Psychopath

THE MASK OF SANITY

Section 2: The Material

Part 1: The disorder in full clinical manifestations

7. Arnold

 

 

Energy Enhancement          Enlightened Texts         Psychopath           The Mask Of Sanity

 

 

7. Arnold

This patient had recently left the hospital (A.W.O.L.) while out on pass. The

following letters arrived from him after a few days:

Baltimore,

April 4th, 19-- Saturday,

2 P.M.

Dear Friend:

Physically I am a very sick man. Have had fever since last Friday. Cold all the time.

Very dirty. No bath since I left. Clothes wet all the time. Four meals since I left. Chest

hurts severely. Can't give up. Have tried to contact my people by phone and telegram

several times but am ostracized. -Hurts-Really hurts. -but they do not understand-Have

never understood. No use for details regarding what is past. Will you

56 THE MASK OF SANITY

give me just one chance please. You must. If you receive this by Monday noon will you

wire me some funds at the Western Union. Use my father's first name, Stephen, for

reference. If I were not sick I would not ask this. Can't beg, can't steal; so am in the devil

of a shape.

Please do not try to have me detained. If you would have sent Jack [a parole patient]

to the hotel last Sunday I would not have tried what I have undertaken, as I have too

much respect for you and a few others to break my word.

Have I registered? Will your response be O.K.? A chancel One chance!

As ever your friend,

Arnold

New York

April 10th, 19- Friday A.M.

Dear Friend:

Man's limitations are many. I must say that it is hard, very hard, for me not to give up, but

I am still trying to carry on. Frankly I was afraid and still am. It has rained ever since I left the

Hospital and I believe every drop touched Arnold. Have enjoyed a fever since Tuesday

morning. I will not give up. If you could see me at present you would wonder how it was

possible for this condition to become mine. I am the worst looking tramp on the road

My regret about my departure concerns you, Miss Green [nurse] and Mr. Drayton [a

physically ill patient]. Doctor, you and McDaniel [a physician on the hospital staff] must make

him a well man.

Respects to all my boys [fellow patients] and to any of Ward A men [dopers] who want to

leave, tell them to be sure and think.

Would you stake me to a start of a few dollars? If so, write me at Hollywood Cafe, New

York City. Place money order in envelope. Whatever amount is O.K. I don't think you want

to be bothered with me any more so I won't suspect a trap.

Closing with my utmost respects to one of the finest characters I ever met:

I am, the young brigand from the South,

Arnold

These letters were addressed to a physician at the hospital who had taken a

special interest in the patient's case, trying over a period of many months to help him

achieve some sort of adjustment.

For a while a measure of faint hope was entertained that he might be able to get

along with freedom to walk about the grounds. He had been in and out of the hospital

for seven years, spending most of his time on a closed ward with delusional and

dilapidated schizophrenic patients. Struck by the man's friendliness and his frankness to

admit himself in the wrong, his physician, despite the usual rules of dealing with such

behavior, made an exception of his case, restoring his ground parole time after time

when it

THE MATERIAL 57

was lost by failure to adjust. The experiment had been more or less innocent, since the

patient did little harm to himself or others beyond cashing a few bad checks for small

amounts, cheating unsuccessfully in dice games, stealing a bicycle for which he had no

use, and behaving uproariously after a few drinks and getting into jail, whence he was

brought back each time safe and apparently repentant.

An effort was made to see if this rational and intelligent man, even though he

failed seven times, seventy times, and seven times seventy times, might at last achieve a

positive reaction to indefatigable forgiveness and succeed in finding some way to exist

without supervision as incessant as that required by a traditional madman. Little or no

hope was held that he might leave the hospital and live as a normal man; but something

would have been gained if, still sheltered. in a psychiatric hospital, he could enjoy the

freedom of the grounds and an occasional pass into town.

