Providentia

The Boston Terror (Part One of Two)

CONVICT DIES IN PRISON WHERE HE SPENT 60 YEARS:  Heart Disease Takes Notorious Jesse Pomeroy Sentenced When Boy

When newspapers across the country announced the death of convicted child killer Jesse Pomeroy on July 31, 1933,  it was hardly surprisingly that relatively few people even knew who he was.   Convicted in 1874  at the age of 15, he would go on to spend six decades in prison, mostly in solitary confinement.   Not that he had been completely ignored by the media given his often-colourful antics and bizarre escape attempts which made for entertaining headlines, if nothing else.   Through it all, he still managed to outlive virtually everyone who could recall the gruesome reign of terror leading to his being convicted in the first place.

Born in 1859 to a Boston immigrant family, Jesse Pomeroy's early life was certainly grim enough.  Not only was his father an alcoholic who seemed incapable of holding a job for long, but Jesse had a congenital milky-white film over his right eye giving him a sinister appearance that made him a pariah at school.    Along with was his outsider status among his classmates, he also matured early making him larger than others his age,, and perfectly suited for bullying smaller children.   Jesse also grew up dealing with the general intolerance all Irish immigrant children faced in the Boston of that era which added to the anger that he seemed incapable of handling.  Even though his mother did her best to protect her son, it became apparent soon enough that something was seriously wrong with him. 

Beginning in 1872, police began investigating a series of shocking attacks on young boys.  In these attacks, boys aged five to ten were lured away from their homes and taken to out-of-the-way places where they were then stripped naked, tied up, and viciously assaulted.  Some of the boys were slashed on various parts of the body, including under the eyes, leaving them disfigured for life.   They were then left abandoned to find help any way they could.  Public outrage over the assaults led to a reward of $1000 being posted for information leading to an arrest.  More than seventeen boys were arrested and released after victims failed to recognize them.

When  Jesse Pomeroy was arrested for assault,  police quickly charged him for all the other assaults as well  His distinctive appearance, including the milky-white eye that so frightened his classmates, meant that  victims had no difficulty identifying him.   Readily confessing to the assaults, Jesse said that he was sorry but could not explain why he had committed these crimes.   One newspaper article detailing Jesse Pomeroy's arrest described him as being "literally possessed of a Devil."   Deemed to be sane but too young for an adult penitentiary, he was given a six-year sentence and sent to a youth reformatory in Westboro.  After serving less than two years of his sentence however, Jesse's mother petitioned the courts to have him released.   Since his time in the reformatory had been exemplary, Jesse was allowed to return home on February 6. 1874.  Unfortunately, whatever guarantees his family provided didn't prevent what happened next.   

On April 22, 1874, just months after Jesse Pomeroy's release, police found the body of four-year-old Horace Mullen in a marsh near Boston.  The body had been horribly mutilated and the head was nearly severed from the trunk.    This time, police didn't waste any time pinning the killing on Jesse Pomeroy.   When he was arrested at his mother's south Boston home, police found that he was carrying a bloody knife and his boots were covered with marshy soil.  Plaster casts of footprints found at the scene of the crime matched the 14-year-old suspect perfectly.  

To force a confession out of him, one officer, took Jesse to the undertaker's office where Horace McMullen's corpse lay.  On being confronted with the body, Jesse admitted knowing Horace McMullen and, when asked whether he killed him, replied, "I suppose I did."   He then made a full confession but admitted that he had no idea why he had killed Horace.  Newspapers were understandably appalled by the young murderer, especially since he had brutally murdered a child.   Hard questions were also being asked about why he had been released from the reformatory in the first place.  

But the story hardy ended there.   Not long before the body of Horace Mullen was found, a ten-year-old girl, Katy Curran, had disappeared from Jesse Pomeroy's neighbourhood soon after leaving her parents' home to buy a school-book.   While police searched for Katy and at least some witnesses recalled that she had been seen with Jesse Pomeroy before his arrest, no trace of her body was ever found.    Jesse Pomeroy's mother, who had been operating a millinery business where Jesse had once sold newspapers,was forced to give up her shop because of all the curious onlookers driving away customers.   

All of which led to a local grocer, James Nash, buying the property Mrs. Pomeroy had been renting and making renovations.  Workers digging in the basement soon came across a child's remains which police  identified as the body of Katy Curran.   Once news of the discovery leaked out, crowds began gathering near the home of the Pomeroy family and police soon had to take Jesse's mother into custody for her own protection.   Jesse's brother Charles was taken into custody that same night though police ruled out any possibility that he could have been involved. 

