Dr. Harold Dearden discusses in a cynical and sometimes flippant
vein in The Mind of the Murderer (Bles, lOs. 6d.), the behaviour of a number of criminals who took life under the dominating impulse of their natural egotism in one form or another. He has, it is true, a serious (but to us convincing) introductory chapter, explaining that as most of us may be called upon to act on a jury, we should acquaint ourselves with the motives and psychology of crime ; but what are we to think of a psychologist who writes of Ronald True': "As a child he tortured his pets and as a man he bullied and imposed himself upon every woman Ile met. Had he had a father fit to cope with him it is likely that a series of sound thrashings might have modified these activities." We consider this to be a book well written, but in the wrong way.
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