Psychopath Hervey Cleckley THE MASK OF SANITY, Section 2: The Material , Part 1: The disorder in full clinical manifestations, 12. Anna

12. Anna

There was nothing spectacular about her, but when she came into the office you

felt that she merited the attention she at once obtained. She was, you could say without

straining a point, rather good-looking, but she was not nearly so good-looking as most

women would have to be to make a comparable impression. She spoke in the crisp,

fluttery cadence of the British, consistently sounding her "r's" and "ing's" and regularly

saying "been" as they do in London. For a girl born and raised in Georgia, such

speaking could suggest affectation. Yet it was the very opposite of this quality that

contributed a great deal to the pleasing effect she invariably produced on those who met

her. Naive has so many inapplicable connotations it is hardly the word to use in

reference to this urbane and gracious presence, yet it is difficult to think of our first

meeting without that very word coming to mind, with its overtones of freshness,

artlessness, and candor.

She had passed her fortieth birthday some months before. Neither her face nor

her figure had lost anything worth mentioning. Despite her composure, she gave a

distinct impression of energy and playful spontaneity, an impression of vivid youth. In

response to ordinary questions about her activities and interests she spoke of tennis,

riding, and reading. More specific inquiry brought out opinions on Hamlet's essential

conflict, comparison between the music of Brahms and the music of Shostakovitch, an

impressive criticism of Schopenhauer's views on women, and several pertinent

references to The Brothers Karamazov. She expressed opinions on current affairs that

seemed to make excellent sense and talked with wit about the cyclic changes in feminine

clothes and the implications of atomic physics for the future. What she had to say was

particularly interesting and she said it in just the opposite of all those many ways of

talking that people call "making conversation."

As discussion progressed, the picture of a rather remarkable woman became

more and more distinct. Here was evidence of high intelligence and of considerable

learning without discernible bookishness or consciousness of being "an intellectual."

Her manner suggested wide interest, fresh and contagious enthusiasms, and a taste for

living that reached out toward all healthy experience. Having a cup of coffee with her

or weeding a garden would somehow take on a special quality of fun and delightfulness.

Something about her over and beyond her looks prompted the estimate that she would

be very likely to elicit romantic impulses, strong sensual inclinations, from most men

who encountered her. Here, it seemed, was natural taste

THE MATERIAL 103

without a shadow of posed estheticism, urbanity without blunting of response to the

simplest of joys, integrity and good ethical sense with the very opposite of everything

that could be called priggish or smug. She showed nothing to suggest she meant to give

such an impression or that she had any thought as to how she seemed.

Even with a detailed record of Anna's career clearly in mind, it was difficult

indeed not to come to a conclusion that all the well-authenticated facts of that record

should be ignored since they were so thoroughly contradicted by the obvious character

of this appealing woman. The banal but nevertheless insistent thought that such a

psychiatric history must apply to some other person was hard to dismiss. Prior to this

interview a great deal of trustworthy information had been made available to me.

Anna's mother and father had given her story at length. A reliable psychiatrist in whose

small private hospital she had been treated on numerous occasions furnished not only

an ordinary history but many details from his firsthand experience with her over the last

twenty years. Her family physician had grown up in the same community with the

patient and, through his personal acquaintance with her and her associates since

childhood, had access to a remarkable amount of unusual information. He, as well as

another medical practitioner who was also a relative, gave further details. Other sources

of fact and opinion lay in several patients treated in the past whose relations with Anna

at various periods of her life were significant. In the course of treatment, material had

emerged in these other cases that rounded out her history and afforded additional

means to evaluate her own reactions in interpersonal relations.

It is too much of a story to tell in a chapter or in a single book. And, no matter

how told, it could not be believed except by those who have already had experience

over years with such patterns of behavior. Familiarity with a temporary cross section of

such a life (as, for instance, during a single period of hospitalization), plus a generalized

account of what preceded, would almost surely convince any psychiatrist of the

diagnosis, but this would probably fail to give him the challenging sense of wonder, the

awe that arises from a contemplation of the accumulated detail in its specific essence.

Her family first became aware that Anna had serious problems through the

discovery of a boys' club in the local high school which, if not exactly founded in her

honor, had at least been organized about her as the central figure. Comprised of ten or

a dozen members in their early teens, a secret society in a sense, the group, like many

Greek letter fraternities, had special phrases, symbolic signs, and countersigns.

Encountering each other at the soda fountain or passing in the school corridor, two

boys might slowly flex

104 'THE MASK OF SANITY

the fingers of their hands (so as to suggest a rounded aperture, possibly), leaving their

arms dangling as if to veil slightly from alien observers a mystic communication.

Amid the chattering of groups over their chocolate sodas or hamburgers. certain

phrases were thrown out stamped with idiom by the tone of voice and a special

knowing quality in the accompanying glance. Small talk proceeded along lines common

to pubertal groups. Baseball scores were predicted and estimates were voiced as to

whether or not a certain girl would neck or pet or perhaps do a French kiss on the third

date. The occasional gestures and the allusive words provoked curiosity among the

uninitiated without actually revealing the secret content. Numerous small groups of

boys, sometimes only three or four, sometimes more, banded by a common interest in

postage stamps, firearms, a secret shack in the woods where they met to gamble, or in

some other affair, often reserved for themselves a peculiar connotation in bits of

familiar language or devised codes of slang, verbal, digital, and postural, to transmit

among the elect understandings of special recognitions best reserved from the

surrounding masses.

