CASE HISTORIES 45 



fifteen, by which time he had reached the fifth grade. He worked 

 in a printery, a machine shop and a theater, never earning enough 

 money to live the way he wanted. Most of his jobs were as 

 hostler for wealthy families who let him go when they left for 

 their summer vacations. When motor cars began displacing 

 horses he should have learned the automobile business, he said, 

 but something in him didn't want to. 



At the outbreak of the Spanish War he enlisted in the army 

 because he wanted to see the world. After three years he was 

 honorably discharged. There followed a series of enlistments in 

 the army and navy with dishonorable discharges and prison 

 sentences for fraudulent enlistment, drunkenness and stealing. 

 He finally became upset and believed people were reading his 

 mind and hypnotizing him and forcing him to say and do things 

 he didn't intend to. He became terrified because he was sure 

 some people were going to kill him. 



In the hospital he refused to work, did not associate with 

 other patients, and was certain he was to be killed. Voices 

 accused him of vile practices, and God gave him instructions 

 about his eating. He became somewhat grandiose and decorated 

 his clothes bizarrely. 



Sex life: He preferred to keep off this subject. With blush- 

 ing and shame he said that he considered masturbation harmful 

 and had never done it much. The record states he had been 

 caught at it. When he was eighteen a married woman, separated 

 from her husband, had picked him up and he had gone with her 

 for two or three years. He disliked even to admit having had 

 heterosexual intercourse. It was not possible to marry on less 

 than a hundred dollars a month he said, and he had never earned 

 that much. At mention of perversions he was instantly on the 

 defensive, "Better not talk of that." 



Fantasies: Voices used to insult him and call him a fella- 

 tionist, and he would retort. His brain told him that another 

 man, Satan perhaps, was trying to control him. The tempter 

 agreed that you could do anything you pleased if only you 

 confessed it afterward to a priest ; that cleared it all up, but he 

 insisted no, it couldn't be as simple and easy as that, for you 

 would get sent to prison for fifteen years just as some men had 



