erament even on a lesser pathological
basis. This is the reason why officialdom and especially the narrow
limits of prison life bring out so forcibly these psychogenetic
disorders. In prisoners the psychogenetic character of the disorder
becomes especially apparent. One sees how in many cases the transfer
from one prison to another, to an observation station, to an insane
asylum, puts an end to the process. In certain instances the process
seems to revive itself again when the individual is placed in a similar
environment."

Of Bonhoeffer's three subdivisions of degenerative states the preceding
one would as a whole appear to me to be especially deserving of a
separate classification. Anyone who has had any experience with insane
criminals will recall that group of cases in whom the entire psychosis
seems to be more or less centered about a certain idea; in most
instances, about the idea of not having received a just trial. These
individuals, without showing any intellectual impairment, in fact
without showing any characteristic which would fit their mental
disturbance into any of the known psychoses, constantly evidence a sort
of paranoid habitus, a paranoid trend which is exclusively directed
against those who had anything to do with their conviction and
safe-keeping. The most trivial occurrences in their environment are
endowed by them with a personal note of prejudice. The delay of a
letter, the refusal to grant some of their unusual requests, an
attendant's accidental failure to sweeten their coffee sufficiently, the
slightest deviation from the routine greeting of the visiting physician;
in short, any such trivial, insignificant occurrence is at once endowed
with a special meaning, and explained in a more or less delusional
manner. Yet these individuals can reason in a perfectly rational manner
on any subject which is not concerned with their conviction or
confinement. They are as a rule intellectually bright and keen, and fail
to show any evidence of emotional deterioration. On the contrary, their
emotions are of such fine and sensitive nature that incidents which an
ordinary individual would overlook entirely, offend them to a marked
degree, and are reacted to by them in a very decisive manner. Indeed,
one frequently asks himself whether their persecutory ideas deserve to
be endowed with the value of actual delusions. I fully agree with
Sturrock[12] when he says: "If I refuse to allow a prisoner full scope
beca