First and fundamentally, the comprehension of the entire adult world was glibly

evaded by this communication system. In mixed gatherings, such as at dancing school,

allusions could be made, say to a half bottle of cheap liquor stored weeks ago in a

hollow tree near the riverbank. This often evoked an arcane deviltry through which the

girls could be teased but in which they could not fully mingle. Groping among

confused and paradoxical concepts of virility, some boys could find stimulus (or

protectiveness) in neologisms and fresh innuendos pertaining to the act of excretion and

its subtle relationships to insult, sexuality, and infinite defilement.

Like dozens of other small, spontaneously forming and dissolving fraternities

centered around interests that ranged from bird study to techniques of mutual

masturbation, the group whose special interest lay in Anna did not for a while attract

undue or sustained scrutiny from the adult world. The club had come into being after a

discussion among several boys heretofore not particularly well acquainted with one

another. Chat had veered desultorily front literal accounts of what they had done to

certain girls to playful variations on the theme of personal insult by the versatile (and at

times fantastic) use of strongly obscene words.

As every junior high school boy knows, this argot of double-talk can bring a

stimulus of exaggeration into the simplest statement and at the same time literally

indicate matters so grotesquely perverse that they probably lie beyond biologic

experience. Though at times seized upon to express actual rage or contempt, even the

most objectionable formulations are oftener used in amiable or even affectionate

badinage and horseplay. The actual nouns

THE MATERIAL 105

and verbs, chiefly those of four letters (occasionally those of three or five), denote parts

of the body involved in excretion and the genital organs of man and woman, and

eliminative and sexual activities. Mingled in a sort of cloacal chaos, seasoned with

qualifiers of coprophilic and more broadly scatologic significance, weirdly sadistic,

rounded Out with participial references to olfactory and other sensory outrages, this

unprintable language is worn so smooth by continuous repetition among pubertal boys

that even its more literal meaning often bypasses their awareness.

In calling this language unprintable I am not uncognizant of the fact that there is

not one of the forbidden words which has not occasionally appeared in books and that

all of them can be seen scrawled on the walls of latrines. These words, however, in

isolation or in different contexts, cannot even hint at the terrible significance so obvious

in the context of speech into which they are woven. Though some attention has, of

course, been given by psychiatry to what is now being mentioned, it is an area that

deserves further study.74,91,229,248 The material is so highly charged that even in medical or

in any other technical writing it cannot be handled freely. The actual discussion that led

to the beginning of the club to which we are giving attention cannot be presented to the

reader.

It is, of course, for one thing not directly accessible to me in full detail, although

there is sufficient information to reconstruct a reliable approximation in concrete terms.

The nature of Anna's behavior and experience in her relationship to the club can

scarcely be conveyed by a generalization, From what material is available about this

specific incident and with the aid of confirmatory detail gathered from the review of

many similar situations, let us, as best we can (tentatively, but with sufficient evidence to

give confidence that the approximation is in substance valid) attempt to reconstruct a

little of the scene. Even a few bowdlerized and typical fragments may be helpful.

The boys had been hanging around together at a spot near the riverbank where

they sometimes fished, talking in the sort of bull session that often arose.

"Butch, you sure ___ed me up on that algebra assignment last night."

"Aw ___ Jack, you ___ed yourself, you damn old horse's … Just because the prof wouldn't

suck up all that bull___ you tried to hand him, don't give me that kind of ___ The prof just up

and ___ed on you. That's all there is to it. He ___ed on you good. Right in your eye.___ ,. to

Prof. Blankl Why that ___ halt ___sted ___sucker almost ___ed me out of a pass on the last

test."

Another boy diverted this trend of conversation by claiming he got:

106 THE MASK OF SANITY

a piece of ___ from the colored woman who washed dishes at the Greek's hot dog stand,

boasting that it was plenty good… and cost only fifty cents.

"____ on that old black…" Butch commented disparagingly, "If you put a croker

sack over her head I might give two bits for it." Thoughtfully he added, "Nigger ___ ___s

too bad for me. You can have my share of that ____y stuff!"

Butch had been raising his .22 rifle to his shoulder from time to time as he talked,

idly glancing down the sights as he aimed it at distant objects. "Lemme see your gun a

minute," Jack asked, impatiently stretching out his hand. When Butch signified refusal by

silently shifting the rifle out of reach, Jack expressed mild vexation: "Well, stick the

goddamned thing up your ......"

Bill, another one of the group, caught up the momentarily abandoned subject.

"Some fellows say nigger women got the best damn ____ in the world." Bill referred to an

ingenious method learned from his older cousin, now a grown man at college. The boy

had overheard him and another man discussing their exploits of miscegenation. Bill had

not yet had an opportunity to try the technique personally, but this he did not disclose. It

involved the use of an old towel (a hole having been cut near the middle) and offered

advantages worth knowing about. He went on to explain how you could, in this way,

"____ it to 'em" with no bodily contact except that imperatively necessary and with

minimal suggestions of intimacy. Jack laughed and expressed approval of the approach

described by Bill, then tilted his head toward the boy with the rifle, shouting, "Reason old

Butch talks so finicky is because he can't even get up a___ I Betcha a hundred dollars if all

the ____ in the world was sprawled right there in front of him that he couldn't even raise a

____ !"

"You dirty _____ you," Butch answered, slightly irritated, "You're talking about

your ____ self. Everything you say goes back on yourself." Apparently feeling this was a

little lame, he added quickly, "Bet old Jack ain't ever even ____ off in his pants!"

