invented them. Just look at ’em one by one and tell me what you see, or what they look like or remind you of.
A. (For the impact second, and for the first time, eyes wide and completely alert. Scansion swift, up, down, across. Then lids lower again to usual hooded attitude; subsequent gaze steady and dull. This particular card usually seen by men his age as two figures dancing around an overgrown tree.) This is like two guys mashing an animal, pulling on it or maybe choking it. It didn’t bleed yet but it will. There’s the animal’s hole. (Pointing to a red spot on the card.)
Q. (Impulsively using a technique applicable to another test entirely.) Why are they doing that?
A. (Instantly withdrawing; concealing; secretive.) They just doing it.
Q. (Another card, oftenest seen as two animals crawling up a hill.) How about this?
A. (Instant response.) That’s a tit. Two dragons wanted it but they spoiled it, they tore it all up. Now they are mad, they are flying at it.
Q. Try this. (Usually seen as a large butterfly.)
A. It’s like animals pulling apart somebody’s body. Vicious animals. There’s the girl’s spine and her hole. She’s cut in half. It’s red inside. (Respiration deeper perhaps but slow; eyes hooded; nostrils repeatedly dilated.)
Q. This one?
A. Oh, that’s somebody built a double deadfall, bam, it got two animals, chucks maybe or possum, both at once, mashed.
Q. And this?
A. A woman’s belly bust open. It was a baby in it bust it. But the baby bust open too, see it there? (Q. gathers up the cards. A. watches absorbedly.)
A. (As if he had been thinking about it all this time.) Phil …?
Q.?
A. You could call me George if you want.
Q. Anything you say … we came a long way today. You’re doing real good now. You want to try some more; more kinds, sometime soon? Not now, it’s lunch already.
A. (Dully.) Okay.
Q. (Raps for guard.)
End session.
Comments: George has a strange quality about him I call inaccurately non-guilt. It is inaccurate because he is completely aware of good and evil as other people judge them, but he seems burdened not at all by that sense of punishment earned which afflicts most people in a Judeo-Christian matrix like ours. An extreme example is the character described from Biblical times right up to the present, who when injured or thrust into misery concludes instantly that this is punishment for a transgression, known or unknown. The cry, “What have I done to deserve this?” seems to mean, “I have done nothing to deserve this!”; actually it means, in many or most cases, “For which of my sins am I being punished?”
In George’s case I feel—almost intuitively—that there is in him no conviction of quid pro quo, punishment for crime. Punishment he understands, other people’s attitudes toward crime he understands. But he simply seems not to share the attitude. A trivial analogy would be two persons, one dedicated to and transported by music, one completely tone-deaf and arrhythmic. The latter would recognize that the former was experiencing something, but could not know what it was nor how it felt. George seems in that sense to be “tone-deaf” to a whole spectrum of commonly-shared feelings—empathy for a dying animal, squeamishness in regard to pain, blood, injury, or injustice: a protective coating built up over the years and penetrated apparently only when he saw the casualties. Certainly a great deal of this could be explained by his execrable childhood, where punishment descended without rhyme or reason, while childish breaches of conduct like absence at meals or at night, stealing, impertinence, and disobedience were as often as not overlooked. Punishment did not necessarily follow crime in George’s cosmos, yet punishment inevitably came, crime or no.
I have seen a great many prisoners who, for all their griping about a raw deal, actually felt that they were fairly caught and justly punished. A great many felt, or said they felt, that
A. (For the impact second, and for the first time, eyes wide and completely alert. Scansion swift, up, down, across. Then lids lower again to usual hooded attitude; subsequent gaze steady and dull. This particular card usually seen by men his age as two figures dancing around an overgrown tree.) This is like two guys mashing an animal, pulling on it or maybe choking it. It didn’t bleed yet but it will. There’s the animal’s hole. (Pointing to a red spot on the card.)
Q. (Impulsively using a technique applicable to another test entirely.) Why are they doing that?
A. (Instantly withdrawing; concealing; secretive.) They just doing it.
Q. (Another card, oftenest seen as two animals crawling up a hill.) How about this?
A. (Instant response.) That’s a tit. Two dragons wanted it but they spoiled it, they tore it all up. Now they are mad, they are flying at it.
Q. Try this. (Usually seen as a large butterfly.)
A. It’s like animals pulling apart somebody’s body. Vicious animals. There’s the girl’s spine and her hole. She’s cut in half. It’s red inside. (Respiration deeper perhaps but slow; eyes hooded; nostrils repeatedly dilated.)
Q. This one?
A. Oh, that’s somebody built a double deadfall, bam, it got two animals, chucks maybe or possum, both at once, mashed.
Q. And this?
A. A woman’s belly bust open. It was a baby in it bust it. But the baby bust open too, see it there? (Q. gathers up the cards. A. watches absorbedly.)
A. (As if he had been thinking about it all this time.) Phil …?
Q.?
A. You could call me George if you want.
Q. Anything you say … we came a long way today. You’re doing real good now. You want to try some more; more kinds, sometime soon? Not now, it’s lunch already.
A. (Dully.) Okay.
Q. (Raps for guard.)
End session.
Comments: George has a strange quality about him I call inaccurately non-guilt. It is inaccurate because he is completely aware of good and evil as other people judge them, but he seems burdened not at all by that sense of punishment earned which afflicts most people in a Judeo-Christian matrix like ours. An extreme example is the character described from Biblical times right up to the present, who when injured or thrust into misery concludes instantly that this is punishment for a transgression, known or unknown. The cry, “What have I done to deserve this?” seems to mean, “I have done nothing to deserve this!”; actually it means, in many or most cases, “For which of my sins am I being punished?”
In George’s case I feel—almost intuitively—that there is in him no conviction of quid pro quo, punishment for crime. Punishment he understands, other people’s attitudes toward crime he understands. But he simply seems not to share the attitude. A trivial analogy would be two persons, one dedicated to and transported by music, one completely tone-deaf and arrhythmic. The latter would recognize that the former was experiencing something, but could not know what it was nor how it felt. George seems in that sense to be “tone-deaf” to a whole spectrum of commonly-shared feelings—empathy for a dying animal, squeamishness in regard to pain, blood, injury, or injustice: a protective coating built up over the years and penetrated apparently only when he saw the casualties. Certainly a great deal of this could be explained by his execrable childhood, where punishment descended without rhyme or reason, while childish breaches of conduct like absence at meals or at night, stealing, impertinence, and disobedience were as often as not overlooked. Punishment did not necessarily follow crime in George’s cosmos, yet punishment inevitably came, crime or no.
I have seen a great many prisoners who, for all their griping about a raw deal, actually felt that they were fairly caught and justly punished. A great many felt, or said they felt, that
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