According to police, Katy Curran had been enticed into the store while Jesse's mother was absent.  He then tortured and murdered her before hiding the body in the basement and covering it with ashes.  Though it seemed incredible that nobody had ever discovered the body, especially since police already suspected him, Katy's disappearance would remain a mystery for months.    As for Jesse Pomeroy, stories of his suspicious behaviour in jail, including openly asking if there was a reward for discovering Katy Curran's body, raised suspicions but it was only with the body's discovery that police were finally able to get a confession.

News that Jesse Pomeroy had killed two children so soon after being released from a reformatory generated widespread outrage.   Not only did Jesse's mother and brother need police protection, but there was also talk of burning down their house.    Medical doctors interviewed Jesse and his mother to try understanding how a boy his age could be a compulsive killer and different theories became popular.  According to one theory, Jesse had somehow become influenced by his mother's frequent visits to her husband's job in a stockyard while she was pregnant with him.    It was commonly believed at the time that any trauma experienced by pregnant women could somehow be impressed onto their unborn children so the idea that Jesse had somehow been "marked" in the womb by the sight of animals being slaughtered seemed plausible enough.     Jesse's mother herself dismissed that theory and instead tried to blame the vaccination he received as an infant.

Whatever the explanation, there still remained the question of what to do him.   Arguably one of the first true serial killers in U.S. history, Jesse Pomeroy's case was unique in the annals of forensic history.

Continue to Part Two

Can Digital Footprints Be Used to Measure Personality?

The growing use of social media among Internet users produces a vast and new source of user generated ecological data, such as textual posts and images, which can be collected for research purposes. The increasing convergence between social and computer sciences has led researchers to develop automated methods to extract and analyze these digital footprints to predict personality traits. These social media-based predictions can then be used for a variety of purposes, including tailoring online services to improve user experience, enhance recommender systems, and as a possible screening and implementation tool for public health. In a study recently published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, researchers conducted  a series of meta-analyses to determine the predictive power of digital footprints collected from social media over Big 5 personality traits. Further, we investigate the impact of different types of digital footprints on prediction accuracy. Results of analyses show that the predictive power of digital footprints over personality traits is in line with the standard “correlational upper-limit” for behavior to predict personality, with correlations ranging from 0.29 (Agreeableness) to 0.40 (Extraversion). Overall, our findings indicate that accuracy of predictions is consistent across Big 5 traits, and that accuracy improves when analyses include demographics and multiple types of digital footprints. (PsycINFO Database Record 

For the abstract

Ontario Doctor Advocating Reparative Therapy For Gay Males Found Guilty of Sexual Abuse

 A 72-year-old Toronto psychiatrist who has gained notoriety for his attempts at "curing" homosexuality has been found guilty of sexually abusing two of his male patients.  According to the complaint filed against Dr. Melvin Iscove, he was accused of mutual masturbation and oral sex with two male patients in his office as well as anal intercourse with one of them on another occasion.   The patients themselves were led to believe that the sexual activity was part of their treatment aimed at "curing" them of their same-sex urges.  

While the disease model of homosexuality has long since been discredited, Dr. Iscove is an adherent of the theories of Dr. Edmund Bergler, a psychoanalyst whose work on reparative therapy was popular in the 1950s.  Even though the province of Ontario has banned the use of reparative therapy, Dr. Iscove's practice has focused on the treatment of a wide range of sexual problems including marital conflict, hypersexuality, and homosexuality.

During his disciplinary hearing, Iscove downplayed the significance of many of Bergler's writings (including statements such as "there are no happy homosexuals" which he gave his patients as homework assignments.   Though Iscove insisted that he attempted to "soften" the impact of these articles, he was evasive on whether he believed homosexuality could be changed through therapy.    “Dr. Iscove also became evasive in responding to questions as to whether homosexuality should be considered an illness, and whether it was capable of being ‘cured,’ despite that these views were clearly held by Dr. Bergler.” the panel wrote as part of its summation of the hearing.  “Given that Dr. Iscove had admittedly devoted his professional life to studying and applying the theories of Dr. Bergler, it was not clear to the committee why Dr. Iscove refused to acknowledge that he agreed with Dr. Bergler on these points.”

As for this sexual encounters with his clients, testimony head by the panel left little to the imagination.   Now in their 40s, both clients, whose identities are covered by a publication ban and who the panel noted didn’t know each other until the discipline proceedings — came forward in recent years, about incidents that took place when they were younger. Based on their testimony The committee found that he not only engaged in mutual masturbation and oral sex with two male patients on different occasions during therapy sessions but he also had anal intercourse with one of them in his office.   “Neither complainant described any emotional or romantic aspects of the sexual activity with Dr. Iscove, and both said that at some point, they thought that the sexual activity was part of the therapy and an attempt to cure them of homosexuality by engaging in the acts, rather than fantasizing about them,”  that panel reported in their written summation.

