Homicidal Act Research Articles

Low blood glucose nadir in the glucose tolerance test and homicidal spouse abuse

The purpose of the study was to investigate whether homicidal spouse abuse offenders with a low blood glucose nadir in glucose tolerance test (GTT) showed more instances of repeated and severe aggression and criminality than counterparts with more normal GTTs. An attempt was also made to determine whether personality profiles on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) differentiated between the groups. Altogether, 60 male homicidal offenders were studied. Those with low values had been repeatedly violent and impulsive under the influence of alcohol in relationships but also outside the home. The homicidal act usually occurred under the influence of alcohol with no clear recollection. These offenders had normal MMPI but some of them showed motor restlessness and irritability during the GTTs. The possible connections with enhanced glucose and abnormal brain serotonin metabolism among habitually violent and impulsive offenders are discussed.

Alcohol as a factor precipitating aggression and conflict behaviour leading to homicide.

SummaryThe study was concerned with the cases of criminal homicide recorded by the police in Helsinki in the years 1963–1968, totalling 116. In 92 cases (79–3%) the presence of alcohol either in the victim or in the perpetrator was ascertainable, and in most cases both had been under the influence of alcohol. Alcohol had played a part in murders less often than in other types of criminal homicide.When aggressive behaviour and altercation had preceded the homicidal act, it had beat initiated by the victim as frequently as by the perpetrator. Alcohol was often associated with such modes of aggressive and conflict behaviour. Where alcohol was associated with such behaviours, usually a situation involving two males was in question. At least in some of these cases, homosexual and jealousy problems had played a part.In those alcohol‐positive cases where the homicide had been preceded by aggressive behaviour and altercation initiated by the victim, the average blood alcohol value for the victims was 0–248%; the corresponding figure for the cases where such behaviour initiated by the victim had not occurred was 0–213% or almost the same; and thus the average severity of the states of intoxication had also apparently been approximately the same in both groups of cases. From this it seemed legitimate to infer that aggressive tendencies in the victims belonging to the former group mere stronger or more easily actualized, so that alcohol was enough to precipitate their manifestation. As a rule, chemico‐legal blood alcohol determinations had not been possible with the perpetrators, but everything suggested that the same applied, to them as to victims.

The detection of attempted suicides and murderers using the Rorschach

MARTINI compared the Rorschach protocols of attempted suicides with those of nonsuicidal psychiatric patients and identified a number of signs that differentiated the groups. In particular, he cross-validated five signs and proposed a total of 17 signs as worthy of further study. The validity of these signs in differentiating attempted suicides from nonsuicidal patients has been replicated by DASTON and SAKHEIM~ and WEINER~ but not by NEURINGER, et aL4 Neuringer, et al. felt that the signs were more useful for male patients than for female patients. Although, the signs proposed by Martin seem to be reasonably successful in differentiating attempted suicides from nonsuicidal controls, it remains possible that the signs would identify any individual who has cathartically released aggressive impulses, and that these tendencies could as easily be directed outwards as inwards.5 Thus, it is of interest to compare attempted suicides with murderers to see whether the signs are capable of differentiating these two kinds of people. The present paper reports such a comparison. METHOD The 72 attempted suicides were those used by MART& in his original study. They were male patients hospitalized in neuropsychiatric units of Veterans Administration hospitals. The 50 male murderers had been convicted of murder and sentenced from 10 years to life imprisonment and included some sentenced to death. All Ss were tested after the suicidal of homicidal act. The two groups were all male and did not differ significantly in age (x2 = 1.87, df = 1 on a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test) or in the total number of Rorschach responses on their protocols (x2 = l-33, & = 1). The two groups were tested by different psychologists. RESULTS The two groups were compared for the number of Martin’s signs on their protocols and no differences were found (t = 0.84, df = 120). The murderers had an average of 9.4 signs (S.D. = 2.6) and the attempted suicides had an average of 9.0 (S.D. = 2.6).

Assault and homicide associated with amphetamine abuse.

