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The Morbid Psychology of Criminals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

David Nicolson
David Nicolson*
Affiliation:
Her Majesty's Convict Prison, Portsmouth
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Extract

Having made ourselves acquainted, in a measure, with the more rudimentary perversions to which mental operations in prisoners are liable, we shall be the better able to enter upon a consideration of those more advanced perversions which establish themselves at the expense of the healthy exercise of a reasonable intelligence, and which induce behaviour so eccentric or obstructive as to necessitate medical interference. These latter I propose to deal with under the general term of delusions; not being always careful to discriminate between a “delusion proper” and a hallucination; for, after all, what is a hallucination in its outward manifestion but a delusion credited (upon grounds not always well established) with some relationship to the organs of sense.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 20 , Issue 89 , April 1874 , pp. 20 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1874 

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References

* This will not. of course, detach it from the special class, for the general prison circumstances (from their irksome nature) may be shown to favour the formation of notions of this sort.Google Scholar

* Foster's “Life of Dickens,” vol. ii., p. 207.Google Scholar

* As we are dealing with cases of evident mental instability, we must not forget the possibility of crimes being committed in connection with epileptic discharges involving the cortical centres of the brain, whereby consciousness is, for a time, obliterated. The deed being lost to consciousness at the time, fails to present itself to memory afterwards. So, too, with some drunken acts.Google Scholar

* “Lectures on Surgical Pathology,” 1863, p. 389.Google Scholar

* Diseases Mental, “Syd. Socy. Edition,” p. 148.Google Scholar

* “Physiology and Pathology of the Mind,” p. 101.Google Scholar

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