As for criminals of unsound mind, it is necessary to begin by
placing in a separate category such as cannot, after the studies
of Lombroso and the Italian school of psychiatry, be distinguished
from the born criminals properly so-called. These are the persons
tainted with a form of insanity which is known under various
names, from the ``moral insanity'' of Pritchard to the ``reasoning
madness'' of Verga. Moral insanity, illustrated by the works of
Mendel, Legrand du Saulle, Maudsley, Krafft-Ebing, Savage, Hugues,
Hollander, Tamburini, Bonvecchiato, which, with the lack or atrophy of
the
moral or social sense, and of APPARENT soundness of mind, is properly
speaking only the essential psychological condition of the born criminal.
Beyond these morally insane people, who are very rare--for, as
Krafft-Ebing and Lombroso have pointed out, they are found more
frequently in prisons than in mad-houses--there is the unhappily
large body of persons tainted by a common and clinical form of
mental alienation, all of whom are apt to become criminal.
The whole of these criminals of unsound mind cannot be included in
a single category; and such, indeed, is the opinion expressed by
Lombroso, in the second volume of the fourth edition of his work,
after his descriptive analysis of the chief forms of mental
alienation.
Pages:
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71