Be it noted that during seven years of psychiatric study and observation he had

never shown any sign technically regarded as indicating a psychosis. That is to say, he

was always entirely rational in conversation, alert, above average in intelligence by

psychometric tests, free from delusions and hallucinations, and completely lacking in the

slightest evidence of "deterioration." Nor had he ever shown retardation, a true

depression of the cyclothymic type, increased psychomotor activity, flight of ideas, or

any other condition which it is permissible to class as psychosis. He had been free also

from any symptom characteristic of a psychoneurosis.

During his long and frequent periods within closed wards, he was superficially

agreeable to his physicians most of the time but extremely fretful about his

confinement. He spoke eloquently of having learned his lesson and always pressed his

request for parole or discharge with good logic. Once after making an especially

convincing plea for freedom and with the possibility of parole within the next few days,

he succeeded during the night in obtaining whiskey by lowering on a cord an empty

Coca-Cola bottle which he had obtained and which some confederate filled for him. He

at once proceeded to get rather high in the dead of night to the great astonishment of

the attendants, who had regarded him as a "sane" man but who were now at a loss to

understand his senseless guffaws, sudden maudlin outcries, and impulsive lurches about

the ward. Not realizing that he could possibly have obtained liquor, they feared for a

moment that he must have developed an ordinary psychosis. On being approached he

cursed, sobbed feebly, and was brought back to bed, passing intestinal gas with frequent

loud and unpleasant effects, grinning almost triumphantly at the nurse who had hurried

to him at each detonation.

The next morning he admitted the drinking after being confronted with

58 THE MASK OF SANITY

the Coca-Cola bottle to which the string was still attached. He was at first superficially

penitent but soon could be seen to show pleasure at his cleverness, which he seemed to

feel afforded just cause for a bit of gloating. He seemed to have no deep sense of regret

and could not understand why the episode delayed his parole. Indeed, he became

definitely vexed and talked incessantly for a day or two about his failure to get a square

deal.

This patient, entirely sane by orthodox psychiatric standards, having spent the

better part of seven years closely confined among other men who, to him as to any

layman, were unmistakable lunatics if otherwise agreeable company, was given another

series of chances to win his freedom.

The opinion has often been expressed that the Psychopath, who in some ways

seems to behave like a badly spoiled child, might he helped if he could be put in a

controlled situation and allowed to feel the unpleasant consequences of his mistakes or

misdeeds regularly, as he commits them.

With this patient such a policy was pursued and the effort was protracted to

remarkable lengths. Such a plan of treatment or reeducation perhaps may accomplish a

good deal with some patients of this type. With Arnold it yielded no discernible fruits,

His parole was restored time after time. He expressed a clear understanding that

he was obligated not to leave the hospital grounds. Each time, in accordance with his

past behavior, he would promptly disappear. After a few hours, several days, or perhaps

a week, the police would call to say they had him in custody. Back on his ward he

seemed properly regretful and immediately expressed confidence in himself, explaining

that the last misadventure had served as the lesson he needed. He was soon allowed to

go out on the grounds again. Two or three small acts of defrauding, the temporary

misappropriation of an automobile (which he would usually abandon after his whim for

a ride had been fulfilled), or some other succession of deeds incompatible with parole

status always brought him back under strict supervision. After a short time he was

given still another trial.

He spoke fulsomely of the handsome treatment he was receiving, protested an

earnest affection for his physician, and swore staunchly that he would justify this faith

shown in him. Always he seemed entirely sure that his difficulties were a thing of the

past. Unlike the patient whose behavior is distorted by compulsion in the ordinary

sense, he showed no evidence of a struggle, no awareness of anything that gave him

doubt about his future success in achieving what he planned.

This alert, intelligent man remained always free from confusion, from any

indication of powerful impulses or yearnings, froth all conscious influences that might

account for his spectacular failure to gain freedom. He expressed eloquently very

natural desires to live an unrestricted life outside

THE MATERIAL 59

his familiar wards where he was locked in with very psychotic men. He mentioned no

force or conflict, in many long interviews, that might make it difficult for him to

conduct himself in a way that would bring him release from hospitalization. He denied

experiencing the slightest pleasure from alcoholic beverages. And, indeed, he always

seemed miserable, melancholy, and quite unlike his usual buoyant self when he had

partaken of drink.