The author describes the histories of 13 persons who committed homicide while intoxicated with amphetamines. In most of these cases, the events leading to the homicidal act were directly related to amphetamine-induced paranoid thinking, panic, emotional lability, or lowered impulse control. The most important variables associated with these cases included predisposing personality, environmental circumstances, and the use of other drugs.

The murderers--before and after.

This paper presents a summary of the history and findings in 10 patients examined by the authors both before and after admission to the Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Prioon Service charged with homicide. In general, the constellations of psychopathology presented by these patients conformed poorly to the usual diagnostic categories. The homicidal act seemed “determined” more by an environment of violence than by specific dynamic mechanisms or individual psychopathology. Individuals once conditioned to patterns of violence present exceedingly difficult disposition problems both to the psychiatrist and court, and suggest an emphasis on prevention rather than detection and treatment.

The International Medical Congress at Madrid

The fourteenth International Medical Congress is now a thing of the past. About 7000 members attended it, exclusive of the wives and families accompanying them. For some unknown reason the Madrid authorities included in the Congress not only doctors, but dentists, veterinarians, and pharmacists as well. This was too large a number of persons for the authorities to manage, and consequently a good deal of confusion prevailed. The Spaniard is a polite, courteous gentleman, but his business capacity is decidedly wanting. Moreover, the results of that fatal word mañana (to-morrow) were everywhere in evidence, and arrangements which should have been made weeks before were only just concluded when the Congress opened. An account of the proceedings of the neurological section appears on another page. From it it will be seen that the Association had honours conferred on it by the election of three of its members to the position of Honorary Presidents. The difficulty of understanding what was said by the Spaniards, however, led many men to forsake the Congress and explore Madrid, or go on excursions to the Escurial and Toledo. The reports and papers were too numerous for the time allotted to them, and only about a third of the sixty-six communications were read. On another occasion it will be better to limit their number and allow all of them to be read. Only one resolution was passed by the neurological section—a resolution calling on the Press not to report crimes, in order to avoid the contagion of crime. It is doubtful, however, whether the editors of the Press in any country will consent to omit the most sensational part of the contents of their paper; but that too much prominence is given to the life of the criminal in prison and to accounts of his life-history, in some papers, there is no doubt, and the consequence is that weak-minded individuals commit some homicidal or other criminal act.

Homicidal Impulse

In reference to the remarkable statement recently made at the trial of the Rev. J. S. Watson, at the Old Bailey, that no case is on record of an impulsive act of insanity involving homicide in a person who had not given evidence of insanity of an unmistakeable kind previously, the following cases may be interesting as showing that at all events the impulse to homicide is at times present without other symptoms of insanity, and that the absence of the homicidal act itself is due in such cases either to the retention of sufficient self-control for the temporary resistance of the impulse, or to the act itself, in its results, falling short of homicide.

On the various Forms of Mental Disorder, (being the Substance of Lectures Delivered at the York School of Medicine,)

In describing the symptoms arising from the derangement of the group of faculties last under consideration, namely, those termed moral, and with which man is specially endowed, as contrasted with the lower animals, it might have seemed natural to detail those morbid mental phenomena, which Prichard and others have so much dwelt upon when treating of moral insanity. But such a perverted condition of the moral sense is so almost invariably indicated, and often only discovered by the activity of the animal propensities, that it is more convenient to treat of it under the third class of mental disorders. It is likewise more consistent with our adopted principle of classification, which consists in referring each mental disorder to that group of faculties, the affection of which is essential to its manifestations. In homicidal mania, the animal propensities are of necessity called into action, whether the homicidal act be the result of their diseased action, in association with a healthy condition of the higher sentiments, or of their normal action when associated with, and therefore uncontrolled by, a state of the moral sense rendered powerless or feeble by disease; be it congenital or acquired, or the result of functional disorder or structural changes. We usually become cognizant of diseased mental conditions by positive, not by negative, symptoms; some overt act or explosion of passion will, in general, be the first proof of such disease of the moral sentiments, as involves their occlusion or inertness, when they ought to be in exercise. Should the disease be of such a nature as to increase the activity of these faculties, then we have an exhibition of religious excitement or ecstasy, a morbid condition already treated of.