The Mask of Sanity. Hervey M. Cleckley

      CHAPTER 8. TOM

      This young man, twenty-one years of age, does not look at all like a criminal type or a shifty delinquent. In fact, he stands out in remarkable contrast to the kind of patient suggested by such a term as constitutional inferiority. He does not fit satisfactorily into the sort of picture that emerges from early descriptions of people generally inadequate and often showing physical stigmata of “degeneracy” or ordinary defectiveness.106, 225

      Tom looks and is in robust physical health. His manner and appearance are pleasing. In his face a prospective employer would be likely to see strong indications of character as well as high incentive and ability. He is well informed, alert, and entirely at ease, exhibiting a confidence in himself that the observer is likely to consider amply justified. This does not look like the sort of man who will fail or flounder about in the tasks of life but like someone incompatible with all such thoughts.

      There is nothing to suggest that he is putting on a bold front or trying to adopt any attitude or manner that will be misleading. Though he knows the examiner has evidence of his almost incredible career, he gives such an impression that it seems for the moment likely he will be able to explain it all away. In his own attitude he has evidently brushed aside so satisfactorily such matters as those to be mentioned that others, also, caught up in the magic of his equanimity, almost share his invulnerable disregard.

      Tom has so plainly escaped the ordinary and, one would think, the inevitable consequences of his experience, that, in a sort of contagion, his interviewer is also affected. The effect is to make it seem more plausible to accept the whole detailed reality of a life as dream or illusion than believe that this man could so regard it were it otherwise. With indisputable evidence that a human being has been run over and dismembered by a series of freight trains and the bodily remnants subsequently put through a sausage grinder, any investigator will have definite and vivid preconceptions of what he will behold. The evidence itself bleaches, suddenly and automatically, if one is confronted by the intact victim, whole, smiling, immaculate, unscarred, without a scratch. What happened to the anatomical unit in this allusion scarcely seems more drastic than what, as a social unit, the patient before me had experienced.

      This poised young man’s immediate problem was serious but not monumental. His family and legal authorities were in hope that if some psychiatric disorder could be discovered in him he might escape a jail sentence for stealing. Despite many years of disappointment the family still sought some remedy, some treatment or handling, that might bring about favorable changes in the patient’s behavior. Those concerned with the legal aspects of the immediate problem had dealt with this man often in the past and saw in his conduct indications of something more than, and something different from, an ordinary or sane antisocial scheme of existence. His high intelligence made it difficult for them to account for what he did on that basis.

      Evidence of his maladjustment became distinct in childhood. He appeared to be a reliable and manly fellow but could never be counted upon to keep at any task or to give a straight account of any situation. He was frequently truant from school. No advice or persuasion influenced him in his acts, despite his excellent response in all discussions. Though he was generously provided for, he stole some of his father’s chickens from time to time, selling them at stores downtown. Pieces of table silver would be missed. These were sometimes recovered from those to whom he had sold them for a pittance or swapped them for odds and ends which seemed to hold no particular interest or value for him. He resented and seemed eager to avoid punishment, but no modification in his behavior resulted from it. He did not seem wild or particularly impulsive, a victim of high temper or uncontrollable drives. There was nothing to indicate he was subject to unusually strong temptations, lured by definite plans for high adventure and exciting revolt.

      Often when truant from high school classes Tom wandered more or less aimlessly, sometimes shooting at a Negro’s chickens, setting fire to a rural privy around the outskirts of town, or perhaps loitering about a cigar store or a pool room, reading the comics, throwing rocks at squirrels in a park, perpetrating small thefts or swindles. He often charged things in stores to his father, stole cigarettes, candy, cigars, etc., which he sometime gave away freely to slight acquaintances or other idlers he encountered. Though many wasteful, inopportune, and punishable deeds were correctly attributed to him, these apparently were only a small fraction of his actual achievement along this line.

      He lied so plausibly and with such utter equanimity, devised such ingenious alibis or simply denied all responsibility with such convincing appearances of candor that for many years his real career was poorly estimated. Among typical exploits with which he is credited stand these: prankish defecation into the stringed intricacies of the school piano; the removal from his uncle’s automobile of a carburettor for which he got 75 cents; the selling of his father’s overcoat to a passing buyer of scrap materials.

      Though he often fell in with groups or small gangs, he never for long identified himself with others in a common cause. In the more outlandish and serious outcroppings of group mischief he sometimes played a prominent role. With several others he broke into a summer cottage on a nearby lake, stole a few articles, overturned all the furniture, threw rugs, dishes, etc., out of the window. He and a few more teen-age boys on another expedition smashed headlights and windshields on several automobiles, punctured a number of tires, and rolled one car down a slope, leaving it slightly battered and bogged in a ditch.

      At fourteen or fifteen, having learned to drive, Tom began to steal automobiles with some regularity. Often his intention seemed less that of theft than of heedless misappropriation. A neighbor or friend of the family, going to the garage or to where the car was parked outside an office building, would find it missing. Sometimes the patient would leave the stolen vehicle within a few blocks or miles of the owner, sometimes out on the road where the gasoline had given out. After he had tried to sell a stolen car his father consulted advisers and, on the theory that he might have some specific craving for automobiles, bought one for him as a therapeutic measure. On one occasion while out driving he deliberately parked his own car and, leaving it, stole an inferior model which he left slightly damaged on the outskirts of a village some miles away.

      Meanwhile Tom continued to forge his father’s name to small checks and steal change, pocketknives, textbooks, etc., at school. Occasionally, on the pretext of ownership he would sell a dog of a calf belonging to some member of the community. His youth made long terms of imprisonment seem inappropriate, it being felt that this might confirm him in a criminal career or teach him additional and more malignant antisocial techniques. He was ineligible for the state hospital.

      Private physicians, scout masters, social workers, were consulted. They talked and worked with him, but to no avail. Listing the deeds for which he became ever more notable does not give an adequate picture of the situation. He did not every day or every week bring attention to himself by major acts of mischief or destructiveness. He was usually polite, often considerate in small, appealing ways and always seemed to have learned his lesson after detection and punishment. He was clever and learned easily. During intervals when his attendance was regular he impressed his teachers as outstanding in ability. Some charm and apparent modesty, as well as his very convincing way of seeming sincere and to have taken resolutions that would count, kept not only the parents but all who encountered him clinging to hope. Teachers, scout