In their response to the decision, and being stripped of his license to practice medicine, Iscove and his lawyers continue to deny the allegations which date back over twenty years and they are reportedly planning an appeal.  Iscove is also facing a second discipline hearing over allegations of "“improper conduct in a public men’s washroom"  

 For more information

 

Understanding The Monk's Malady

Since I'm out of town for a family emergency, I am re-running this post instead.

 

From the earliest beginnings of Christianity, there was no greater religious calling than to  become a member of one of the contemplative orders   Though many monks and nuns joined conventional abbeys and nunneries where they lived as part of a religious community, the Catholic Church also recognized clerics who chose to live a consecrated life in total solitude.  Known as the eremitic life, these "holy hermits" often lived their entire lives completely separated from other human beings and devoting themselves to prayer everyday.   Whether they lived in secluded cells or atop pillars in the desert,  these eremites were obliged to get the approval of their local bishop before swearing sacred vows of chastity and solitude.  Even widows and widowers were allowed to take vows and spend the rest of their lives in contemplation if that was what they chose. 

And that was supposedly it.   Once the holy vows were sworn, hermits were considered dead to society without ever being allowed to return to their old life.   Except that wasn't always the case.   According to John Cassian, a fifth-century theologian who was also known as "John the Roman", some monks and nuns (particularly hermits) displayed a strange malady that often made them unable to function in any way.   This malady, which he termed "acedia" (from the Greek word for "negligence") was usually characterized by apathy or indifference about their physical appearance or religious duties. 

In extreme cases, monks suffering from acedia developed a sense of total repugnance about doing anything relating to their calling.   Also known as the "noonday devil", Cassian noted that it was most likely to strike at noon when the day was hottest and when monks were especially uncomfortable.    As he wrote:

And when this "acedia" has taken possession of some unhappy soul, it produces horror of the place, disgust with the cell, and disdain and contempt of the brethren who dwell with him or at a distance, as if they were careless or unspiritual. It also makes the man lazy and sluggish about all manner of work which has to be done within the enclosure of his dormitory. It does not suffer him to stay in his cell, or to take any pains about reading, and he often groans because he can do no good while he stays there, and complains and sighs because he can bear no spiritual fruit as long as he is joined to that society; and he complains that he is cut off from spiritual gain, and is of no use in the place.  

In writing about acedia, Cassian suggested that it represented a complex syndrome of emotions including horror and disgust of the circumstances under which the monk lived as well as contempt for fellow monks and clerics.   Though we would likely classify it as a form of depression today, acedia is usually defined by Church sources as "a state of restlessness and inability either to work or to pray". Though he sometimes wrote about acedia as being a disease, Cassian was emphatic in pointing out that it was a disease of the soul rather than the body. 

He also stressed that acedia led to monks wanting to abandon their sacred responsibilities and rejoin the world.   Monks and nuns dealing with acedia would often invent any excuse to leave their cells and bemoan their regular activities as being useless.   Whatever we may think of this reasoning today, it was hardly regarded favourably by the desert fathers themselves, especially since it undermined the very basis of their way of life. 

Not only were monks suffering from acedia a danger to themselves, but they often disrupted the contemplation of other monks as well.   Cassian also wrote that:

"And whenever it begins in any degree to overcome any one, it either makes him stay in his cell idle and lazy, without making any spiritual progress, or it drives him out from thence and makes him restless and a wanderer, and indolent in the matter of all kinds of work, and it makes him continually go round the cells of the brethren and the monasteries, with an eye to nothing but this; viz., where or with what excuse he can presently procure some refreshment. For the mind of an idler cannot think of anything but food and the belly, until the society of some man or woman, equally cold and indifferent, is secured, and it loses itself in their affairs and business, and is thus little by little ensnared by dangerous occupations, so that, just as if it were bound up in the coils of a serpent, it can never disentangle itself again and return to the perfection of its former profession."

Cassian was actually not the first cleric to write about  acedia.  One of the earlier desert fathers, Evagrius Ponticus, described eight different temptations that could affect monks.  Based on the writings of  Ponticus and Cassian , these temptations were later referred to as vainglory, anger, dejection, acedia, pride, covetousness, gluttony, and fornication and eventually codified by Pope Gregory I as the Seven Deadly Sins.

For monks coping with acedia, the consequences could be dire.  Catholic theologians regarded it as a mortal sin as well as a form of "spiritual lethargy" and a sign of diminished faith in God.   Though there were other deadly sins, acedia was deemed to be especially serious and overcoming it through prayer, fasting, and self-abuse was seen as a religious victory in many monks.   

