Concerning the Dynamics of Crime
- Author:
Alice E. Johnson, M.D.
Psychiatrist in the Municipal Court of Philadelphia It is an accepted dictum of the mental hygienist that mental disease begins in childhood. In the same way, and in an equal degree, it is true that criminality has its beginnings in the very earliest years.
The criminal and the neurotic show the same deviation from the normal in the developmental process. In both there is a failure of the integrative forces in the personality. Whether we assign the cause of this failure to a defect in the germ plasm, to vitiated biochemistry, or to untoward influences in the external environment, or to all three, the dynamics of the failure is the same in all cases. In the neuroses psychiatrists pretty generally understand that there is an energetic conflict between the various instinctive trends, and that these forces mutually inhibit each other to such extent that no adequate action can be produced by any amount of energy that may be expended.
In the well-developed neurotic state none of the instinctive wishes get satisfying expression, and the psychic tension produced by the pull of one wish against another causes the distress of that mental state. The condition, then, of the neurotic is characterized by the absence of direct action towards the satisfaction of desire. Such action as is achieved appears erratic and “queer”; it is mainly symbolic, a mere gesture. All his fighting is shadowboxing. For his most imperious appetites the patient can find only a Barmecide feast. To every “Yes” in his mind he opposes an equally powerful “No.” Unless a compromise can be effected that will satisfy both sides the struggle may go on indefinitely, with no relief except such as those gestures called symptoms afford. In a person who is called antisocial, misdemeanant, or criminal, the energy in one of his instincts does get into direct action, at the expense of the others. The impulses which would naturally oppose the action are beaten back, and for the time, at least, cannot offer the resistance that would inhibit or modify the action.
Such conduct is sure to be “bad” for the individual, because any action is bad when it can be accomplished only by withdrawing energy that is needed in another direction. “Excess” is always destructive. Any organism is in a state of dysfunction when a part is stronger than the whole. But from the standpoint of society there is a more important reason why it is bad. It is the selfserving instinct that is supreme in the beginning, since this is the greatest need of the infant. In order to swing some of this energy into the channels that will serve his other developing needs the organism must have some endurance of stress. Training is against the line of least resistance. In those who can not or do not accept training the purely egotistical impulses retain their supremacy. In the event of conflict between the impulses in such a case there can be no doubt which will win out and determine the action. Since this conflict takes place, as a rule, below the threshold of the person’s own awareness, he is, often enough, surprised and puzzled by his own conduct. He is speaking with truth when he says he did not mean to do it, does not know why he did it. It is not quite so true when he claims he did it against his own will. And yet the struggle here is not one between abstract “good” and “evil.” The instincts are nature’s expression of the organic needs of the individual. As Spinoza says, “Every instinct is a device developed by nature to preserve the individual or the species.” Since they are all necessary they must be good. We can not with truth speak of “high” and “low,” “good” and “bad” instincts. It is only when they are dissociated and one gets an undue advantage of another, only when there is an unfair distribution of energy between them, that evil results. It is not desirable that this energy be distributed equally among them at all times, but that it be accessible at any time to whichever one will best serve the whole personality under the existing condition.
The difference in personality make-up of the neurotic and of the criminal lies in their differing ability to bear stress, that is, in the ease with which the character elements will become completely dissociated. The criminal does not bear stress well. He is constitutionally incapable of sustained effort or strain. He must do something at once to get relief.
Since there is every degree of this power of endurance, it occurs that people with strongly conflicting desires may be neurotic up to a certain point, and with a little added pressure, may break out in unsocial action. Comfort and relief are actually attained by this outbreak. A sense of freedom and power takes the place of stress.
So long as he can continue to express his energy along this channel the criminal is not unhappy. It is a mistake to believe that evildoers are miserable. They are so only when they are driven back on their neuroticism by obstruction to action. In confinement where they have no freedom to action that will satisfy their egoistic strivings it is not unusual that actual psychosis develops. An example of this is the mental state called prison psychosis. It is doubtful if this could occur in a so-called “innocent” man. It certainly could not happen in one who had no neurotic conflicts in the background. Nobody wants to go to jail, yet we have historical examples of people who have been very happy there. In any case, for the criminal, so long as his instinctive trends are dissociated, the alternative to crime is not the good life of the normal person, but neuroticism. He, in fact, escapes from neuroticism into criminality, and if he is to ‘’ reform,’’ it will be necessary for him to go back through the neurotic state of stress to reach the normal condition of balanced forces.
This is not a new idea. We have heard before of the primrose path, and the straight and narrow way; and the earliest folk-wisdom seems to have held the concept of “penitence.” But when we think of the problem in terms of its dynamics we can more readily understand why so few of the inmates of penitentiaries?alleged placesof-penitence?actually reform, and why so many come back. The newspapers have recently carried a story of a man who committed a forgery several years ago, escaped, and now voluntarily comes back and gives himself up?a dramatic story, but not surprising to the initiated. It is a natural action for one who escapes from his neurotic stress by a criminal action, only to be thrown back to his former state when threatened with arrest and disgrace. The crime and the surrender represent two efforts to escape from unbearable tension.
Effective effort to reduce the incidence of crime and the number of criminals must be directed to the prevention of excessive tension in the individual. This means that the work must be done for little children, before tension arises. A child can not be taught what he needs most to know by command or by argument directed to the intellect, because his reaction patterns are formed long before the critical faculties are developed. He must learn through his senses. Moral precept can not teach a child the meaning or value of right conduct, unless at the same time he is made to comprehend through his own experience the relation of an act to its consequences. If he is allowed to believe the unTHE DYNAMICS OF CRIME 199 pleasant consequences of his conduct come only from the disapproval or punishment of his parents or teachers he may change his conduct in order to avoid such punishment, but this sort of training in itself can not balance his instinctive wishes. His morality, in such a case, will remain second-hand, and will be dependent upon the action of others. Criminals and neurotics have plenty of second-hand morality. They all “know” what is right and wrong.
