The Mask of Sanity. Hervey M. Cleckley

the school principal, etc., recognizing that in some very important respects he differed from the ordinary bad or wayward youth, made special efforts to help him and to give him new opportunities to reform or readjust.

      When he drove a stolen automobile across a state line he came in contact with federal authorities. In view of his youth and the wonderful impression he made, he was put on probation. Soon afterward he took another automobile and again left it in the adjoining state. It was a very obvious situation. The consequences could not have been entirely overlooked by a person of his excellent shrewdness. He admitted that the considerable risks of getting caught had occurred to him, but felt he had a chance to avoid detection and would take it. No unusual and powerful motive or any special aim could be brought out as an explanation.

      Tom was sent to a federal institution in a distant state, where a well-organized program of rehabilitation and guidance was available. He soon impressed authorities at this place with his attitude and in the way he discussed his past mistakes and plans for a different future. He seemed to merit parole status precociously and this was awarded him. It was not long before he began stealing again and thereby lost his freedom.

      The impression he made during confinement was so promising that he was pardoned before the expiration of the regular term and he came home confident, buoyant, apparently matured, and thoroughly rehabilitated. Considerable work had been done with him at the institution and he seemed to respond well to psychiatric measures. He found employment in a drydock at a nearby port and talked modestly but convincingly of the course he would now follow, expressing aims and plans few could greatly improve.

      His employers found him at first energetic, bright, and apparently enthusiastic about the work. Soon evidence of inexplicable irresponsibility emerged and accumulated. Sometimes he missed several days and brought simple but convincing excuses of illness. As the occasions multiplied, explanations so detailed and elaborate were made that it seemed only facts could have produced them. Later he sometimes left the job, stayed away for hours, and gave no account of his behavior except to say that he did not feel like working at the time.

      There seemed to be no cause for dissatisfaction, no discernible change of attitude toward the work. When he chose to apply himself he did better than most. It was plain to the employers that this promising young man was not merely lazy or, in an ordinary way, fretfully restless.

      The theft of an automobile brought Tom to jail again. He expressed remorse over his mistake, talked so well, and seemed so genuinely and appropriately motivated and determined that his father, by making heavy financial settlements, secured his release. After a number of relatively petty but annoying activities another theft made it necessary for his family to intervene.

      Reliable information indicates that he has been arrested and imprisoned approximately fifty or sixty times. It is estimated that he would have been put in jails or police barracks for short or long periods of detention on approximately 150 other occasions if his family had not made good his small thefts, damages, etc., and paid fines for him.

      Sometimes he was arrested for fomenting brawls in low resorts, provoking fights, or for such high-handed and disturbing behavior as to constitute public nuisance. Though not a very regular drinker or one who characteristically drank to sodden confusion or stupefaction, he exhibited unsociable and unprepossessing manners and conduct after taking even a few beers or highballs. In one juke-joint imbroglio he is credited with having struck a fellow reveler on the head with a piece of iron. No serious injuries resulted, though great uproar and spectacular commotion prevailed. Under similar circumstances he was once in, or on the fringes of, an altercation in which gunplay occurred and another man received a minor flesh wound. Meanwhile, he continued to forge his father’s name to checks, often insisted on sleeping through breakfast, obtained loans through ingenious misrepresentations and ran up debts which he simply ignored.

      Tom’s mother had over years suffered special anxiety and distress through his unannounced absences. After kissing her goodbye, saying he was going downtown for a Coca-Cola or to a movie, he might not appear for several days or even for a couple of weeks. Instead of his returning, a long-distance telephone call might in the middle of the night arouse the father, who would be entreated to come at once to near-by or distant places where the son had encountered unpleasant complications or, perhaps, restraint by the police.

      He expressed particularly heavy penitence for all the worry and sleepless nights he had caused his mother, admitting that he loved her dearly and that nothing about his life so displeased him as having given her even a moment’s distress. He spoke as if with feeling about the patience, generosity, and understanding of his father and seemed to believe the filial bond was unusually fine and satisfactory.

      Recently an elderly friend of the family, in town on business, learned something of the situation. This man, whose experience in dealing with other people and their problems was considerable (and very successful), undertook the task of helping the patient. Though he had heard a good deal about past exploits, he could not but feel hopeful after his first talk. A little later he took the patient with him on an automobile ride, feeling that in this way he could bring the problem to full discussion by a more natural, informal approach.

      The conversation, once begun, developed amazingly. The younger man not only promised to behave from now on in an exemplary fashion, but analyzed and discussed his past in such a way that the older found there was little that could be added. Despite his interest and his experience in such matters, he had seldom if ever encountered a more plausible interpretation of human mistakes and social confusion, of how distortion of aims and maladjustment develop out of the complicated influences and situations of modern living. Even more than the pertinent presentation of cause and effect and the cogent steps proposed for solution, the young man’s appearance of sincerity in all these realizations impressed the older counselor. He spoke as the wisest and most contrite of men would speak and seemed to have a more detailed and deeper understanding of his entire situation than even the most sagacious observer could reach.

      The patient talked not only of what he would avoid but discussed plans for work and recreation, for development and progressive maturation. Tom emphasized how his irregular hours, his unforeseen absences, etc., had kept his parents much of the time not sure whether he was dead or alive. Before the ride was over the judicious counselor was encouraged and deeply optimistic. In addition, he was so impressed by points this young man had brought out and by his apparent earnestness and resolution that he felt himself wiser from the experience. Moved and stimulated, he admitted that he had obtained new and valuable viewpoints on life and deeper seriousness. He had been stimulated to review his own patterns of behavior and to seek a better and more progressive plan of self-expression. In this frame of mind he bade the patient good night, letting him out of the car at the front gate of the parents’ home.

      The patient did not even enter the house. After going in the gate, he walked through the grounds, went out by a back entrance, and was not heard from that night. He was not, in fact, heard from for a week. News then came of his being in jail again at a near-by town where he had forged, stolen trifles, run up debts, and carried out other behavior familiar to all who knew him.

      This young man has, apparently, never formed any substantial attachment for another person. Sexually he has been desultorily promiscuous under a wide variety of circumstances. A year or two earlier he married a girl who had achieved considerable local recognition as a prostitute and as one whose fee was moderate. He had previously shared her offerings during an evening (on a commercial basis) with friends or with brief acquaintances among whom he found himself. He soon left the bride and never showed signs of shame or chagrin about the character of the woman he had espoused or any responsibility toward her.

      During the war Tom maintained over some months an off-hand relation with the wife of a man in combat overseas. When in town he ate at her house, sometimes slept there with her, but was as heedless of her and her feelings as of his parents. She apparently suffered some anxiety when, after making plans and promises to do something special with her, he disappeared and she heard nothing from him until he called her from another city (reversing the charges) to chat casually and sometimes to speak eloquent words of endearment. Sometimes he took precautions to deceive her about his sporadic sex relations with other women; sometimes he forgot or did not bother.

      On