While Cassian is regarded as the foremost authority on acedia, other Christian theologians weighed in on it as well.  In his Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas described acedia as a form of sadness or emotional pain over spiritual matters.  He also referred to it as being "sorrowful about the Divine good, which charity rejoices in."    Throughout the Middle Ages, theologians would weigh in on acedia's exact nature and whether it was a form of melancholia (the standard name for depression at the time) or simple laziness.

But acedia didn't just affect monks alone.   Towards the end of the Middle Ages, Francesco Petrarco (a.k.a. Petrarch) wrote about his own battle with what he described as acedia (but more likely depression).  Still, the most commonly cited cases involved monks or nuns living in desert monasteries who had to cope with the bleak environment and a lifestyle that Cassian himself described as "nothing but meditation and contemplation of that divine purity which . . . can only be gained by silence and continually remaining in the cell." 

For the most part, acedia largely faded after the end of the Middle Ages, at least as far as being considered a sin was concerned.   Though writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer mentioned it as one of the mortal sins to which people were vulnerable (usually regarded as being the same as "sloth"), other authors, including Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, began to regard it as a psychological disorder that needed to be treated.   By the eighteenth century, when acedia was mentioned at all, it was typically viewed as another name for acute boredom and as a form of depression.

Even today though, there can still be contemporary accounts of acedia by monks or nuns trying to deal with the religious life.  Poet Kathleen Norris wrote a book in 2008 describing her own experiences with acedia and her life as a Benedictine oblate.   In her book, Norris carefully distinguished acedia from depression by stating that it as  a "failure of the will and can be dispelled by embracing faith and life."     Dom Jean Nault's 2015 book, "The Noonday Devil: Acedia , the Unnamed Evil of Our Times" restates the theological case against acedia and how clerics are still vulnerable today.

Perhaps the most famous recent essay on acedia came from Aldous Huxley in his 1958 essay "Accidie" (his spelling for acedia).   Describing it as an extreme form of boredom or ennui, Huxley suggests that the evolution of urban life has led to a new source of acedia for many city-dwellers.  "Habituated to the feverish existence of these few centres of activity,"  Huxley wrote. "Men found that life outside them was intolerable insipid.  And at the same time they became so much exhausted by the restlessness of city life that they pined for the monotonous boredom of the provinces, for exotic islands, even for other worlds—any haven of rest."  According to Huxley, what began as a peculiar disorder found in desert monks and nuns may well have become a major complaint of the modern age.  

So, the next time you are feeling especially bored, spare a thought for those ancient monks living isolated lives in the desert.  You may have more in common with them than you might think.

The Great New York Starvation Challenge

In the summer of 1881, New York City`s Clarendon Hall became the scene of a rather unusual public challenge.  An eccentric Minneapolis physician, Dr. Henry S. Tanner rented the hall to carry out a forty-two day fast.  Not only would Dr. Tanner`s fasting be monitored by New York`s most distinguished medical professionals, but anyone outside the medical community would be able to watch for themselves (after paying the twenty-five cents admission fee).  According to Dr. Tanner, the point of his fast was to prove that human beings could go without food far longer than the twelve to fifteen-day limit laid down by the orthodox medical community.   By passing that limit, Dr. Tanner hoped to prove that that the human mind possessed "untapped powers that modern medicine has yet to understand".  He also hoped to settle one of the great medical mysteries of the late 19^th century:  the mystery of the “fasting girls”.

By the end of the 19^th century, scientific authority had slowly edged out religion as a way of  answering fundamental questions about how the world worked.  Still, spiritualists and their supporters were fighting back vigorously.  Despite the tremendous rise in Victorian-age enthusiasm for scientific discovery and big engineering projects, there was a widespread fascination with spirit mediums, psychics and other fantastic claims of the paranormal.  Was it possible that scientists didn’t have all the answers after all?

Which brings us to “fasting girls” and the how they were able to survive without food...

Although the notion that religious ascetics could overcome the limits of their own bodies through brutal self-denial had been around since the Middle Ages, cases of young women living without food for extended periods of time first appeared in the medical literature only relatively recently.  By 1873,   Sir William Gull presented his now-classic paper “Anorexia Hysterica”  to describe what he insisted was a new medical disorder (which he later renamed anorexia nervosa) and the fasting girls phenomenon had already become front page news on both sides of the Atlantic.    Not long after Sarah Jacob, the “Welsh Fasting Girl”  drew headlines during the late 1860s, similar cases were found in the United States and Canada, including Mollie Fancher (a.k.a. “The Brooklyn Enigma”), Kate Smulsey (a.k.a. “The Fort Plains Fasting Girl”) and Josephine Marie Bedard, a French-Canadian girl living in Maine.   Mollie Fancher became a particular darling of the Spiritualist movement, as much for her supposed psychic powers as her miraculous ability to go without food.

