Psychology and Crime

NZ Truth, Issue 889, 9 December 1922, Page 1

Psychology and Crime

1 In sentencing to imprisonment an assistant head postman who had broken into a package, an English Judge criticised severely a letter from a psycho-analyst which attributed the theft to a childish habit of building fantasies. Tho Judge further remarked that it is a good thing that Judges and not , psycho-analysts deal with crime. ._ Psycho-analysts have advanced such preposterous notions • on se*xual matters that they have given cause to more sober-minded folk who have some sense of proportion among their mental furnituro to discredit the whole method and creed without condition. The same may very well happen m relation to crime if psychological excuses of a recondite nature aiv forthcoming with suspicious frequency. That would be disastrous to the cause of legal reform. The olu way of thinking, with Its hard and fast division of society into the innocent and the guilty, is crude and cruel, and informed public opinion . undoubtedly favors a j-ympathetic inquiry ; into motive and mentality. . But public opinion jvlll.be driven bac.k ffom th s c position if it concludes that it is pos sible to plate sin with science so thai the strong lance of justice breaks and that the robes and furred gowns of a doctor of psychology may hide muro than is right. The public does not want legal 'persecution of ment.ailvwarped creatures caught up m jnlsdoing,*but It does want to feel aasjict that the phrases of the psychoanalyst are not being made ah excuse m clear cases of anti-social conduct. The insistence of the new psychology on liberation of desires can ba .pr-ted to a point where wine ««>.'• discipline is regarded as self -distortion — a cvn • elusion imlnltely dangerous, since no social life -4s possible without selfcontrol. Accordingly It is the dut/ of psycho-analytical prnctitionern to bo scrupulously careful m the drafunß o! their recommendations to meiwy, Rlnee any abuse of their methol will endanger the very ran) soolol values Inherent m the naychologiPtl treatment of crime, The only way out is a retort to common -aenHe and ctaar thinking on both aldeft,