220 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



iu this direction lies one of the greatest services the psychologist can 

 render to the community that I have chosen as the subject of my presi- 

 dential address ' Psychological Aspects of our Penal System.' 



The root-idea in punishment as ordinarily understood is the infliction 

 of some kind of disagreeableness, pain, or loss on an individual, because he 

 has been guilty of some misdeed. There are thus two aspects — on the 

 one hand the infliction of hurt, on the other hand the relation of this to 

 some wrongdoing or crime. Originally any end to be gained by such 

 infliction was scarcely conscious, if it existed at all — any end, that is to 

 say, beyond the satisfaction of the anger evoked by the misdeed itself. 

 The psychological source is to be found in the anger caused by the wrong. 

 From this primitive source to the modern conception the evolution of 

 theories of punishment, conscious or unconscious, may be said to have 

 passed through four stages or phases. These may be designated the 

 vindictive, the retributive, the protective or deterrent, and the reformatory 

 or curative. 



Let us consider the psychology of this process of evolution. To begin 

 with, an individual who has suffered injury by the wrongdoing of another 

 responds to the injury with the emotion and impulse of anger. This is 

 satisfied by the infliction of some hurt on the wrongdoer. At the simplest 

 and crudest stage of development — the stage where we have to deal with 

 the mere instinctive impulse of the brute or the savage — the hurt inflicted 

 on the wrongdoer may have no direct relation, either in kind or in degree, 

 to the injury done, but only to the intensity of the anger evoked. Of 

 course this is not really punishment in any strict sense. Nevertheless it 

 is unquestionably the psychological origin, and it therefore marks the 

 first stage in the evolution of what became punishment in the strict sense. 

 This is the vindictive stage or phase. In so far as punishment at any time 

 reveals the same emotion and impulse it represents this primitive vindictive 

 stage. 



Even in a very primitive social life, however, some crude notion of 

 justice must very early act as a determining influence on the hurt that 

 may be inflicted on another for some injury done. We are not at present 

 concerned in the tracing of the psychological processes by which this 

 notion of justice comes into being. It is only necessary to put ourselves 

 in the j)lace of the impartial onlooker to understand the psychology of 

 these processes. So far as some notion of justice is a conscious determinant 

 of the hurt inflicted on the wrongdoer by the injured individual, this hurt 

 takes on the character of retribution, and punishment as such comes into 

 being. This phase or stage in the evolution of punishment is the retri- 

 butive phase or stage. 



Another factor must have made its influence felt in a rudimentary 

 way at a comparatively early stage. The notion of punishment must 

 have involved a looking forward as well as backward, in the shape at least 

 of a dim feeling that similar actions to that which has incurred it must be 

 prevented in the future. There can be little doubt, that is to say, that 

 at a comparatively early stage primitive society must have felt vaguely 

 that punishment had a protective function, since by means of punishment 

 of a culprit the individual and society were protecting themselves against 

 the repetition of an injurious act. 



