Infantile Insanity in Its Relation to Moral Perversion and Crime [excerpt]

     The Goncourt brothers in one of their least known stories picture the degenerate daughter of a “camp-wren” or straggling army prostitute. This child, whose life is drawn with so strong a hand, manifested gradual insane upheaval of morals when her psychopathic state was intensified at puberty by compulsory sexual stress and excitement. The ultimate results were factious insanity of an incurable kind and dementia. It so often occurs that even when there is no expression of crime, a condition of elation and light mania may pass into one of the stuporous psychoses with ultimate dementia if strenuous measures of correction are resorted to. A case of this kind, in which insanity was evidently the amplification of an originare verrüktheit, was that of Czolgosz who, after his semi-maniacal outburst which led him to assail Mr. McKinley, was treated in prison with the most brutal violence for the purpose of extorting a confession and revealing the names of his possible confederates. When he was brought to trial there was a condition of mental torture and dulness [sic] as a reaction state that closely approached dementia. I was a witness of his manner in the court room, and feel sure he did not know the nature of the indictment to which he was asked to plead. These cases are referred to for the purpose of illustrating the susceptibility of some fundamental states of mental instability and weakness, to strain and pressure. They suggest the importance as well of humane and methodical management, care, and protection, rather than unreasoning harshness.