Notwithstanding a High “I. Q.”
Zoe I. Hirt, B.S., Erie, Pennsylvania
In the fall of 1920, Albert was enrolled in the ninth grade of the junior high school. The big husky looking boy was always by himself, going about with his head down and a little to one side, usually taciturn, and often sullen, among his classmates. He came to school late two or three mornings each week, and soon his attendance became very irregular. He was resentful, and sometimes impudent when the teachers found fault with his irregularities. On January 13, 1921, when he was exactly fourteen years and one month old, he was given the Binet-Simon Test?Stanford Revision. He succeeded in a superior way with every task required by the scale, beginning at the XIV year level and going through the XVIII year, or Superior adult tests. This gave him an intelligence quotient of 138. His score was 83 in the vocabulary test. In three performances with the Witmer cylinder test he took ninety seconds for the first, fifty seconds for the second, and fiftyfour seconds for the third. The tremor of his fingers caused him to fumble the blocks and thus lose a good deal of time in adjusting them in their recesses.
At the close of the examination, the examiner expressed surprise that one who seemed to have so much intellectual ability was accomplishing so little in his school work, for he was not making passing grades. He frankly confessed that he smoked all the cigarettes he could get hold of, and that he masturbated. He said that he had indulged in the latter practice since he was eight or nine years of age, at first only occasionally, but now, he said, he was “going it pretty hard,” having convinced himself that no harmful effects were produced. When asked how he knew that he was not being harmed, he replied that he weighed 126 pounds? more than most boys of his age and height?that he was gaining steadily in height and weight, and that he had never yet seen a puzzle or problem that he could not solve if he cared to. He said that he was failing in his classes in school simply because he was not interested and he considered it a waste of time to do the work assigned. He said that he saw no sense in doing things that he knew he could do?that it was only when he was in doubt as to his ability to do a thing that he found it interesting and worthwhile to attempt to do it. Asked whether he had any plans for the future, he replied that he had always thought he would like to be a ‘’tramp,” but of late he had been thinking of becoming a naturalist. The student counsellor of the school called at Albert’s home one evening and gleaned the following facts from an interview with his parents:
The father and mother were distantly related to each other, and both had been school teachers before their marriage. The mother boasted that she was a ‘’ Daughter of the American Revolution” with “four bars on her pin.” The eldest daughter, seventeen years old, was a college freshmen; the eldest son, sixteen years old, was a high school senior, ranking among the brightest in his class; the son next younger than Albert, age thirteen years, was a high school freshman, making high grades in all of his classes; the youngest son, ten years old, was doing good work in the fifth grade. The parents were both working in the large general electric plant near their home, hoping from their combined earnings to lay aside the funds necessary to send all of their children to college. The father and two of the boys spoke with a decided, but not a serious, stammer.
Until quite recently, the family had always lived in the country. Albert had been a “cross” baby and a very poor sleeper. The father used sometimes to carry him out for long tramps through the country to put him to sleep at night.
One day, when Albert was between eight and nine years old, while he was at play on a hillside near his home, he was accidentally shot by a neighbor man. The bullet entered Albert’s back after it had passed through the head of a woodchuck. The child had to be kept under ether for a couple of hours before the physician could locate the bullet which had entered close to the spine and passed into the abdomen. After the boy recovered from his wound and returned to school, he began to have trouble with his teacher who used severe methods of punishment. She charged the boy with “making faces” at her; a little later it was discovered that he had chorea which affected the nerves of his face. Then for nearly two years the child was unable to attend school. One evening when Albert was two months less than thirteen years old, his father found stored in the cellar of his home a large amount of plunder?there were many pounds of meat, dozens of eggs, several pounds of butter, and many bottles of milk, besides several pairs of rubber boots and a heap of automobile repair tools. The man knew at once that this was the hoard of the marauder who had kept the neighborhood in a turmoil for several months. Albert finally confessed that he had left his bed night after night, when all the rest of the family were asleep, and burglarized the backporches and refrigerators, and the garages in the community. His father reported the facts to the police department at once (a special officer had been on duty for weeks trying to catch the thief) and then he made restitution to his neighbors as far as possible. A few days later Albert removed money from a pocketbook which his mother was carrying in a knitting-bag upon her arm while she had him and his younger brother with her on a shopping tour to town. She left the two boys outside examining something of interest in the window while she went into a store to make a purchase. When she went to pay her bill she found that her pocketbook was empty. Only one boy was waiting for her when she stepped outside of the store; Percival did not know when Albert had left his side or where he had gone. Several hours later the truant arrived home and he confessed that he had taken six dollars out of his mother’s pocketbook and had spent it all. Then the father appealed to the Probation officer of the juvenile court for advice, and Albert was placed in a farm school for boys. It was after the nine months’ period of detention in that institution that the boy was enrolled in the junior high school.