"Maybe all he's done is just to_____ in 'em," Bill commented merrily. "Bet that's

what old Butch would do if a girl had no better sense than to let him think she'd let him

____ her."

Turning now from this exchange of compliments, the boys offered bits of

information and speculation about several girls with whom all had some acquaintance

through classes, dancing school, or Sunday school.

"I understand Sue White's begun to put out a little ____," Bill said. "____ no!"

Butch disagreed. "Sure would like to get myself a little of that ____ But Sue's a nice girl."

"Pete Green says he finger ____ed old fat ____ed Rita ___." Pausing a moment he

continued listlessly, "Can't think of her last name. You know who I mean. Lives in the big

house next to Sam Beech's uncle."

"Wouldn't be surprised," Butch agreed. "I dry ___ed her myself the

THE MATERIAL 107

second time I ever got her alone. On the other hand, you can't believe anything that damn

mother ___ing ____ Green says," Butch added.

Feeling his enmity to Pete Green, who, a month or two ago, had made him back down

with the threat of "slapping the living ____ out of him, Butch continued in unspoken thought,

"Damn that Pete Green! If that _____ ever tries to cross me up again I'll tell him I'll ____ his

____ mother up the _____ with a two by four and then ____ in his ____ face! That would

shut him up, maybe!"

Pete had intimidated Butch several times in the past. He knew he wouldn't dare to

provoke a fight by talking to Pete in any such way, but it eased his feelings a little to think

about it.

"Tell you what I'd like to try," Bill admitted, after a moment of silence, "is some of that

____ Anna Blank packs. Every day in Latin class I keep thinking I'll take a shot at it ... but

somehow with a girl like that… I just don't know…"

Bill could not quite express what made him cautious. It was not only that her father and

mother were rich and prominent and powerful in the community and her older brother strong

enough to beat him half to death if anything, even about a try, was found out. It was more

than that. Most of the girls you did these things to were sort of from the other side of the

tracks. But by no means all of them were. You could get away with it lots of times with ones

supposed to be real nice. Lots of goofy fellows still thought some of them were nice, Bill

realized in an inexpressible wave of superiority and vague elation. Some poor damn ____s

would even marry them some day.

The sort of thin, ruthless exuberance that glowed in the boy screened an

underlying stratum of personal insecurity probably common to all mankind and

sometimes particularly disturbing at this age. He did not try to account for the

triumphant feeling or to ask if it sprang chiefly from ideas of debasing the female or,

perhaps even more, from the scornfully superior position he thus attained in fantasy to

the other male. Thoughts of this sort did not enter Bill's consciousness, but factors

influenced his feelings which, if he had understood them, might have produced such

thoughts. By no means given to violence in action, this boy would not have inflicted

physical injury on another. In imagination, as in the comic strips, all sorts of fatalities

occur without anyone really getting hurt.

Still musing on Anna, Bill continued. "She sure is built, that girl! She's built just like a

brick ___ house."

Butch and Jack, who had been looking slyly at each other, gave a low whistle almost

simultaneously. Then they began to interchange a sort of chuckling that was half laughter

and half teasing, designed to provoke curiosity in their companion. After a while Bill was

told how easy it was to get ____ from Anna. Each of the other boys gave a detailed

account of his own experiences, including one success by Jack in the storage room at

school. These experiences were quite recent and until now had not been widely discussed

by either Butch or Jack.

108 THE MASK OF SANITY

Each had, in fact, been surprised and, though this was not admitted, also shocked

to discover that Anna was not a "nice girl." A confused disillusionment no doubt played

some part in their present emphasis on the opposite evaluation of this girl who had,

rather typically, represented the "sacred" (sexless) female in their thoughts. The fear of

so honoring a female who turned out to be this other sort of thing loomed as a threat to

one's own manhood. The untouchable priestess, once disclosed as an impostor, must

be thoroughly defiled. Thus man sometimes seeks protection from confusion through

which he himself risks the defilement of personally enshrining one who will make his

virility (honor) the laughingstock of the group.

Fortified by this enlightenment, Bill partook of Anna's favors soon afterward. All

of the boys found a special pleasure in talking together about their achievements. Soon

a friend of these three was told about their source of pleasure, then another friend, and

still another. At first each boy had gone alone, but as time passed it became more

practical for several to visit Anna together. An appointment would be made by one of

those interested. Anna, under the pretext of taking a walk or going to visit a friend

would, without detection, make her way to a building situated on the other side of the

large garden behind her house. Now used as a storehouse and garage, the building was

originally a stable, and its former hayloft afforded reasonable privacy. The boys, by

coming from another street through a hedge back of the garage, could make their way

unnoticed to the rendezvous. Safe opportunities, though fairly frequent, were limited

because the chauffeur was sometimes in the garage. There were also days when the yard

man worked nearby, or, rarely, Anna's brother might be there exercising with barbells

and other gymnastic equipment he kept in another part of the building. This, no doubt,

was a factor in the group's choice of coming together, particularly as its membership

expanded. Of even more importance, perhaps, was a specific satisfaction found by

some in entering upon the venture together. The closely shared experience seemed to

enhance the pleasures of club conversation when they gathered later to talk over what

happened.

After chapel in the morning it was customary for the captain of the baseball team,

the chairman of the debating club, and others interested in extracurricular activities

occasionally to announce plans for meetings of their various groups. One morning, in

response to a dare by other club members, Jack came forward and in a bold voice called

out: "At the beginning of lunch hour there'll be a meeting of the Animal Crackers in

Room 49." There was a scatter of giggling and some random speculation on the part of

a few teachers, but no official inquiry about the club was made and no adult thought of

any play on Anna's name or caught improper innuendos.