All of which led to an interesting standoff. 

On one side, various scientific authorities insisted that the fasting girls were frauds.  Their defenders, including Spiritualists and family members, denied the accusations that the girls were secretly eating and insisted that the fasting was genuine.  Spiritualists in turn denounced the hardheaded skepticism of the medical doctors and one of them, Joseph Rodes Buchanan, even insisted that “Medical men and schools know no more of the psychic universe than a mole does of astronomy”.   After a controlled study of the most famous case, Sarah Jacob, led to her starvation death in a London hospital in 1869,  nobody felt inclined to try repeating the experiment for fear of more starvation deaths.  The vigorous debate reached its peak in 1881 and a public challenge from Dr. William Hammond of the New York Neurological Society for a formal proof of food abstinence. 

Bringing us back to Dr. Henry S.  Tanner and his public fast.  Although his initial plan was to go without food completely, he altered this slightly by taking “alcohol vapour baths” but otherwise stuck to his fast under the watchful eye of a panel of physicians (who also measured his urine and feces carefully).   Dr. Hammond and his neurologist colleague, Dr. George Beard, didn’t take part in the challenge despite invitations from Dr. Tanner and the media.   Over the course of the forty days that the fast lasted, Dr. Tanner was never caught cheating and insisted on continuing despite becoming extremely emaciated.   Though he previously expressed the hope that his progressive starvation would lead to the sorts of religious visions and other “psychic experiences” that ascetics had reported in the past, Tanner would be disappointed.   He just got hungry and weak.

Once the forty day fast ended however, Dr. Tanner's claim to winning his challenge failed to impress his critics.  Neither Dr. Hammond or Dr. Beard considered the test to be valid despite Tanner losing more than forty pounds in his experiment.   As the two neurologists pointed out, the medical panel supervising the fast was made up of “a parcel of doctors whom very few had ever heard of” and that the “alcohol vapour baths” may have invalidated the results since they likely acted as a stimulant.   The New York Times was quick to side with the neurologists and labelled the entire event as “Tanner’s Folly” sinice the doctor had failed to win the challenge or to prove his claim.  The Times also added that "no physiological principle of any importance was deduced from the undertaking". 

Not surprisingly, Dr. Tanner was infuriated and insisted that his successful fast proved his claim about the ability of the mind to overcome the body.  He stated that his fasting demonstrated that humans could live in a state of suspended animation similar to bears going into hibernation.  While Tanner argued that his going without food for forty days proved that humans were capable of "hysterical lowered vitality" (entering a death-like state under extreme circumstances), hardly anyone was persuaded by his argument.  Though fasting girls continued to be studied, it was as examples of mental disorder rather than as being miraculous (despite prominent exceptions).

While the 20th century would see a far more controlled study of human starvation that was much more useful in learning about the limits of the human body, "Tanner's Folly" earned Henry S. Tanner temporary status as a celebrity (despite being largely forgotten today).  as well as a place in the writings of Mark Twain who, in his 1897 book, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, commented that ""I think that the Dr. Tanners and those others who go forty days without eating do it by resolutely keeping out the desire to eat, in the beginning, and that after a few hours the desire is discouraged and comes no more". 

Food for thought. 

When a Parent Risks Deportation

Nearly 5.1 million children younger than age 18 live with at least one undocumented parent, about 7% of the U.S. child population. Between 2010 and 2013, an estimated 300,000 parents of U.S. citizen children were deported. Raising children in the context of deportation risk increases overall parenting stress for undocumented Latino parents. To investigate this and understand the experience of undocumented parenting, the authors of a study recently published in the Journal of Marriage and Family interviewed 70 undocumented parents in two Southwest cities from 2012 to 2013. The authors frame their analysis using the lens of the problem of “illegality.” There are three domains of stressors associated with parenting in the context of deportation risk: trapped parenting, threat of family separation, and altered family processes. The authors discuss these findings in the context of the literature on undocumented families and parenting stress and connect these findings to the current sociopolitical context experienced by Latino families in the United States . (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

New Book Now Out

Just thought I'd mention that my latest book, Self-Injury: Your Questions Answered, is now out.   Part of the Q&A Health Guides series by Greenwood Press, the book is meant as a readable introduction to the topic of self-injury, especially in teens and young adults. Written in a question-and-answer format, the book provides information, guidance, and resources for anyone whose life has been impacted by self-injury as well as their families.   

It's available in hardcover and Kindle versions and I welcome any questions you might have about it.

 

Can The Smell of a Loved One Relieve Stress?

People in romantic relationships rely on their partners in all sorts of ways.   