He did sometimes, as a matter of fact, continue ten days or two weeks without

mishap. At his own request he was detailed to help the attendants on the infirmary

ward, which he did ably, faithfully, and apparently with interest. A merry, rather witty

person, he freely admitted that he had made a fool of himself and a mess of his life, but

he always maintained that he would never again break his word, which he had given not

to drink, not to stay out beyond the limits of a pass, and not to violate any other

hospital regulations. He was usually friendly and courteous to his physician and to other

personnel and went out of his way to be attentive to physically ill patients, apparently

taking mild pleasure in any kindness he could do them.

He continued to request a pass to go downtown, but seldom insistently, often

smiling or laughing with apparent relish as he admitted that his past performances did

not justify the further confidence he begged. It was an academic point, apparently, this

admitting of fault or guilt. It seemed more an expression of being polite and proper

than anything indicative of comprehension about cause and effect. But he made these

gestures attractively. His characteristic approach was tentative and with what looked

like a dash of humor at his own expense.

One Sunday morning he was given a pass after he had made a special point that

he wanted to attend church. Arnold did not return. Some of the hospital attendants on

their way home that night found him several miles out in the country staggering about

in the rain on a lonely road, his trousers hanging down about his heels, seriously

impeding his progress and tripping him from time to time into the ditch, where he

rolled and thrashed, hallooing wildly or cursing in aimless violence. Soaking wet,

covered with mud and vomitus, he was brought back to the hospital.

The next morning he faced his physician with a hangdog expression through

which a merry glance soon darted. Smiling, he lightly damned himself for the worst sort

of fellow imaginable and swore good-humoredly that he had learned his lesson. Within

a week parole was restored and shortly thereafter he celebrated his freedom by

somehow obtaining whiskey without leaving the grounds and hobbling into the

recreation building, where a dance was in progress, a picture of agitated dejection. He

stumbled about in purposeless lunges, eyes rolling, mouth open, and drooling saliva,

then collapsed sensationally on the floor before attendants could seize him.

60 THE MASK OF SANITY

These episodes are entirely typical of his last few months in the hospital. During

this time a limited degree of freedom was restored to him within a few days after each

episode and each time he failed as promptly and as spectacularly as in the incidents

described previously. Altogether he was arrested some dozen or more times during this

short period, nearly always within a few hours after leaving the hospital grounds.

He had frequent superficially serious talks with his physician in which he

expressed despair over his situation, remorse for his all but incredible record as a failure,

and a quick, cheerful confidence in his future. What might be called a thin and bright

surface of sincerity which is hard to indicate without paradox seemed to distinguish him

from his fellows who are also described in this book. This quality, not in the simplest

sense false, seemed not only consistent but almost complete. It was, however, too

bodiless to hold any true resolution or remorse or to be useful to him in gaining

worthwhile insight. It seems likely that his sincerity, though not a literal fraud, was so

thin as to be, for practical purposes, merely an academic abstraction. He was often in

high spirits, communicative, boyish, and rather winning. Though fretting and

complaining continually about his confinement and apparently unable to understand

adequately why this was advisable, he seemed to find mild interest and trivial pleasure in

small matters. He could give no explanation of why he committed acts that demanded

his remaining in a psychiatric hospital. He always fell back on the plea that he would

never do so again. When drinking, he was often noisy, always unhappy and distraught,

silly, and tearful.

His physician's enthusiasm to rehabilitate him by a siege of patience slowly waned

as failures accumulated. Finally on Easter Sunday he engagingly made another plea for a

bit of freedom. If he could only have a pass for a few hours, to go to church for Easter

services! His request was granted. Marvelously, he returned on time without indication

of having sought disaster and exultant at his success. On the strength of this

performance he was allowed to remain out in the sunshine on the grounds during the

afternoon. At nightfall he could not be found. The two letters at the beginning of his

story tell the rest.