THE MATERIAL 109

The existence of the club and their daughter's undesirable situation was finally

brought to the attention of Anna's parents through its effect on another person.

Among the older boys who had been attracted by Anna was one who had

apparently turned to her in the utmost seriousness. All accessible information indicates

that this boy fell in love with Anna not by a trivial attraction but with all the vividness

and life shaking stir that the first complete and genuine experience of this sort can bring

to an earnest young man almost ready for college. The younger girl, suddenly having

become mature in body, loomed like something never seen before upon his awareness.

There is reason to believe that he was determined to marry her and resolved to be

scrupulously faithful through all the years he must wait for this. There is nothing to

suggest he did not seek her with strongly passionate physical desire, but apparently his

idealization of her and fear of arousing even further impulses, which it would have been

for him a desecration to fulfill under these conditions, caused him to treat her, if not like

an untouchable goddess, at least with extraordinary restraint. Anna, it seems, behaved

in such a way that he was sure she reciprocated his feelings not only in kind but also in

degree.

Reports as to how he discovered the relations of Anna with the club are

somewhat conflicting. It is almost impossible to believe that fortune was so unkind as

to have him blunder upon an actual meeting of this group with the customary activities

in progress. So it is said to have happened. At any rate, he received enlightenment in

such a convincing way that the impact was sudden and trenchant.

In his immediately subsequent state, rumored to be a "nervous breakdown" at the

time, his family physician, after considerable difficulty, seems to have obtained some

idea of what he had experienced. Being a relative of Anna's mother and a boldly

conscientious man, he felt that the situation demanded attention and disclosed

something of it to her parents.

Insofar as the complicated and seldom obvious attitudes that enter into the

administration of parental authority and guidance on such an occasion can be evaluated,

it seems that this girl's father and mother avoided the typical mistakes that might have

been made. Neither attempted to conceal the humiliation and distress brought upon

them by such conduct. After adequate frankness about their reaction to the conduct

itself, they tried to avoid rubbing it in by moralizing reiteration. A decision was made

for Anna to be sent at once to a fine boarding school in a distant state. Apparently

feeling that the daughter could not fail to be critically traumatized by realizations that

withered them with pain and shame, Anna's mother and father tried, as some people are

able to do after losing eyesight or a first child, to

110 THE MASK OF SANITY

accept what has happened without evasion but nevertheless to turn with all resolution

available to what is ahead and not to stir what is tragic or hideous, but now past and

unmodifiable. There does not seem to have been gross error in glossing over what had

taken place or minimizing the possible consequences. Both parents tried to support

Anna by emphasizing opportunities in the future and by their knowledge that in the

process of growing up it is not uncommon for people to make mistakes that in the adult

world would be fatal.

Anna's apparent reactions were such as to enable all the family to be entirely

sincere in showing her their continued confidence, their respect, and their love. In

choosing a fine private school with high academic standards, she seemed to be showing

her serious intentions about the future. Her keen interest in choosing clothes, her care

in getting exactly the right sort of curtains for the dormitory room might have suggested

to some almost too easy and quick a recovery from the fell blow she was thought to

have suffered, but at the time this seemed instead a fit and appealing veil of insouciance

that she bravely, if not almost heroically, pulled about her to conceal with stoic and

patrician grace the terrible trauma her spirit had sustained. Even in the short period of

time before she left for the East, the outwardly blithe air that Anna displayed when she

joked and laughed with friends who came by (her ability to seem blandly preoccupied in

getting the new jazz records and those popular dancing slippers that the shop was

expecting any day now) provoked fleeting but ominous thoughts in the family that such

poise, considering the full circumstances, might be a little excessive.

Excellent reports on Anna came for several months from the distant school. She

was doing well in her studies and already she had won a place on the swimming team.

She seemed also to have found herself almost at once in the warm affection of teachers

and students. One teacher, in a letter to her mother, spoke of Anna's "unusual promise

in English" and of her Surprising maturity of outlook." Anna's own letters, though few,

were warm with expressions of devotion that seemed to follow the inimitable idiom of

sincerity.

In these letters she sometimes mentioned her conviction that she knew of no way

to express her gratitude except to show by her own conduct that she did deserve the

trust her mother and father had shown in her and the support of their love and

understanding. No happiness could mean more than that she would find in making

them feel they could be proud of her again.

Such letters were building up in these parents an encouragement they sorely

needed and offering (as an anodyne for their anguish and humiliation)

THE MATERIAL 111

increasing hope that as parents they had not, perhaps, failed their daughter utterly.

Meanwhile, reports began to come from the school which seriously disquieted them.

Anna had apparently broken a number of rules, most of them involving minor

issues, it is true. She had twice been caught smoking with several other girls; she had

four times stayed out considerably beyond hours; she had cut several classes; she had

spoken disrespectfully to a teacher. But, after all, such misdemeanors often indicate a

healthy sort of growing up and her parents were anxious to avoid forcing Anna into a

rigid pharisaical propriety as compensation for her terrible error.

When a final decision was reached that Anna could not be kept at school, a good

many more serious symptoms had come to light. Several petty thieveries (at first

assumed to be absentminded borrowings), flagrant but ingenious cheating in laboratory

work, calm lies about matters that were accepted as points of honor-all of this added up

to make her expulsion imperative.

