What Murders Are Like
The Psychology of Murder—A Study in Criminal P sy. chology. By Andreas Bjerre. (Longman's. 98.) • HERE is a thoroughly interesting book on -a subject which most of us will admit to be a fascinating one. Moreover, let
us make clear at the outset, it is a serious and scientific work and in no way an attempt to play up to sensationalism or morbid interest in criminology.
Mr. Bjerre was a Swedish lawyer of distinction who spent his time for some years in the largest Swedish prison investi- gating the psychology of the convicted criminals whom he found there. How different were his objects from those average prison visitors is disclosed by these pages. He is in.
finitely far removed from the sentimental old lady who comes in to " convert " the prisoner to her particular brand of religiosity. It is obvious that Mr. Bjerre had a thorough dislike of the four murderers whose biography he gives, and whose strange psychology he analyses so acutely. But perhaps for this very reason one feels that his work brings a far greater hope than that of the mere philanthropist. He
-devotes his book, after a general introduction, to the study of three types of murderers. The first he calls " self-deception;' the -second " anguished fear," and the third " shamming."
Each is the record of an individual case. In all three instances it is that of a brutal and horrible murder. At the beginning of each chapter we are given briefly the story of these men's lives and their crimes as it emerged in court. Then comes the result of innumerable conversations which Mr. Bjerre had with them during their life sentences of imprisonment.
On the subject of religious conversion he is depressing. In his view it alniost always had a positively detrimental effect. " And their conversion made them," he writes of the convicts; " in their own esteem new beings, in the literal sense of the word—i.e., it freed them from responsibility of their crimes and criminal passions ; it freed them from all sense of respon- sibility both as to the past and the future, and, since it was unable to free them from the punishment imposed, it neces- sarily made thein martyrs 'who suffered for others' crimes; but who would be more richly rewarded in heaven. There was in fact no limit to the self-glorification of these criminals after conversion. But just as they appeared pitiful in their distress and prostration during the first period of solitary confinement, the more repulsive, even loathsome, did they appear in their apparent humility and iMpertUrbable self-satiSfaction, which was of course charged with the bitterest reproaches on every- thing and everybody in their vicinity, and it need scarcely be said that there was not the faintest suspicion of unselfish longing in their religion." .
The first biography is of a man called Winge, whom he takes as an example of extreme self-deception. Winge was a man of quite good intelligence, not born into extreme poverty, and obviously of a decidedly sensitive nature. But from a very early age- he was led to a life of squalid debauch, and finally to a series of crimes, culminating in a brutal murder, by an extreme power of self-deception, which enabled him to live in a complete " phantasy world," divorced from reality. His murder was the killing of a postman in order to steal his bag of registered letters. The point to which his self-deception
reached may be judged from the following :
" So also he had been quite certain that the postman would not suffer any injury or discomfort from being stunned, but would enjoy a few days or even weeks of pleasant rest from his wearisome and monotonous -work. But he:had also fortified his 'conscience in case the postman should succumb. His own difficult position was the justification for the sacrifice of the postman, who was sixty years old and therefore only hid a few years of life left, whereas he had the whole of his splendid future before him. And finally when he saw and talked to the postman, he became Convinced that such a life tramping along the streets from morn till night in all weathers could only be a burden to the old man. He was, doing him-a great service by freeing him froin it."
So extreme had the habit, become, that although he was serving a life sentence in prison, Winge was consistently.
happy and contented. He was alwayS inventing special circum- stances such as the good treat:tient -he–reeeived in prison to prove that he could be no ordinary criminal. who had really done anything to be ashamed of, but Must be an exceptional -Who- would: lie speedily, Pardoned and 'released: SO contact with hard reality could change this phantasy. The second type of murderer which the author takes is that of an individual suffering from what he calls " anguished fear." lie tells us of a young peasant, Gunnarsson, who murdered his SWeetheart lest his mother should discover that she was with child. Mr. Bjerre describes the type as follows :- " It was therefore a considerable time before I clearly recognised that the determining force in their lives from beginning to end was nothing but their sense of insecurity, their cowardice, their terror f life, or, in a word, their complete lack of self-confidence. In prison this bottomless sense of insecurity disclosed itself first and most obviously in the way their thoughts hovered always round what others had done, planned, intended, said, suggested, thought m. felt as regards them, or, differently expressed, around the attitude which others adopted towards them. I often had the impression that some of these criminals simply did not live or exist except in their fear of the judgment of others."
These cases are apparently those of what other psychologists call " the inferiority complex," taken to an extreme point. We have left ourselves no space to consider the type of murder which Mr. Bjerre calls " shamming," but it is of equal interest to the others. This is a sane, clear-sighted book, which really delves down to the springs of human conduct. It is true that Mr. Bjerre deals only with abnormal cases, but the study of the abnormal often gives the easiest clues to grasping the psychology of less pronounced types.
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