Research has certainly demonstrated that positive social support can be just as important as regular exercise and healthy living in ensuring good health.  Not only does emotional support make people healthier (mentally and physically), but can also help in dealing with stress.  Whether that support takes the form of physical contact, such as holding hands or hugging, or simply through verbal encouragement, having someone to turn to in a moment of crisis can be essential for personal well-being.  Even when a partner happens to be absent, whether temporarily or following a death, people often rely on physical reminders of that partner for comfort.  That reminder can be a photograph, a cherished memento, or a voice recording but research has shown that the mental representations evoked by these reminders can help reduce emotional pain.  

But what about familiar odors?  While we all have experience of memories being awakened by specific odors, can the familiar smell of a romantic partner help people manage stress?  Though not as well-researched as the use of visual or auditory reminders, there have been research studies examining the psychological benefits of being exposed to the scent of a loved one.   One 2006 study showed that 80 percent of women and 50 percent of men deliberately smell the used clothing of their romantic partners while they are away and reported feeling comforted by the sensation.   

In fact, researchers suggest that the smell of a loved one can produce biochemical changes including reduced cortisol levels reflecting the reduced stress they feel.  Laboratory studies have shown that rats, much like humans, experience stress-buffering effects on cortisol levels when they detect the scent of a familiar rat.  Studies have also shown that human infants become much calmer when detecting the scent of their mother's milk.  This in turn leads reduced fussiness and lower cortisol levels.  

But could something similar occur with adult humans?  A new  study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology explores this question by using a rather innovative research design.  Marlise K. Hofer of the University of British Columbia and a team of researchers recruited 96 couples for their study after they were deemed to meet basic criteria (in a long-term heterosexual relationship, no obvious medical problems, and not using hormonal birth control).   The average length of the relationship was 2.4 years and all participants were in their early twenties.  

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

The Unprintable Newport Scandal

Much like most countries which actively banned homosexuality in the military until fairly recently, the United States  had a history of  discharging anyone convicted of such "unbecoming conduct" going all the way back to the American Revolution.  Up until fairly recently in fact, this often meant vigilantly investigating any rumours that surfaced and maintaining a policy of active harassment of known or suspected homosexuals that persisted well beyond the era of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".  

And so it was in 1919 when rumours began to spread about the sexual conduct of Navy personnel at the base located in Newport, Rhode Island.  Though nobody batted an eye at servicemen visiting the various brothels in town, the possibility of homosexual behaviour among servicemen was taken much more seriously.   After an enlisted man, Ervin Arnold, who had been a policeman in civilian life, heard from another enlisted man about what was occurring in the Newport area, he decided to do his own informal investigating.  On discovering that the local YMCA and several "art clubs" were thinly disguised meeting-places were men could engage in sex, cross-dressing, and other "effeminate behaviour,"   Arnold reported what he found to his superiors and a formal court of inquiry was held on March 19, 1919.  

While World War I had already ended by this time,  hints that this immoral activity had been going on even during wartime generated considerable outrage in the upper echelons.  After the court called on the Navy to devote "any expense and time necessary.. to conduct a most thorough and searching investigation" to identify these mysterious malefactors, an investigation was ordered which was personally approved by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels and then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt.   Due to political wrangling over jurisdiction, the Navy decided to make the investigation an internal one and Ervin Arnold was placed in charge.

From the very beginning though, there were questions about exactly how this investigation could be carried out.  Since any servicemen wanting to avoid being dishonourably discharged would have the good sense to be discreet about their conduct, Arnold and the other Navy investigators tasked with the challenge came up with a disturbingly simple idea:  why not conduct a "sting operation" using good-looking young men to infiltrate the homosexual underground and get the evidence they needed by having sex?  

In an unbelievable plan approved by Arnold's superiors, the Navy then recruited a few good men for the job.   It was Arnold himself who outlined just what would be needed for the mission:  young men between the ages of 19 to 24 who would be appropriate for "this class of work, with reference to perverts."  Not only would these undercover investigators be expected to worm their way into hidden places where gay sex might occur, they also had to collect the needed evidence for a successful conviction.  This meant actually having sex and then testifying about it afterward at the court martial.   

And it worked, sort of.  Within weeks, over fifteen enlisted men were caught based on the lurid testimony provided by the zealous investigators.  The men in question were offered leniency if they named any of their sex partners, something many of them did.  As a result of the investigation, seventeen enlisted men were convicted of sodomy and "scandalous conduct" with most being sent to prison afterward.  