At the half dozen or more subsequent schools attended by Anna, she often

seemed to have changed, and for varying periods her family's hope was high. Her

behavior at each place fell into similar but not identical patterns. Like the persisting

theme in a complicated work of music, her actions took diverse courses but came always

to an identical point, which for her was failure. A Brahms concerto may spread and

range, with woodwinds at one phase carrying the movement and, a little later, the violins

manifesting something of another sort or the piano (as if in reply to the orchestra)

weaving a fresh subject into the manifold skein; so through her history appeared

episodes of variety and genuine novelty, all contributing to a design of impressive

versatility but leading to an inevitable conclusion.

Once or twice Anna completed the entire year, but nearly always each new

institution found itself unable to handle her after a few months. Sometimes she worked

steadily during the summer and easily completed courses she had missed in her

numerous shiftings about. Perhaps on the basis of an excellent performance on the

entrance examination, she gained admission to a distinguished college for women and,

after being expelled, briefly attended a smaller college and two state universities. On

other occasions she undertook training in business school, in hospitals (nursing, x-ray

technician) and welfare work. She often expressed spontaneously a lively interest in this

or that career and worked out her plans with good judgment, but, after widely varying

periods during which she applied herself, she regularly ended by quitting voluntarily or

being dismissed.

When Anna sought some new job with which to occupy herself or to enter some

course of training, she seemed to have no hesitation in giving

112 THE MASK OF SANITY

as references those who had no choice except to describe her as entirely unreliable and

unfit for what she planned. Sometimes the reason for her failures seemed not to lie so

much in antisocial or spectacularly improper acts as in other maladaptations. A few

excerpts from a letter follow:

Mrs. Anna _____ has requested that we write you in regard to her work as a student

in our School for Roentgenological Technicians. … Because of her irregularity in

attendance she lacked fourteen weeks of the period required in our course…. It was

necessary to admonish this student on several occasions because of her poor work. …She

repeatedly made mistakes, the seriousness of which seemed not to concern her in the least.

…Similar complaints were handed in against her by several instructors. The mistakes were

never made through lack of intelligence… but apparently from disregard of consequences

or some type of distraction…. She was put on probation, twice for avoidable and grave

mistakes, and once for her attendance record…. On being threatened with dismissal

because of her apparent disinterest, she, for a while, regularly demonstrated her fine ability.

… This student, we are compelled to say, was a definitely dangerous worker to have

around Roentgenological apparatus. It became necessary to watch her carefully. She

could not be trusted to carry out things on her own responsibility. … When told of her

failings, she always showed amazement and disbelief that she could possibly be doing

anything wrong. She appeared to be sincere in such reactions.... I find it impossible to

recommend this person for work along these lines. … I am convinced that her

performance would be detrimental to the profession or to any group for which she might

work. … We regret that it is necessary to submit so unfavorable a report... This letter is

written in response to her request.

Among the almost limitless accumulation of incidents that loom in a

retrospective glance at her career, only a few can be given here, and these in the utmost

brevity.

From one prep school she was dismissed though standing high in her classes

after it was proved she had placed a half dozen or more rubber condoms so that these

useful items would become unmistakably evident when several couples seated

themselves on the two sofas that flanked the fireplace. Here, almost directly under

chaperoning eyes, the younger pupils not yet given permission to go out with their

boyfriends had circumspect dates on certain evenings. No sudden scurrying of mice

could have evoked more hearty squeals or such quick explosive male laughter than the

magic-like appearance of these unmistakable objects, some neatly rolled, others

generously stuffed. Had only one or perhaps even two of the condoms emerged

inconspicuously into view as the soft cushions shifted with the seating of couples, it

might have been possible for an alert girl, or perhaps

THE MATERIAL 113

even for one of the self-conscious and preoccupied boys, to cover it and hide it away

before general attention was aroused.

Anna, it seems, had given some thought to this. Perhaps with time and retelling,

some exaggeration has colored the event. It is said that an elastic band was set to snap

one condom boldly forth and that others were placed so they would slip down from

under the knitted antimacassars. At any rate, Anna made certain of a conspicuous

display. Struck almost witless by the magic appearance of such an object in her lap

(whence it had dropped from the top of the sofa), one girl released the initial squeal.

Such uproar ensued automatically that hastening chaperones missed little of the scene.

On numerous occasions Anna made difficulties for herself by driving off in cars

that belonged to teachers or other school employees. Only once, or possibly twice,

during her teens does it appear she had serious intentions of stealing the car for

permanent possession. On the other hand, there were periods when she frequently

stole underwear, stockings, and ornaments (usually inexpensive costume pieces or club

pins) from other students and even from those in authority.

While at the university, for a time she fell into the sporadic practice of relieving

her dates of small amounts of cash she discovered in their pockets during heavy petting.

Under such circumstances she also, but more rarely, took a pocketknife or a bunch of

keys. At one finishing school where personal dignity among the faculty was

emphasized, she is said to have lost her place as a student by neatly lettering on the door

of the office of the sedate Latin instructress a concise advertisement:

Hot p____ available here-cheap!

After making good grades in a well-known college and having been in no serious

trouble for several months, she began lying in bed too late to attend her early classes.

Interviews with the college physician, and eventually with a psychiatrist, followed. After

several warnings and probationary measures, and just in time to avoid expulsion, she

began to attend all classes again.

