Pathology of Lying [30]
you'd think I do pretty well. I would rather starve than have it cast up to me that I had asked for any body's help or sympathy. I want to make my own way. I must have an education. In September I plan to go to the M. Academy and work my way through. I am just past 18 now.
``The B.'s are ashamed of me I suppose. I ran away from them. They are refined people. But I can't be treated in that way. They adopted me. They said that I got some money dishonestly, but, doctor, it is not in me to be bad. I feel that through and through.
``Well, I know that I'm a Yankee by birth, on both sides. My people came from Mayflower stock. I will make my way in the world, I will succeed, and you'll see, doctor. I will have an education. As to going back to the Johnsons, I would commit suicide rather than do that. It was not true that I had a good education as I told you. They did not treat me well. They can write as they please and talk about forgiveness for what I have done, but it is they who were cruel and abusive. Suppose they do say I'm their child. I know I am not because I was not treated the same as the others. I was 12 or 13 when I ran away from them. How could I belong to the family? They are all so much older than I am.''
Inez now gave us, most curiously, some addresses which opened up knowledge of her career over several years. But what she told us about these new people was directly denied by return mail. At one interview her first words were, ``Do you know now, doctor, that I was in a State hospital?'' Having made this challenging statement she went no further, merely involved herself in contradictions as to the place, and would say nothing more than that she had once suffered from an attack of nervous prostration. She absolutely denied items of information about herself which we had gradually accumulated, and this type of reaction obtained all the way through our last period of acquaintance with Inez, even after we had the detailed facts about her early life from her parents.
Inez never lost an opportunity to impress upon people whom she did not regard as her equals that she considered herself much of a lady and quite above housework. On one occasion, when held as a runaway girl, she had a terrible outbreak of temper simply because she was asked to clear the dinner table. This was no momentary affair. Her recalcitrancy was kept up the larger part of one day, and she made the place almost unbearable that night by screaming and moaning. Telling me about the incident, she said it was because she would not allow herself to cater to such people. ``If a person asks me, I may do things, but nobody can tell me to. I would not give in. I would not do it.''
To some of us it has seemed highly significant that at moments which would ordinarily be expected to bring out great emotion Inez showed almost none. For instance, when going to an important interview about the disposition of her case, she first plaintively said she did not know what to say, and then immediately began to dwell with evident pleasure upon the costume of the person addressing her. Many normal emotions were seen expressed, however, and many moral sentiments were undoubtedly held, but there seemed to be curious displacements upon these levels of her mental life; there was faulty mental stratification. Probably the force which caused this is egocentrism.
In relating what we now know of the past history of this case we shall put together that which we have heard from many different sources. There is no question about all the important facts--correspondents largely corroborate each other.
Inez came from a family of French extraction, apparently stable and normal tradespeople. The old mother at 74 years wrote us an unusually well-thought-out, detailed account of her daughter's early life. The paternal grandfather was insane and an aunt had epilepsy. Defective heredity in other respects is denied. We get no history of convulsions in the immediate family, nor of any other neurotic manifestation, except that one sister
``The B.'s are ashamed of me I suppose. I ran away from them. They are refined people. But I can't be treated in that way. They adopted me. They said that I got some money dishonestly, but, doctor, it is not in me to be bad. I feel that through and through.
``Well, I know that I'm a Yankee by birth, on both sides. My people came from Mayflower stock. I will make my way in the world, I will succeed, and you'll see, doctor. I will have an education. As to going back to the Johnsons, I would commit suicide rather than do that. It was not true that I had a good education as I told you. They did not treat me well. They can write as they please and talk about forgiveness for what I have done, but it is they who were cruel and abusive. Suppose they do say I'm their child. I know I am not because I was not treated the same as the others. I was 12 or 13 when I ran away from them. How could I belong to the family? They are all so much older than I am.''
Inez now gave us, most curiously, some addresses which opened up knowledge of her career over several years. But what she told us about these new people was directly denied by return mail. At one interview her first words were, ``Do you know now, doctor, that I was in a State hospital?'' Having made this challenging statement she went no further, merely involved herself in contradictions as to the place, and would say nothing more than that she had once suffered from an attack of nervous prostration. She absolutely denied items of information about herself which we had gradually accumulated, and this type of reaction obtained all the way through our last period of acquaintance with Inez, even after we had the detailed facts about her early life from her parents.
Inez never lost an opportunity to impress upon people whom she did not regard as her equals that she considered herself much of a lady and quite above housework. On one occasion, when held as a runaway girl, she had a terrible outbreak of temper simply because she was asked to clear the dinner table. This was no momentary affair. Her recalcitrancy was kept up the larger part of one day, and she made the place almost unbearable that night by screaming and moaning. Telling me about the incident, she said it was because she would not allow herself to cater to such people. ``If a person asks me, I may do things, but nobody can tell me to. I would not give in. I would not do it.''
To some of us it has seemed highly significant that at moments which would ordinarily be expected to bring out great emotion Inez showed almost none. For instance, when going to an important interview about the disposition of her case, she first plaintively said she did not know what to say, and then immediately began to dwell with evident pleasure upon the costume of the person addressing her. Many normal emotions were seen expressed, however, and many moral sentiments were undoubtedly held, but there seemed to be curious displacements upon these levels of her mental life; there was faulty mental stratification. Probably the force which caused this is egocentrism.
In relating what we now know of the past history of this case we shall put together that which we have heard from many different sources. There is no question about all the important facts--correspondents largely corroborate each other.
Inez came from a family of French extraction, apparently stable and normal tradespeople. The old mother at 74 years wrote us an unusually well-thought-out, detailed account of her daughter's early life. The paternal grandfather was insane and an aunt had epilepsy. Defective heredity in other respects is denied. We get no history of convulsions in the immediate family, nor of any other neurotic manifestation, except that one sister