288 



THE ABNORMAL MAN. 



Suicidal Tend- 

 encies in a 

 Child. 



A Would-Be 

 Parricide. 



continually wished that she were dead and out 

 of the way and used various drugs to destroy 

 the embryo. Her daughter, born under these con- 

 ditions cried and whined incessantly when a child, 

 was seldom happy and would frequently say, "I 

 wish I were dead !" Even when in her teens, no 

 matter how kind or courteous her young friends 

 were to her, she always felt that she was not 

 welcome. At the age of twenty she told me that 

 the impulse to commit suicide at certain times be- 

 came almost irrisistible ; that she had a constant 

 desire to die and could not help feeling that her 

 presence was an imposition even upon her best 

 friends. She assured me that but for her relig- 

 ious training and the fear of doing wrong she 

 would have taken her own life. 



At F , Ohio, the principal of one of the pub- 

 lic schools brought me a boy who was so utterly 

 bad and viciously cruel that he had to be ex- 

 pelled from the public school. The little fel- 

 low, not yet ten years old, had been twice taken 

 into custody by the police for his cruelty to 

 younger children. On one occasion he had 

 planned to kill a younger playmate but was 

 stopped by a passerby. The young lad had a spe- 

 cial dislike for his father and repeatedly affirmed, 

 "I will kill the old man just as soon as I am old 

 enough." ^The mother very injudiciously re- 

 ferred to his dislike for his father during the 

 examination and remarked that she guessed he 

 didn't mean it; the boy looked up with an ex- 

 pression of hatred on his face and said, "I do to, 

 and I will show you some day." Then relax- 

 ing the expression, he broke into a low, guttural, 