During an interval in which she had no further trouble with the faculty, Anna

alienated and outraged several girls in the dormitory with whom she had been very

friendly. After a few bottles of beer which the group had shared, she entered the rooms

occupied by two of these friends and, in their absence, urinated on several evening

dresses which they highly valued. (After the act she refolded the dresses neatly and put

them back, sodden and malodorous, in the drawers.) It was a number of days before

evidence emerged that unmistakably connected Anna with this deed.

114 THE MASK OF SANITY

Observations which in themselves were highly suggestive but not final proof

were for a while withheld by those who could not bring themselves to believe Anna

capable of such behavior. She easily denied such a possibility to several who spoke with

her separately in the hope of finding facts that would exonerate her. She also fabricated

evidence to establish her innocence so calmly and so freely that it carried almost

axiomatic conviction. On being confronted with plain proof from several sources, she

was able to smile off the affair and dismiss it as a whimsical prank. Some felt it was

their responsibility as a group to report this incident, but so much was brought out in

Anna's behalf that all finally agreed to let the affair go no further.

Merely tabulating these and many other details of Anna's behavior tends to

suggest rather easily formulated motivations. With a more complete story these appear

less likely. If a good many of the stealing incidents are isolated, some would no doubt

be inclined to interpret them as ordinary compulsive reactions. On the other hand,

personal contact with her does not give the impression of an underlying anxiety or of

any strong drive against which she struggles or which she would like to reject. In

addition to taking things for which she has little or no need (and which might symbolize

some ordinary unconscious aim), she also steals in response to a real though mild desire

to possess or for convenience.* With a more inclusive view of her activities the thefts

become more difficult to account for satisfactorily by the specific and familiar theories

of compulsion. They, like so many of her other symptoms, seem part of a different and

far less circumscribed psychopathology.

Concentrating on the long record of her outlandish sexual promiscuity (some of

which will soon be given), the most naive observer would perhaps think of

"nymphomania" or at least of very powerful erotic drives. Others might surmise that

she is and has always been a frigid (or partially frigid) woman who finds stimulation but

never orgasm and who is driven more or less consciously to all sorts of indiscretions in

a never-ending quest. Neither of these hypotheses seems to account for Anna's

behavior when one becomes familiar with more evidence pertaining to her inner

experiences.

Anyone's real inner experience is, of course, difficult to arrive at even by

conjecture and perhaps impossible to establish by proof. In a person so accomplished

in devising falsehoods on any subject and in making them so convincing, Anna's own

statements can hardly be taken as necessarily true. There seems, indeed, but one way

(and this one obviously not permissible)

________________________

* See p. 258 for further discussion of these points, particularly of the contrast between "compulsive"

and "impulsive" symptoms.

THE MATERIAL 115

to discover directly a lady's physical reactions to intercourse; and even then she can, it is

said by some, often be misleading if she so wishes. Despite these difficulties, a rather

convincing impression emerges that Anna's sexual problem is very different and far

more complicated than anything that has been mentioned.

It seems likely that she has frequently experienced the physiologic reactions of

orgasm but that these reactions have been a minor factor in her behavior pattern.

Sometimes, while having technically satisfactory relations with a husband, she would

continue intercourse with other men who, it seems, failed entirely to arouse or to gratify

her in the usual sense. As a matter of fact, while living with the husband who, more

regularly than any other man she can recall, made her "respond," she initiated and

continued relations with several other men. From some of these she neither particularly

wanted nor ever received pleasure that could be called sensual or romantic.

Although such conclusions are necessarily speculative (as they are, indeed, about

any patient) and not scientifically verifiable, it seems most probable that this woman has

somewhat less than ordinary conscious sexual motivation and that the most significant

feature of her sexual experience is that, despite frequent mechanical responses, it has

meant so little to her. The localized sensory reaction has not been greatly valued nor

has it seemed to play a dominant role in directing her conduct. Anatomic intimacy with

man has never been associated with interpersonal relationships of any consequence or

duration. Important as this fact may be (granting that our estimate is in some measure

correct), it still does not offer a circumscribed area in which a final explanation for

Anna's career can be readily drawn. In every other aspect of social experience also this

woman has similarly failed to develop any sort of relationship with another human being

that seemed to have much meaning for her or, to put it another way, that could

influence her to any consistent, obviously purposive behavior.

It is true indeed that this casual or "cheap" use of physical sexuality often appears

to be a confused sort of vengeful or self-destructive response to hurt and rejection or to

misleading essential concepts of "male" and "female."164 The pattern followed

sometimes suggests that such behavior may represent (with varying degrees of

awareness in the subject) a "throwing of oneself away." It may at the same time seem to

return a hurt and symbolize a protest too profound and too complicated for words.*

Anna's sexual behavior and her generalized self-destructiveness (at social and personal

levels) might be interpreted on such a basis. Let us remember, however, that such

____________

* See Chapter 36.

116 THE MASK OF SANITY

an interpretation is speculative. Let us refrain from projecting items of psychiatric

theory into Anna's unconscious and from assuming that they constitute evidence of

emotional reactions in infancy that have shaped her subsequent course and by which we

can confidently explain her career. Perhaps, some might say, serious and subtle

traumatic events unknown to herself and others, even during the first year of her life or

later, planted the seeds of a profound (unconscious) conflict which she has been forced

to act out in this malignant pattern. No real evidence of this, however, has emerged in

the study of her case.

