CASE HISTORIES 87 



some hostile motive or intention to ridicule, and muttered and 

 glowered hatefully. I have never seen more hate in a human face 

 than in his. 



"I'm not as strong as I used to be. My thoughts are getting 

 slower. I don't feel like moving myself much. I can't think as 

 fast as I used to. I've no appetite and I feel lazy. I don't like 

 this climate. I can't get braced up. I worried myself out, work- 

 ing in the machine shop. You get to be an old man in a short 

 while. ("Why don't you mingle with the other patients?") 

 They're from other cities, and I don't know what to say to them. 

 They don't want me around. They go on their way, and I go on 

 mine. You're from another state, and so you're not easy to talk 

 to. 



" People don't care about me ; they have enough to do to take 

 care of themselves. In the navy one fellow called me short, and 

 the others laughed (intense emotion). I've always been guyed 

 about being short. A navy chief had it in for me because I was 

 from the west. He gave me extra work. They made fun of 

 westerners, of our table manners and the way we looked. I felt 

 the other fellows came from better families. Workmen like me 

 have a hard time. When work is unsteady the money soon goes. 

 Some people have money already and don't have to worry. Other 

 people get better chances than I do. You can't help me, and / 

 can't talk with you, because you're not a shop worker like me. 

 You loaf around here and do no work. If I was as well fixed 

 as you I'd feel good too. You're not in my class. I want to keep 

 to my class. You like women, you're dressed that way, you're 

 not a bad looking fellow." 



Quizzing him on his sex life drove him into such a fury of 

 hate that I half expected him to leap at my throat. For a month 

 I paid no attention to him, but every time I entered the ward he 

 glared at me ferociously. However, he never actually offered 

 physical violence to anybody. Through gifts of candy he became 

 sufficiently mollified so that I attempted the Terman intelligence 

 test. All went well until he began to fail on the harder questions 

 and realized he was failing. He got so angry that he did poorly 

 on some problems that I felt sure he could have solved if he had 