The parents realized that Albert was becoming an increasingly serious problem, and they readily consented to his being taken to the mental clinic conducted by an experienced psychiatrist and neurologist of the city. A few days later the boy was examined and the following report was returned:
Moist rales over apex of right lung. Pupils equal, large, regular, react well to light and accommodation. Patellar reflexes decreased. Marked tremor of fingers and hands, station normal, no ataxia. Wasserman, 4 plus.
Recommendation was made that Albert be required to take only those subjects in school which interested him, and that he be given as much freedom as possible. He was to report to the clinic doctor at least every two weeks. The school attempted to carry NOTWITHSTANDING A HIGH “I. Q.” 131
out all of the doctor’s recommendations, but Albert’s delinquency increased. Sometimes he would start out at school time in the morning and nothing more would be seen of him, either at school or at home, for several days. On one occasion he was gone for five days, returning home at 1:30 a. m., his clothes dripping wet from his all-day tramp in a pouring rain.
In the spring the doctor advised permitting Albert’s withdrawal from school for the rest of the semester. He was encouraged to make a garden, and his father provided a camping outfit for him in the big yard back of his home. In June, the clinic report showed most encouraging improvement in Albert’s condition. In July, work was secured for the boy on a farm within four or five miles of his home, and all of his friends were sure that the problem had been solved. Everything seemed to run smoothly for two weeks, and then, without a minute’s warning, Albert appeared at his home one evening, saying that another boy had been trying all the while to get his farm job and had finally succeeded.
The next morning Albert left home saying that he was going back to the farm to get his clothes. That was the last that was heard of him until, five days later, his mother received a letter from him, mailed in a town nearly a hundred miles away, asking that she send money to him to pay his fare home. The mother did not send any money, and several days later the wanderer returned home, ragged and dirty, and smelling as if had been living in stables. He could not give a clear account of where he had been or what he had done.
An investigation of the cause that had led to his discharge from the farm revealed the facts that he had remained only one week, that after the first or second day he had proved himself utterly unreliable, that all he had wanted to do was to eat, sleep and read, and that he had been insolent when reproved.
Soon after Albert’s return from his “trip,” he stole money from his sister’s trunk while she was at home from college on her vacation. A little later, at the opening of school in September, 1921, he returned to high school, but he came only a day or two each week. Sometimes he would go into the school library and sit there with a book for hours at a time, giving no heed to the bells that called him to his classes. One Monday morning his mother telephoned that he was too ill to attend school. She said that he had been at home alone on Sunday ? evening, and when she came home she found fifteen cigarette “butts” on the table beside him, and she thought this was the cause of his illness.
Finally, one day late in October, 1921, the newspapers told that detectives had arrested Albert on suspicion that he had stolen the quantity of silverware that he was trying to pawn. At the police station he confessed that the silver was the property of his mother. The physician who had been observing Albert for nearly a year, now classified him as a “constitutional psychopath,” and recommended to the judge of the juvenile court that he be sent to a correctional institution, to be transferred later to an institution for the insane if his condition warranted the change. Up until this time the doctor in charge of the mental clinic had frequently considered the advisability of placing Albert in a training school for the feeble-minded. The juvenile court finally committed him to the Pennsylvania Training School at Morganza.
Two months after Albert’s commitment the chief parole officer reported that the boy was making an effort to conquer his habit of masturbation, and that his improvement was encouraging in other ways. On July 5, 1923, he was paroled from the institution at Morganza with a record of obedience and good work. He is now leading his class as a freshman in high school. His mother says that his conduct is entirely satisfactory in every way.
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