We may also consider the possibility that such a person as Anna might be born

with a subtle and specific biologic defect. Perhaps, despite a high capacity for

intelligence and charm, something necessary for wisdom or for sincere and major

human feelings was left out or incomplete in her development. Capacities very different

and much simpler are incomplete in the person born with color blindness or with a

spastic deficiency in the motor system. Such biologic deficiencies are not necessarily

hereditary. Let us assume that a defect in development may leave such a person as

Anna without the capacity to attain deep loyalty or genuine love or to adequately

recognize and react to the major goals and values of human life. The lack of major

satisfactions and aspirations and the freedom from serious scruples or remorse might

leave such a person free to act out any whim of folly or rebellion and offer some

explanation for such a career as Anna's.

At 40 years of age, during our first interview, Anna absentmindedly checked the

preliminary information blank to indicate her status as divorced. She spontaneously

changed the pencil mark to show that she was married. As a matter of fact, Anna's

current marriage had lasted a good many years. It is true her husband was such in name

only, but he served a practical purpose. The couple had not seen each other or

otherwise communicated since shortly after the nuptials, but the legal existence of this

union deterred Anna in one aspect of her behavior that had formerly given considerable

trouble to her family and their attorneys.

Before her last wedding and over a long period, she had fallen into the habit of

marrying on an impulse apparently as trivial as what might lead another woman to buy a

new hat. With one man after another she casually completed the legal ceremonies and

entered into this monumental contract, the groom being now an adventurous taxi

driver, now an opportunistic bar companion, or, again, a delinquent idler she

encountered in her welfare work.

The succession of divorces and the repeated financial settlements demanded by

vagrants and petty rascals she had on several occasions espoused threatened the family

resources. Gratifying (and in contrast with some other

THE MATERIAL 117

cases of similar illness), Anna's marriage series was halted by the prospect of legal

bigamy.

The husbands of this series were not (or certainly not usually) men who took the

bride very seriously. This cannot be said of her earlier husbands, two of whom were

distinguished and wealthy men and, according to the evidence, genuinely and deeply in

love with Anna. With one of these, an architect of international repute, she lived for a

while in England. To him and almost simultaneously to his wayward brother Anna is

said to have given gonorrhea which, as the first year of marriage drew to a close, she

inadvertently picked up from a sycophantic interior decorator, a person, according to

report, more active homosexually than otherwise.

I entertain some skepticism about the details of this episode. Such an extravagant

and perfectly timed series of events scarcely seems possible. Though usually ready to

deny anything inconsistent with chaste and honorable behavior, this patient has in other

moods seemed to relish adding fanciful touches to the already spectacular reality. Her

promiscuity has, however, been so lavish that coincidences almost impossible in a

hundred other lives combined hardly seem unlikely in hers. There is little doubt that she

was sufficiently unfaithful for this or something equally bizarre to have befallen the

husband.

On being detected in activities that would produce fear, shame, or consternation

in others, this patient often showed simple insouciance. Once at college she did so well

for so long that hope returned to her family. Apparently she had found herself at last.

After a succession of excellent reports, one showing failures in four subjects appeared.

Anna was called on long-distance telephone by her father, who wanted to lose no time

in trying to find some remedy for the trouble.

Her easy, happy laughter relieved him deeply, even before she bad time to go on

and explain the mistake that had been made in the dean's office. She had just heard of it

but had not realized the rather comical error had been transmitted to any report that

reached him and her mother. Actually she had not realized it was quite time for these

reports to be mailed out. She had been, you see, pretty busy-but "mighty happy," too.

Warmed within and deeply reassured, he left the telephone completely at ease.

Within a few days, sure enough, there came official acknowledgment of the

mistake. The grades of another girl had been confused with those of his daughter. The

true report was even better than those excellent ones that had been coming regularly

now for months. The dean's signed name and the official school paper and forms

would have dispelled any suspicions of fraud had suspicions arisen. Anna's tone and

manner when she spoke over the telephone were such, however, that no doubt at all

seemed justified.

118 THE MASK OF SANITY

Soon truly disturbing information came from the school. Not only was Anna

failing dismally in all studies, but serious misconduct had brought the question of her

expulsion to a crucial point. Wiring his daughter that he was taking the first train, the

father also instructed her to make appointments for him with the college authorities.

On arriving he found that no appointments had been made. He was entirely

unexpected. He was surprised, furthermore, to find that Anna had left for the weekend,

after convincing the house mother that she had parental permission to visit an imaginary

aunt. Apparently she typed letters and forged signatures to bring off this deception with

cleverness comparable to that employed in getting the school stationery and report

forms and successfully utilizing these to send back the false reports to her family.

On her return after the weekend she seemed surprised to find her father still

there and at first expressed vexation with him. He never learned just what

misadventures befell his daughter, who had apparently roamed about in a large city

nearby. She took all the discussion of her recent acts with equanimity, apologized for

her mistakes, and admitted that it was quite inexpedient to bring off such deceptions

when it was apparent to her they would certainly and promptly be discovered. She said

she did not know precisely why she had acted in such a plainly injudicious way, but she

never seemed curious or really concerned about the possibility of discovering a reason

for the behavior.

What would have happened to this patient had it not been for the extraordinarily

ample estate of her family and for their persistent care? One can only speculate. We

need not here estimate how many times she was released from jails in widely scattered

cities by their efforts, how many times she was hospitalized, how many beginnings with

psychotherapy were made by various experts. It is interesting to note that Anna, unlike

so many whose conduct closely resembles hers in other respects, seems never to have

committed a major felony or tried to do serious physical injury to another.