All this, however, is but the merest glimpse of the man. The account as related to

this point is a word, and no more, in the man's history. Seven years ago, when admitted

for the first time, he had already spent some ten or twelve years in and out of jails and

mental hospitals, scarcely ever passing a week of his life without attention from the

police.

Small swindles, with property owned by another given as collateral for a loan, bad

checks, wrecking an automobile which he had bought on credit and for which he made

no effort to pay, surreptitiously selling a half dozen

THE MATERIAL 61

of his uncle's cows and blowing the cash-in these and scores of other but similar

activities he kept the local law enforcement agencies extended. He seemed always so

frank and honest, so thoroughly without malice, that often those damaged by him

withdrew their charges to give him another chance.

Sometimes by pleading grave illness or other disaster and emergency in the

family, he would, in his father's name, borrow $50.00 or $100.00, which he squandered

before the misrepresentation was detected. Once, feeling himself in need of funds to

make a trip, he rented to a stranger rooms in the house of a neighbor, cleverly timing his

transactions so he could show the accommodations, close the deal, and obtain payment

in advance during a period when the lady owning the property was downtown shopping.

The money he obtained and promptly wasted was seldom, if ever, sought for any

appreciable need or to satisfy impulses that seemed more than mild and transient

caprice. The frequent trips he made were all but purposeless. Whether he went to a

nearby town or a large, distant city, he sought no job or other opportunity, found no

adventure in the ordinary meaning of the word.

He often hung about street corners, went to a movie, loitered in a park, or spent

hours in a poolroom or cheap hotel lobby chatting about trivialities, and then, finding

his environment tedious, he would return home. Meanwhile, his parents, whom he

never informed of plans for travel, suffered no little anxiety and grief wondering

whether he was dead or alive and if they might see him again.

He did not write to his family while on these expeditions. If jailed for pawning a

tire he had stolen from someone's car, pressed too unpleasantly for bills he had run up,

or faced with trial for fraud (after selling nonexistent commodities for which he

successfully misrepresented himself as salesman), he usually telephoned his parents and

spoke convincingly of the ill fortune which had overtaken him and of his innocence of

willful wrongdoing. They regularly sped to his aid and, usually with appreciable expense

to themselves and with humiliation, succeeded in obtaining his release. Otherwise he

simply turned up one fine day, nonchalant, gracious in his apologies, but apparently

unaware of having caused any valid distress to those he always maintained he dearly and

deeply loved.

On turning to drink he sought low company and often ended by wandering off.

Sometimes days passed before he was discovered lying in forlorn swamps or wallowing

drunkenly about remote cornfields. Not dozens of times but scores of times his friends

and relatives had to search him out and bring him, inert or struggling farcically to no

end, back home, where he was washed, reclothed, and nursed to sobriety. He had done

no work at all since a brief gesture of helping his father in the store for a few months

after he

62 THE MASK OF SANITY

quit junior college in the town of his nativity at 17 years of age. He had no real friends

and seemed to want none, though he was superficially sociable and mingled easily with

both sexes. He had frequently sought the favors of prostitutes but had never showed a

lasting or a wholehearted interest in any woman.

So he was presented to the hospital seven years previously: 28 years of age, a

short, overnourished, quick-witted man, admitting many faults, acknowledging his

human frailty, debonair but not pretentious, a close-cropped black moustache on his lip,

a rather engaging, shy, swift light of merriment slipping at times into his glance. During

the seven years that he was under observation, no delusion was ever noted nor any

other sign even remotely suggestive of a mental disease that is accepted as such. He has

never even experienced temporary hallucinations while under the influence of alcohol.

He has undergone no disintegration of personality (as this is ordinarily understood),

none at least that is discernible on prolonged observation, by psychiatric examination, or

by any other means available. He is today plainly the same man that we first knew and

who, according to all accounts, has been a problem to his community for years.

