ly the habitual
criminal, who always uses deceit and simulation in his vain attempts at
meeting life's difficulties squarely in the face, regularly resorts to
malingering when confronted with a serious criminal charge or when life
in prison becomes especially unbearable to him. A good illustration of
an attempt at falsification of reality for the purpose of annihilating a
particularly stressful situation by means of a mere assertion of a state
of affairs such as he would wish them to be, with a total disregard for
the real facts which constantly stare him in the face, is furnished by
the following case:--

M. came from a good family and led a normal life, earning a
substantial livelihood as printer up to the age of about thirty-eight.
At this time one of his children died, and this, together with poor
physical health, is said to have brought on a severe depression,
during which he was actively suicidal and very self-accusatory.
Several months later he lost another child by fire, and at this time
also claimed to have obtained positive proof of his wife's infidelity.
His mental depression became very much more aggravated; he attempted
suicide on a number of occasions, was very suspicious and
apprehensive, developed persecutory delusions, feared he was going to
be burned to death or suffer some other horrible fate. This condition
finally necessitated his admission to the Government Hospital for the
Insane on May 28, 1897, at the age of forty. Here he gradually
improved, and was discharged into the care of his father on
October 22, 1899.

On February 19, 1903, he was readmitted as a D.C. prisoner, having shot
and killed a man who seduced one of his daughters. Some idea concerning
the type of individual we are dealing with here can be had already when
we keep in mind his mode of reaction to the various stressful situations
in his life enumerated above. All went well with him so long as he was
not called upon to make a difficult adjustment, but with the loss of his
child he develops a mental disorder. That he should have reacted to his
daughter's injury with murder is quite in line with his general
inability and incompetency for proper adjustment, and the development of
a mental disorder which has kept him in an institution for the past
twelve years and will in all probability keep him there the rest of his
life, in reaction to the committed murder, further emphasizes the
general vulnerability