterfall by dumping tubs of water over the hill. Tom reverted to his “Bull, bull, bull,” and refused to come. “Very well,” I said, “You come now or not at all.” “Then I shan’t come at all,” he mumbled. “Certainly,” I agreed, “and you go to bed for the afternoon.” Three minutes later he appeared sheepishly in the door of the school room, ” I guess I won’t go to bed this afternoon.” To his surprise he found it was too late. He was refused admission and spent the afternoon in bed. Several days in bed on a cereal diet similarly cured him of going to the lake without permission. Because of his nervous attacks his mother had never taken him on city streets, into stores, or to the theater. He was taken frequently after coming to the school, to accustom him to more normal life. At first he had no regard for appearances. He slouched and thumped his feet because he liked to hear the noise they made. Although he could walk a mile in the country without fatigue, he felt that it was beneath his dignity to walk a single block in the city. He would begin immediately to stumble, to mutter that he thought he was going to have a fit, that we ought to take a taxi. This ridiculous behavior was particularly anomalous after you had watched the alert intelligence of Tom’s face as he listened to Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion.” The willful element was definitely demonstrated. The next time he went to town his teacher told him that if he walked well and did not mention beingtired she would take him to the moving pictures. He walked steadily erect through an hour’s shopping and made no complaint. Within a month’s time all active resistance was overcome. Tom is the first person to see when the game is not worth the struggle. He now yields prompt and cheerful obedience. Yet he has by no means surrendered in the fight against learning anything through study. Most pedagogic methods seem foolish to him. Oral composition is particularly ridiculous. In the days when his resistance was still active I recorded a typical incident. When he was asked to reproduce a fairy tale he had read, he answered, logically, “I’ve read it to you, you know it. I told you one story yesterday, that’s enough.”
“I don’t want to do it, and I won’t” he persisted. “I said no and I mean it.” He gave in when he found that the struggle only postponed indefinitely his recess hour, but the incident is typical of his attitude toward the recitation of any lesson. His position is one of extreme impatience, “I know it and you know it. What’s the use of all this fuss?” Though he has yielded all active resistance, his passive refusal to co-operate is quite as effective. One teacher wrote on January 5th, “His general attitude is bored. His voice in reading is bored. There is no energy in anything he does except in his curiosity and criticism. When tired he grunts, lolls, scratches his head, makes random responses. He becomes glum when you ask him anything he does not know.”
Another teacher wrote on February 3d, “I had no control over him. He complained every ten minutes of being tired, rubbed his eyes and hair, yawned and sighed. His face and legs were twitching, and he acted as if he were going to have a fit any minute. He had to have recess every twenty minutes and during his twenty minutes of supposed work made no effort of any kind and appeared bored to death. All information he deemed unnecessary because his mother and father could always look after him anyway. For two weeks I tried unsuccessfully to teach him the geographical relation of the continents to the oceans. He could do no arithmetic? not even between one and six.”
A third teacher records: “Tom writes a copy each day. He doesn’t exert himself very much or try to write any better. His writing in ink is very shaky. He tried today and it is slowly showing slight improvement. He is very much bored by work of this kind. He reads fluently but without expression.” April 6th: “He has never studied alone. His idea of studying is to read his history lesson over once and remember what he can of it. He is very much bored by explanations. He likes to read along without paying attention to details.”
April 7th: “Tom worked some examples in addition; work pretty inaccurate. He is very much bored by an oral lesson in arithmetic. He was very fidgety, kept moving his feet, scratching his head, and his eyes looked as if he were only half awake. I asked him whether he felt tired, and he said, “Tired of this arithmetic.” April 9th: “About the only thing Tom likes to do is to play Indian or read.”
Tom is superior to any mass of information that you may present to him. He knows enough of the stories of history to think that the study is superfluous. Arithmetic is absurd and wholly unnecessary. Latin piqued his interest for a few days but he quite naturally considers declensions and conjugations useless and translates with a dignified disregard of verb and noun forms. His writing is legible; his reading intelligible. Why should he trouble himself to make them any better? With his droll originality and talent in oral narration he should be able to write interesting compositions. Writing is, however, too slow a means of expression. Tom will write nothing but a succinct summary of facts. Geography and a few of the elementary facts of astronomy are the two subjects to which he has responded most warmly. In all probability his response to these latter subjects was due to the way in which they were presented. The only favorable report of Tom comes from a teacher who took him in hand for drill in geography:
“Tom is now a changed boy. He has in the last ten days learned the geography of Sweden, Norway, Russia, Ireland, and Scotland. Besides this, he has learned ten mountain ranges in other countries, eight straits and some of the history of Sweden and Norway. He also now does sums of three numbers, making about five mistakes out of fourteen examples. This improvement is due to competition with William?to wanting to show William, whom he adores, how smart he is and also to wanting to make Jack by comparison a laughing stock. He has to be taught in a special way that amuses him so that the whole thing appears as an entertaining game. It is no use to keep at one thing too long. He learns best if you jump quickly from one thing to another. This method seems to him worthy of his intelligence. I have succeeded in impressing him to the point that he even grants my superior cleverness. We have also to season our work with rough play in order to get the best results. William has to be in the game and all three of us often try contests in quickly naming places in geography.”
Frankly I do not know whether or not we should call Tom feebleminded. If the term implies a physiological deficiency, cerebral or otherwise, I hesitate; for except for an organism which is generally weakened by malnutrition I do not believe that Tom has any such deficiency. If the term is purely of patho-social significance and describes an individual altogether inefficient in the perTOM THE ENIGMA. 223 formances of society, Tom is certainly feebleminded. He presents a puzzling enigma because he has been so far an agent in perpetuating his own insufficiency of which the initial cause was physical. Psychological training is not the urgent remedy for this case. Tom requires first a restoration of his physical energies, then contact with a strong personality. He needs a teacher clever enough to command his respect, vigorous enough to overcome his resistance, resourceful enough to make useful study coincide with his interests,? an individual endowed with a dynamic energy that will create in the boy the incentive to work. He is too cold, too undemonstrative, too egoistic to be stirred by personal loyalty to any one but himself. Egoism and uncomprising justice are the two fundamental qualities of his character. Between Tom and the personality which is strong enough to master him, the contest must be one of wit and will.
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