After his first admission he was carefully examined; social service reports were

secured and he was observed day after day. No evidence of any condition officially

known as "psychosis" could be found. He was granted parole privileges, with results

that need not be described again. Time after time he was sequestered on closed wards,

naturally among patients whose psychoses showed typical manifestations, and among

them he stood out in arresting incongruity. Restored to parole, he regularly showed

himself incompetent and was returned to constant supervision. On the request of his

relatives, he was allowed to go home with them on trial-visit status, where, knowing that

a failure to behave himself would mean returning to the confinement he naturally

detested, he at once engaged in not one but several activities, each of which made his

return to the restrictions of a hospital not only necessary but urgent.

Weary of his life behind locked doors among classically demented men, on

several occasions he demanded his discharge. On being brought before the medical

staff he was found obviously "sane" and released. Soon, however, his relatives were

back with him, bearing tales of such mad folly as few, if any, people deranged in other

ways could produce. Readmitted to confinement inappropriate to his plain sanity by the

accepted criteria of mental disease, he soon became restless and, pointing out his legal

status, left against medical advice.

Worn out by incessant traffic with police in his behalf, diverted from the

customary uses of life by night-long searches for him in lonely hinterlands

THE MATERIAL 63

or in distant jails, his relatives finally succeeded in having him legally committed to the

custody of the hospital as an "insane" person. There is little doubt that the personal

influences and well-known political mechanisms of a rustic Southern community had

weight with the courts, not to speak of common sense unversed in technical psychiatry

but painfully aware of irrational conduct so long flagrantly demonstrated.

After a month or more of confinement under these circumstances, the patient

demanded an interview with the staff. With admirable logic he maintained that he

suffered from no mental derangement whatsoever. He lucidly described and recognized

signs of mental disorder, made light and clever jokes about the impropriety of applying

such criteria to him, and pointed out the absurdity of identifying him with the usual

patient kept in such a hospital. Admitting his maladjustment and his inveterate but

minor deeds of depravity, he insisted that he be left to ordinary legal measures in any

future misconduct, which he did not deny was possible. The staff, as conscientious

psychiatrists, could not do otherwise than agree that he was "sane and competent" and

release him.

Three weeks later he was brought back to the hospital at midnight by a brother

and a cousin. He had a fractured clavicle (memoir of his frequent brawls with local

police) and was lachrymose, penitent, and all but homesick for his ward in the hospital.

The physician on duty hesitated about readmitting him. His story was well known. His

relatives thereupon threatened to telegraph high officers in the government. They were

by no means assuaged at being told that the hospital was not maintained for the

treatment of persons judged sane by the canons of psychiatry and considered

responsible for their misconduct and misfortunes. After consultations with the

physician in charge of the hospital, Arnold was readmitted. Some weeks later he called

in local lawyers who, invoking the writ of habeas corpus, arranged a lunacy trial by jury.

Of course there could be but one verdict. The man was plainly "in his right mind." No

acceptable evidence of mental disease (as officially defined) could be brought out. He

was taken from the custody of the hospital.

A month afterward, chastened and eager for his familiar ward which, compared

to the alternative of jail, aroused nostalgia, he willingly returned, accompanied by

relatives who furnished a tale of woe too long for telling here.

This brings us to his last hospital admission, which preceded the incident with

which we began Arnold's story.

 

Next: Section 2: The Material , Part 1: The disorder in full clinical manifestations, 8. Tom

 

Energy Enhancement          Enlightened Texts         Psychopath           The Mask Of Sanity

 

 

Section 2, Part 1

 

 

 

 

ENERGY ENHANCEMENT TESTIMONIALS EE LEVEL1   EE LEVEL2 EE LEVEL3   EE LEVEL4   EE FAQS
NEWSLETTER SIGN UP
NAME:
EMAIL:

Search energyenhancement.org Search web