An individual with first-hand morality sees the consequences of an act as inherent in the act itself and by no possibility to be avoided. He has therefore an inner compulsion to act as well as he can. This is the only kind of moral teaching that can inhibit bad conduct without producing some degree of neurosis.
Since the demand for right conduct comes to a child in the first place from an external source he is slow to identify this demand with his own need. It does not seem to be his own will but that of some external authority. It is somebody else’s idea. It is just here in his development that the dissociation of personality begins. It is the antagonism between ‘11 want’’ and ‘’ they want.” And this failure of identification is, I believe, the origin of the “evil” in human nature.
Rightness has an absolute sanction. Parents, teachers, policemen, judges, various people, are in a position of authority in relation to a child; they are not the source of authority. The natural law itself is the original source of all authority?not civil laws, nor rules of conduct, nor moral codes, nor public opinion, but a universal law of which these may or may not be authentic expressions. It is this law which ‘’ never lets you down and never lets you off.’’ An individual must be in relation to the source of authority if he is to be safe from neuroticism, misconduct and unhappiness. This law is not against any natural impulse but includes them all. From infancy a child may be taught, little by little, and in various ways, when he may exercise any impulse and to what end, and when not, why. It is only thus that the conflict between good and bad, between the social and the egoistical instincts can be kept at a normal level of intensity.
In our clinic at the Municipal Court in Philadelphia where each year we examine thousands of children, adolescents and adults, the common denominator of all our delinquents is found to be a marked dissociation between the egoistical desires and the individual’s own, but second-hand, idea of right. We have dozens of children brought in on a complaint of incorrigibility who are quite willing to admit the fact of their misconduct, and equally willing to admit it is wrong, but hardly one has any idea why it is wrong. ” Because you will get pinched,” “You will be put away,” “It don’t get you anywhere”; these are the stock answers to the question, Why is it wrong to steal, or run away from home, or set fire to a house, or play truant? None of these cases has any feeling that the action originates in his own wish. 11 The other kid made me do it,” or “I got in with bad company” is to them a perfectly satisfactory excuse. The parents of these children give these same excuses, and the children, with no critique of their own, have no doubt of their truth.
A boy of twelve with normal intelligence and no appreciable physical defect comes into the consulting room with a look of a happy martyr. To a question as to the nature of his trouble, he answers glibly, ‘’ I steal everything I can get my hands on.” It is just as if he said, “I break out with hives every night.” To his mind it is some misfortune that has befallen him from causes wholly outside himself.
A girl of eleven runs away from home, sleeps on door-steps at night. She shows an exaggerated interest in sex play with both girls and boys. Why? “I suppose I must be bad.” The examination bores her. The affair has no relation to herself. A boy of sixteen is arrested for shoplifting. “I wanted some money to go to the movies.” He had been given a job, and left it after two days. “I didn’t like that sort of work.” Oh, yes! it is very wrong, he thinks. What do you mean by wrong? “It is what you get punished for.”
In all cases of this kind there can be found environmental and emotional determinants. These are important for the purpose of treatment. But the way they determine is by energizing certain wishes and increasing the tendency to dissociation. We can not say of any one of our children that he will certainly develop into a criminal. Many of them are still young enough to be amenable to the good training which we try to get for them. Some, however, have definitely the set-up for a criminal career, with the two elements necessary for habitual misconduct, intolerance of stress and instincts so far apart as to make stress inevitable. The first of these elements is due to the natural constitutional make-up of the child, although proper early discipline could increase to some extent the tolerance. The other element is dependent upon the child’s acquired idea of the meaning of right and wrong.
A man need not be insane or feeble-minded to commit a crime. And he need not be an all-around bad citizen. Our Court dockets are crowded with cases that prove this is true. One need onlyhave his instinctive goals so far apart that he does not function as a whole at any time. Our laws do not recognize any such condition. And if they did, what could they do about it? No laws and no conceivable administration of any law will cure crime. Indeed, this is not the function of law. Its function is to ‘’ safeguard society,’’ and what it does to the criminal is incidental. Dealing with the problem of crime is society’s own business, and it can not be delegated to any one group. The most insignificant citizen has as much to do with it as has the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
The first step toward an effective program is a complete change of attitude toward the whole matter. The problem can not be solved by emotion of any kind. The hatred of society for the criminal is itself but a neurotic gesture. Sentimentality and cynicism alike are ways of evading the issue. To make any progress toward our goal it will be necessary to adopt the objective, impersonal, patient attitude of the scientist in the laboratory and field. So far there has been a woeful lack of this objectivity in our work on the subject. We think of men as good and bad. We talk of the freedom of the will, and of absolute responsibility. These terms have no more meaning in fact than the evil eye or the influence of the stars on human destiny. I believe we must stop thinking about trying to make people “good,” and concentrate on developing ways of integrating them into whole, harmonious personalities, with each instinct as free as the others will allow. If this is done we will certainly have good human beings.
In our approach to this endeavor some of the subjects which present themselves for immediate study are: better eugenics; early training that will recognize the absolute right of a child to the development of a well-rounded, self-reliant personality; adequate nourishment and facilities for play for every child, regardless of his family’s social or economic status; education that will fit a child to think for himself, whether he can learn from books or not; a rational sex morality based on the individual’s physiological, psychological and social needs. If in trying to develop these things we find it necessary to revise our long accepted ideas of the function of the State in relation to its citizens, then let the change be made.
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