Unfortunately, the sheer scope of the investigation meant that civilians, including some of Newport's most prominent citizens, were implicated as well.   Since homosexual conduct was illegal at the time, the Navy obviously didn't see a problem in that (just their own little contribution to "public order").    Still, when one well-known clergyman was publicly identified, the full details of the investigation made headlines.   During the trial of the clergyman in question, Dr. Samuel Neal Kent, the nature  of the evidence presented (which most newspapers covering the trial described as "unprintable"), and the methods that the Navy used to collect that evidence certainly raised eyebrows. 

Though the federal trial was especially bitter,  the judge presiding over the case essentially threw out all of the testimony of those investigators who admitted personally taking part in the sexual activities they were supposed to be stopping.   In summing up his instructions to the jury, the judge expressed his outrage over the very nature of the sting operation that the Navy investigators used.  As he pointed out, no government could order men to engage in homosexual conduct against their will.   And if they were willing participants on the other hand, how were they any less guilty than the men they were testifying against?   This argument apparently won over the jury and Samuel Kent was acquitted on all charges.

Almost immediately after the acquittal,  a committee of fourteen Newport clergymen wrote a strongly-worded letter to President Woodrow Wilson protesting the sting operation that the Navy had carried out.  In their letter, the committee members cited the judge's own arguments in the Kent case and called for an investigation into the sting operation, the investigators involved, and those that had approved it. And so, after the Providence Journal published the letter on January 12, 1920, the Newport Sex Scandal was born.   

While supposedly focusing on the sting operation itself and the "immoral" conduct of the investigators, the scandal became a political football aimed at embarrassing both Daniels and Roosevelt and demanding a full investigation into how they were managing Naval affairs.   The Providence Journal's publisher, John R. Rathom was especially brutal in his condemnation of Naval affairs and got into a heated exchange with Franklin Roosevelt as a result.  Though Josephus Daniels appointed a special board to investigate the accusations made by the clergymen, proceedings would drag on for months afterward.  In the meantime, Franklin Roosevelt resigned his position with the Navy to stand as the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate but the bad publicity generated by the sex scandal may well have played a role in the landslide Republican victory that same year. 

It wasn't until July, 1921 that the subcommittee investigating the scandal issued a scathing report denouncing both Daniels and Roosevelt for allowing the investigation in the first place.  Carefully worded to avoid mentioning the "unprintable" nature of the evidence collected by the investigators, the report concluded that "conduct of a character at which seasoned veterans of the service would have shuddered was practically forced upon boys"  and that Daniels and Roosevelt were guilty of "lacking moral perspective."  Though Franklin Roosevelt ignored the report by suggesting that the Republican members of the subcommittee were trying to embarrass him, there is no telling how badly his political future might have been damaged by the scandal.  Ironically, the public sympathy generated by the near-fatal paralyzing illness he developed that same year meant that his role in the scandal would be quickly forgotten.

While the Newport scandal helped ensure that Naval investigators would be more careful about how they gathered evidence, the ban on homosexual conduct would remain.  Certainly the men who had been convicted during the original investigation had their lives thoroughly ruined as a result.  Even civilians such as Samuel Neal Kent had to endure public humiliation by being implicated, something that was all too common with later investigations as well.   Still, while the Newport Naval base  continues to be a major part of life in Newport, Rhode Island, the scandal that there is a certain irony that the town, along with neighbouring Providence, are now tourist magnets for GLBT visitors across North America.  

Such is progress. 

The Jesus Experiment (Part 1 of 2)

For Milton Rokeach, it would be more than an experiment in treating mental illness.  In many ways, it would be one of the most remarkable studies of its kind ever undertaken and help transform the very meaning of human identity.   

Rokeach, a professor at Michigan State University was a pioneer in studying the psychology of dogmatism and the persistence of certain ideas even in the face of conflicting evidence.  His books, The Authoritarian Personality and The Open and Closed Mind are classics of political psychology and the psychometric scale he developed to measure dogmatism and the rigidity of belief is still widely used.

His most famous study, however, took place at Ypsilanti State Hospital outside of Saline, Michigan.   First opened in 1930, the hospital treated thousands of mental patients with a wide range of different treatments, many staying there for their entire lives during that pre-deinstitutionalization era.  Working closely with hospital staff, Milton Rokeach spent three years studying three particular patients who happened to share identical delusions, i.e., being Jesus Christ.    What would happen if these three patients were placed in the same ward and forced to confront one another?  

Delusions of religious grandeur are relatively common among patients with severe mental illness.  I recall dealing with quite a few of these when I worked in the forensic wing of a maximum-security prison (though never at the same time).   While the delusions can be temporary, they may also persist for a lifetime and resist all attempts at treatment.  Though advances in psychiatric treatment were helping patients control these delusions, developing effective psychotherapeutic strategies meant trying some, er, unique approaches.

