MURDERERS’ MINDS

Hokitika Guardian, 1 December 1928, Page 2

MURDERERS’ MINDS

ROYAL COMMISSION ON POLICE POWERS.

(By F. Aveling. ALC.. Pit. 1)., D.Sc.. Reader in Psyeliolozy. University of London, King’s College.)

The first session of the Royal Commission on Police Rowers elicited the •ui-ious fact that criminals when nr■esied often make voluntary confes.i*llis of their crimes to the police—the instance beiore the ( ommission being that of murder.

Th-o fact provoked the comment o' the chairman, Lord Lee, that “it seems a little odd there should be sc in ny criminals anxious to bang them selves.”

Why do so many murderers act ir this “ odd ” way, The answer giver to the Commission was that by sue] voluntary confessions the prisonei hope to secure a mitigation of the charge from murder, say, to manslaughter. But is this always so? Or are there reasons other than the calculating ettniiin<r of the crimiml which drive him t< confess when driven to bay? AY hat ol the eonfesisons of those who give them selves up to the police with never hue nor cry against them? There are at least three other explanations. The really criminal mind is a peculiar thing, not- always entirely abnormal. but usually abnormal in kinks, emphasising almost out of recognition some one.or other ol the perfectly normal tendencies of every one ol us.

mi the first place, there is egoism, r sentiment never absent Irom the human mni\e-up. In bis own secret mind tin murderer is generally a very fine lellow indeed, lie lias asserted liimsell against the social order even to the .aking of life; and in bis inner being he is proud of it. II is confession in this case is a vainglorious boast, an act of supreme self-

assertion. raising him above the common boi’d. Notoriety is more to him than life; and lie risks bis life to attain it. There are people who have “ con |c‘sed ”to murders they never committed in order to satisfy their insatiable egoism.

But the criminal mi ml, more than any other except that of the insane, is also soaked in fantasy, it moves in a land of unreal dreams, grotesque distortions of the day-dreaming oil the ordinary man and woman. These dreams are far more real lor it than the real world itself. r ihe sense of proportion is altogether lacking; the real and the dream are inextricably woven together. The fantasy-confession is a tissue ol truth and falsehood, of (fact and dream elaboration. These are the conlessions often supposed to be in mitigation ol the capital charge. Driven by egoism or by the intolerable secret to confess, such criminals distort and invent as they relate the spurious history ol L..eir crime. p.,. s tly—and as a this enters into all c 'itfessions as a fundamental impulse—there is the cathartic longing. Unconscious though it may be, there is the drive to purge the soul, “to cleanse the stuffed bosom of the perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart” by comin• 11 m( a r11 ig it to others ; and so, b\ a process <cl magic, to destroy it. This instinctive drive is well-nigh universal in the liumna race. Wlmt wonder that the criminal, in a hurst of fantastic egoism and mock humility, should lay his conscience hare —as all do to authority ; even if the authority 1 o chooses to conless to vea\cs the strands of the rope that will hang him!