VOL. XIV BULLETIN OF THE ORTON SOCIETY 1964

Special Communication DID LEE HARVEY OSWALD HAVE A

LANGUAGE DISABILITY. g To speculate about the existence of

a language disability such as develop- mental dyslexia in a person who has not been studied directly with this point of view in mind may appear to be rather far-fetched. However, from the history of an individual and from his writings, important data can be obtained which may be very sugges- tive if not scientifically conclusive. This seems to be true in the case of Lee Oswald, as seen by a psychiatrist interested in language problems.

On Sunday, November 21, 1963, two days after the assassination of President Kennedy, the newspaper ac- counts a b o u t Oswald's history con- tained several items that suggested the possibility that he had been hand- icapped by reading (and spelling) disability. On that day the writer of this article* started a letter to Dr. Perry Talkington, a psychiatrist in Dallas, Texas, bringing this possibility to his attention and thinking that he or a colleague might be called upon to examine Oswald.

In this letter it was said, "Assum- ing that he had a reading disability with the consequent years of frustra- tion without understanding or help during his grammar school years, 6 to 17, it might have been a fundamental factor in producing hostility and re- bellion against society." Just as the letter was being completed, n e w s came by radio that Oswald had been killed. The letter was completed and sent with the statement that now we shall never know for sure about the existence of such a handicap.

*Lloyd J. Thompson, M.D., presently clin- ical professor of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Caro- lina.

S P E C I F I C

However, after that date, details on Oswald's educational history from the Associated Press, Time Magazine, the Saturday Evening Post and other sources seemed to fit in with and bear out the picture of a specific reading disability.

Later, other evidence was added. Time (12-20-63) quoted from letters Lee wrote to his mother and noted, "Oswald was not much on grammar, spelling or punctuation." However, Oswald did write, "I very much miss sometime to read you should try and get me the pocket novel '1948' by Wells."

D I A R Y

Finally, in confirmation of the sus- pected disability, came publication of "Oswald's Full Russian Diary" in Li[e (7-10-64). Sample pages reproduced on the cover show a mixture of print- ing in capital and lower-case letters and longhand writing, difficult to de- cipher in many places. The introduc- tory note said, "Oswald's writing is so undecipherable that the editors had to make an educated guess. Other than that, the diary is printed exactly as Oswald wrote it, misspellings and all."

The innumerable misspelled words in this diary cannot be adequately ex- plained on the basis of insufficient education (Oswald was in school more or less until he was seventeen), or as due to the natural "carelessness" of someone writing only for himself. His errors are not typically those of illiteracy, although he does spell many words apparently more or less "by ear." They are v e r y characteristic, however, of specific language disabil- ity, in which reversals in the order of sequences of letters and omission of

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letters and syllables are prominent. As is usual in such cases, the same word is spelled in different ways at differ- ent times, and longer or more diffi- cult words are often better spelled than ones that would normally have been learned at an earlier age.

Examples of such reversals occur on almost every page, e.g., guied, So- rite, vauge, wacth, farley, fonud, fov- iengress, complusery, yonuge, leauge, patroict, presenec, disauade, contin- uenec, ect. In one place, from is used

.for to. In contrast to the above evidence

of a specific reading, writing, and spelling disability, there are accounts of the many books Oswald took from the library and about how he read up on Marxism. It is quite possible, how- ever, for a child with definite reading disability to attain a fair but slow reading facility by the time of the later teens, whereas spelling remains very deficient. Also, Oswald may have learned readily by hearing from oth- ers, and some of his ideas may have

been falsely attributed to reading. An A.P. report said, "He was invited on a television panel show where he de- scribed himself as a Marxist, but de- nied he was a communist. He stum- bled all over himself trying to ex- press his beliefs cogently, and never did."

If Oswald did have a specific read- ing disability (dyslexia) as the above evidence strongly indicates, the conse- quent years of educational frustration from 6 to 17 without understanding on his part or by others might have been a fundamental factor in produc- ing hostility and rebellion against so- ciety and the social order as represent- ed by those in authority. It is not to be denied that factors such as the ab- sence of a father, the role his mother played, the moving about with school changes, the lack of security, etc., were important in his "ego development," but in all probability did he not have the added burden of a developmental ~lsylexia?

Lloyd ]. Thompson, M.D.

Revie

THE NEw YORKER LOOKS AT R AI ING THE LAST SKILL ACQUIRED. Calvin Tomkins. A Reporter at Large. THE NEW YORKER, September 14, 1963.

It was news to many NEW YORKER readers that Specific Dyslexia ex- isted. It startled them to read that an estimated seven percent of the chil- dren in elementary schools (roughly 2,415,000) may suffer from this dis- ability. The article by Reporter-at- Large Tomkins interested them so much that the magazine's supply of reprints was soon exhausted and letters-to-the-editor continue to come. We can hope that each-one-will-tell- one, that discussion will grow, that this sort of publicity, describing facts and findings instead of a dogmatic point-of-view, will continue, bringing

recognition and treatment to an in- creasing number of dyslexic children.

The article opens with an attention- getting case history of Chris, an at- tractive, intelligent nine-year-old boy who had not learned to read and could not even write his name. In his three years in school (social promotion and second grade repeated) he had learned to be fiercely unhappy and moody, to disrupt classes, to fight on the play- ground, to cry himself to sleep, to feign complete indifference to the sub- ject of reading and to resist all efforts by adults to help him.

His mother and father were loving, responsible people, on relaxed terms with their children until they began to lose contact with Chris. His school

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