As Rokeach would later describe in his now-classic 1964 book, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, the experiment he arranged was based on three basic assumptoms.   The first assumption was that not all the beliefs that a person holds are of equal importance.  The beliefs will range from central beliefs to others that are only peripheral.   The second assumption was that, the more central a belief was, the more resistant it would be to change.   He described these central beliefs as being the most primitive, i.e., at the very basis of how people perceived reality.   The third assumption was that changing a primitive belief would have repercussions far greater than changing a more peripheral belief.  

For most people, central beliefs about the world and the physical reality around them are rarely questioned and even harder to shake.   We can seen that even today considering the ongoing battle between ardent creationists and people defending scientific theories about evolution.    In the case of the three patients at the centre of the experiment Rokeach would be overseeing, all of them suffered from an extremely strong central delusion that reflected how they viewed reality itself.   What impact would being forced to change that belief have on them?  

Identity is at the core of what we believe about ourselves.   People suffering from severe amnesia causing them to forget their own names experience strong emotional distress at having lost their sense of identity.   Even for people suffering from delusions that they are someone else, disproving it can be extremely difficult since they will simply reject any external evidence.  But what happens if three people who believe themselves to be the same person are forced to confront one another?   

This has actually happened in the past, believe it or not.  In one of his commentaries, Voltaire wrote about a deranged man named Simon Morin.  Morin suffered from the delusion that he was Jesus Christ and happened to be placed in an asylum with another man who believed himelf to be God.  Morin was reportedly so struck by this strange delusion that he actually recovered for a while and became well enough to leave the asylum.   Unfortunately, he quickly relapsed and was eventually burned at the stake in 1663.   In another case described by Robert Lindner in his book, The Jet-Propelled Couch, two women admitted to the same mental hospital both claimed to be Mary, the Mother of God.  After a brief argument, one of them concluded that she was actually Mary's mother.   She was the one who eventually recovered.  

With those two examples in mind, Rokeach arranged for inquiries to be sent out to various hospitals in the Michigan area looking for two or more patients who shared the same delusion.  As he reported in his book, delusions of identity tended to be fairly rare but eventually three patients were identified, two of whom were at the Ypsilanti hospital.   After the third patient was transferred to the same hospital, they were all placed in the same ward and carefully observed over the next two years. 

Although the three men shared one delusion, they were otherwise very different.   The first of them, Clyde Benson, had been institutionalized since 1942 when he was fifty-three years old.   He had a long history of moodiness and substance abuse despite having inherited a share in his family's successful farm.  Having been married twice, he eventually left his second wife and family to go into a downward spiral of criminal behaviour that sent him to jail.  It was while he was in  his cell that he had a psychotic breakdown and insisted that he was Jesus Christ.   At the time of his commitment, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia despite having no prior history of mental illness.    By the time of the Three Christs experiment, he had been hospitalized for seventeen years.

The second man, Joseph Cassel, was born in Quebec as part of a French-Canadian family.  Interestingly enough, his birth name had been Josephine though he had changed it to Joseph at the earliest opportunity (Freudians take note).   Joseph eventually immigrated to Detroit and had hopes of being a writer.   Despite marrying and having three children, he was unhappy over being unable to stay home and write.   He eventually quit his job in 1938 and refused to get another one so that he could write while his wife worked.    After moving in with his father in Quebec along with his wife and family, Joseph was committed to a Canadian mental hospital and later "deported" to the Ypsilanti hospital where he would remain.   Along with a history of impulsive attacks on other patients, Joseph was also prone to paranoid delusions of staff and patients conspiring against him.  Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Joseph developed the delusion that he was God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost which became fixated over time.    On being told of this delusion, his older daughter commented that "“He always wanted to be important, better than other people, but he just wasn’t aggressive enough.”

As for the third patient, Leon Gabor, his childhood was marked by several traumas including his mother's religious fanaticism (she claimed to hear voices) and his father's abandonment.  Forced to attend seminary school by his mother, he was expelled at the age of seventeen though the reason for his expulsion is not recorded.  He enlisted in the military during World War II and was honourably discharged in 1945.  After returning to his old job as an electrician, he later tried to attend university but dropped out after one year.  Leon drifted from job to job and was largely supported by his mother's old-age pension until being committed to hospital in 1954.   About a year before being committed, he reported hearing voices (much like his mother did) although these voices told him he was Jesus.  He eventually went on a rampage and smashed all the religious icons in the house.  When his mother tried to stop him, he threatened to strangle her.  After telling her that she needed to worship him directly since he was Jesus,  she called police and he was sent to hospital under guard.  Much like the other two patients, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

So, would the three patients react to seeing other people with the same delusion?  

Continue to Part 2