Degeneration, Decline & Race

Bénédict-Augustin Morel

Treatise on Physical, Intellectual and Moral Degeneration

(1857)

“When the insane temperament has been developed in its most marked form, we must

acknowledge that the hereditary predisposition has assumed the character of deterioration of

race, and that the individual represents the beginning of a degeneracy which, if not checked

by favourable circumstances, will go on increasing from generation to generation and end finally in

the extreme degeneracy of idiocy. With the occurrence of idiocy there is happily the extinction

of the degenerate variety, for with it come impotence and sterility.”

(Maudsley, Responsibility in Mental Disease, 1874 p.50)

Degenerate “Stigmata”• PHYSICAL: unequal development of

two halves of the face and cranium, imperfections in the ear, squint eyes, harelips, a wolf-face, and irregularities of the teeth, stuttering, tremors, or tics, hermaphrodism, etc.

• MENTAL: feeble-minded, idiots, or the eccentric, precocious, with one-sided talents, or the morally delinquent.

History of “Moral Insanity”Rationality more or less intact, but

moral or feeling capacity impaired—asocial, often linked to criminal behavior

• (1801) Phillippe Pinel: “mania without delirium”

• (1835) James Cowles Prichard: coined term “moral insanity”

• (1876) Henry Maudsley: “moral insanity” or “moral imbecility” linked to degeneration

HENRY MAUDSLEY(1835-1918)founder of

Maudsley Hospital

“the Borderland”

Max Nordau (1849-1923)

Degeneration (1892)

CESARE LOMBROSO

(1835-1909)

Genius and Insanity (1864)

L'uomo delinquente (Criminal Man) (1876)

THE DEGENERATE GENIUS

Lombroso, The Man of Genius, 3rd. ed.p. 92

Schopenhauer

Wagner

Baudelaire

Relation of Average Monthly Temperature to admission of lunatics to asylum and to production

of works of genius (Lombroso, Man of Genius)

Works of genius

Henri Matisse

Vincent van Gogh

"Cubists and Futurists Are Making Insanity Pay”New York Times, March 16, 1913

DEGENERATE “ART” Guide to the Exhibition, Munich 1937

1937 Munich Exhibit of “Degenerate Art”

Paul Klee Runner at the Goal

Max Beckmann’s Paris Society

Cesare Lombroso, Album of CriminalsAtavistic: evolutionary throwback

Lombroso’s German & Italian

Criminals

Cesare Lombroso, The Female Offender (1893)

Galton’s Composites

Francis Galton’s Composite

Photographs

Francis Galton Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development (1883)

member of extended Juke Family (from Estabrook papers, SUNY)

Richard Dugdale, The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity (1877)

Charles Guiteau

NY Daily Graphic Jul 6, 1881

July 1881 “Struck Down at the Post of Duty”

“Last Honors” Harper's Weekly October 1, 1881

Legal Definitions of Insanity• M’Naghten Rule (1843)—defendant was

responsible if he knew the nature and consequences of his act, and that it was forbidden by law (cognitive test).

• Irresistible Impulse (1887)—emotional inability to resist act (supplement to M’Naghten)

• Durham rule (1954)—not criminally responsible if behavior is product of mental disease (product test).

• Insanity Defense Reform Act (1984)—not guilty, if due to mental disease and was unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of act. Shift of burden to defendant to prove insanity.

AFP/ Getty ImagesJohn Hinckley Jr. (L) escorted by police in Washington, D.C.

on March 30, 1981, following his arrest after shooting and seriously wounding then U.S. president Ronald Reagan.