It is true that she was badly beaten up in some sort of night spot brawl in St.

Louis. On this occasion several of her ribs were fractured, and a lung was punctured;

her brother, who flew to her aid from Baltimore, thought at first her injuries would

prove fatal. Though occasionally, when drinking, she has taken an active part in

slapping or hair-pulling incidents, she has shown little inclination to attack. In similar

episodes she rarely initiated gross vocal disputes or was vulgarly aggressive with words.

Calmness seemed more characteristic of her than high temper, although it is recorded

that in her teens she was expelled from one academy for publicly telling off a school

authority in a speech vehemently and versatilely obscene and closing with references

anything but flattering to the state of his "third leg."

THE MATERIAL 119

Many of these incidents which in isolation appear spectacular occurred while

Anna passed in the community as a reliable, conforming, and extraordinarily attractive

woman. Much of the time she seemed poised, polite, and a paragon of happy behavior.

For a while during her early twenties she taught a Sunday school class. Her teachings

were ethically admirable and she gave a strong impression of sincerity. She often

worked for a month or more at a time, efficiently and with what seemed pleasure, at the

Red Cross and in other welfare activities. Most who knew her casually in these

endeavors would have been genuinely astonished to learn that she had any serious

personality problem.

Once while hospitalized for a week or ten days, she left the almost universal

impression of being a delightful patient. Courteous, composed, undemanding, and

cheerful, she took discomforts and minor pains in a way that elicited admiration.

During this brief period, in which a benign nodule was surgically removed from her

breast, she casually accepted cunnilingual attentions from a female attendant (apparently

a true lesbian) and also sought to entice an intern. In these enticements she went so far

as to get the fly of his trousers open before accepting his determination to refrain.

Occasionally during her early thirties, but also a few times since, Anna had

engaged in a pastime known in some circles as gangbanging. There were minor

variations of procedure. Usually drinks with five or six men, whom she might pick up

in one of the less inviting honky-tonks or frolic spots about town, constituted the first

phase. Later the group rode out into the country and all her companions had sexual

relations with her, each taking his turn. On such an exploit, argument once arose about

whether or not she had stolen a cigarette lighter belonging to an escort, and the group,

uniting against her, threw Anna in a creek and then drove off, leaving her to walk home.

This patient spent a good deal of time reading. In contrast to many psychopaths

who readily claim all sorts of entirely imaginary learning, she showed considerable

familiarity with literature of many sorts. She seemed to read Shakespearean plays, the

major Russian novels, pulp magazines, and comic books with about the same degree of

interest. Her factual knowledge about what she had read seemed good, though it must

be admitted she often falsified with assurance when questions led her into unknown

areas.

She played complicated music on the piano with fine technical skill and spent a

good deal of time doing so. She had an accurate acquaintance with current scales of

intellectual and esthetic fashion and could probably have avoided offense even to the

most snide of editors of the most avant-garde of little magazines. How she reacted to

such matters in the innermost and final chamber of her being can only be surmised. My

impression is that King Lear

120 THE MASK OF SANITY

and Amazing Confessions elicited responses in no fundamental way different.

There is little I can offer in explanation for the biologic enigma I trust is

apparent. Despite abundant time to approach the patient directly, unusually rich detail

furnished by others, and even the rare chance of treating psychiatrically more than one

other upon whose life her own had impinged traumatically (and, so it would almost

seem, of seeing her through more than one set of eyes), despite all this, I cannot reveal

the forces that patterned her. I have opinions, but opinions are not facts.

Without claiming there is anything demonstrable or profoundly explanatory in

such an appraisal, I would give these impressions. It is unlikely that she experienced (in

what can reasonably be called ordinary awareness) much of the emotion that we

associate with the various deeds she has carried out. In both quantity and quality her

emotions, I believe, have regularly fallen short of the affect we almost automatically

assume must prompt, accompany, or follow such actions as hers. Though appearances

of emotion were sometimes impressive in Anna, it seems probable that these were

chiefly facsimiles of actual feeling, an automatic and undesigned mimicry. Though she

had vexations and minor satisfactions and though she could at times get mad and could

be a little fond of people, Anna never really seems to have meant much harm to others

or to herself.

One of the physicians who had often treated her expressed his bewilderment

about how real seemed her disregard of what was obvious, how strangely she escaped

the subjective consequences of her experiences. Taking a phrase from the Russian

novel about prostitution, Yama, to embody his reaction, he said, "All the horror is in

just this-that there is no horror."176

A thoughtful and now elderly member of her family whose advice her parents

and one of her early husbands had often sought was particularly impressed with what he

described as an unbelievable but somehow authentic innocence that Anna never seemed

to lose. Experiences which would harden an ordinary person conspicuously or ensure a

conscious cynicism, mordant and profound, seem to fall lightly on her spirit, to leave

her surprisingly serene. The person just mentioned, after more than two decades of

concern with her problems, finds even more surprising than all the unfortunate acts

combined, Anna's thoughtless assumption that she is to be trusted in all matters, that

her behavior has been essentially honorable and ladylike, and the fact that her selfrespect

is apparently bright and unblemished.

Seeking to give his impression of this strange equanimity, of these paradoxical

attributes of innocence, he once quoted:

THE MATERIAL 121

She hath wasted with fire thine high places,

She hath hidden and marred and made sad

The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces

Of gods that were goodly and glad.

She slays, and her hands are not bloody;

She moves as a moon in the wane,

White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,

Our Lady of Pain.

A. C. Swinburne

"Dolo