Even now the authorities found it difficult to regard this boy as an ordinary forger. He showed nothing in common with people who are placed in the category of the delinquent. Instead of being expelled, he was allowed to withdraw from college.
He had made a good record during his seven months as a freshman and was popular with the students. Letters were contributed in his behalf by the high school principal at home, by his minister, a former Sunday School teacher, a scoutmaster, and even by the mayor of his home town. All of these expressed confidence in Pete as “a splendid young man of high moral standards,” “a regular fellow,” “a fine Christian character,” “a well-behaved and clean-minded boy who deserves every consideration.”
During our numerous interviews Pete seemed to express himself freely. “I just don’t know why I did it,” he said at first. At other times he said he must have been impelled by desire for money. As the subject was returned to from day to day his explanation varied. “It seems there was some sort of an impulse I can’t account for,” he once suggested. A few days later it was, “I just didn’t think what I was doing.”
No one familiar with the whole material of these interviews would have difficulty in seeing plainly that none of these reasons were very pertinent. Pete admitted he had not even spent the money. He had no particular need and no special plans that might call for extra cash. His statement about some impulse is, of course, interesting; but the more Pete discussed this the more evident it became that he was not referring to anything like compulsive behavior in the ordinary psychiatric sense. Apparently he fell upon this remark as upon his other ever-varying explanations in a vague effort to fill out verbally a framework of cause and effect which as human beings we all tend to manufacture when we cannot find it in actuality. There was no specific breathtaking and unbearable drive to do this irrational act, and no vivid fulfillment in its accomplishment. He had done it as a lazy man might swat a fly. Pete was not discovering real motives in himself but reaching at random for plausible or possible reasons that might have influenced some hypothetical person to do what he had done. It was rationalization in the purest sense but not adequate enough to convince the patient himself.
Among dozens of other possible explanations he mentioned that shortly before one of his forgeries he had received a letter from one of his friends in Florida mentioning the friend’s plan for a weekend trip to Miami. Pete recalled a feeling of envy and suggested that he might, childishly, have felt that he, too, would like to have a sort of treat or adventure or break in the routine. By getting this extra money he would, in a vague way, be keeping up with his friend, having a little lark, or indulging himself in a sort of reward or bonus. Or he might think up some way to spend the money that would constitute an equivalent to his friend’s week end of pleasure. Under discussion this, too, broke down as a factor of much pertinence. The envious thought of his friend’s trip had been brief and trivial. It had not preoccupied him or exerted strong or persistent emotional pressure as sometimes such apparently illogical and inadequate factors do exert in human behavior. And he had neither executed nor continued to plan any adventure in which the money might be used or wasted.
The patient realized that all the impulses he mentioned were without strength to drive him into a dangerous or even a mildly unpleasant act. The more one talked with him the more plain it became that he had realized how readily such forgeries could be detected and laid at his feet and that he had, before and during the acts, been far from unaware (intellectually) that serious and undesirable consequences were likely to follow. There was no question of Pete’s having been, in the ordinary sense, merely thoughtless or impulsive. He was not negligent in reason and foresight, but somehow the obvious, and one would think inevitable, emotional response that would inhibit such an act did not play its part in his functioning. There had been no anxious brooding over consequences, no conscious struggle against temptation or overmastering impulse. The consequences occurred to him, but rather casually, and he did not worry about them even to the point of carefully estimating his chances of getting away with the forgeries undetected, or just what penalties he might face. He drifted along, responding to rather feeble impulses but without adequate consideration of consequences.
This boy, as he clearly pointed out, had no inclination to leave college. He had been remarkably free of homesickness and, in fact happier, he said, than ever before in his life. He had chosen the college himself, largely on the basis of renown and social prestige. Though very much smaller, it was regarded by many as more or less equivalent to Harvard or Yale. He had won a scholarship awarded by a civic group in the town where he lived, on the basis of character and all-around qualities rather than on mere superiority in grades. He had no difficulty in passing examinations and obtaining admission at the college of his choice.
In this discussion several points of interest emerged. Until his last year in high school he had planned to go to West Point. There had never been, he admitted, any real interest in military life, and he frankly stated he had never intended to remain in the army after graduation. The idea of wearing an impressive uniform and the most superficial aspects of being a West Pointer seem to have been almost his sole motive. In explaining his change of mind, he frankly spoke of his desire to be among wealthy and socially prominent people and pointed out the particular advantages of the place he had chosen. Such motives, of course, influence in a way most, if not all, people. But this young man seemed influenced to a degree truly remarkable. As the discussion progressed it began to appear as if such values alone affected him. In the ordinary climber or snob it is usual to find this sort of dominant attitude only under concealment that fools the subject if not the observer. With Pete there seemed to be no awareness that such aims should not be given primacy, and, indeed, exclusive sway, or that there was reason to pretend otherwise.
In further talk along this line his fundamental attitude began to shape up into something much less simple than that of the ordinary opportunist or the vulgar schemer. Something distinctly and almost terrifyingly naive emerged behind a readily volunteered and not very appealing life aim. It became clear that this was far from a truly dominant and persistent aim. Like momentary apparel, it had been donned, somewhat as revellers may try on for a moment paper masks or fancy costumes at a party, only after a moment to discard them. Pete was not a shrewd opportunist intently set on pursuing a policy of material success with little regard to ethics or esthetics. Gladly, and in a deep sense innocently and sincerely, he accepted such a scheme and such evaluations. And these motivations probably influenced his conduct more often than any other conscious motivation. But even here there was no persistence of aim, no goal regularly beckoning, no substantial emotional force driving, even in a poor or perverse channel, toward fulfillment. Such values prompted Pete, but their influence was more that of transient recurrent whims than of human-sized connation.
This bright and pleasant young man volunteered information about numerous acts in the past which had not been detected. He had occasionally stolen, usually articles of little value, from friends and from stores. No evidence of any distinct motive or any strong thrill of adventure could be brought out in connection with the petty thefts. He had also, with gracious and “between us as gentlemen” approaches, put pressure on a number of his father’s friends to “lend” him small sums which he never thought of repaying. During the previous summer he had, by complicated and ingenious schemes, secured sugar for a Negro man who made whiskey illegally. In this way he obtained several hundred dollars, nearly all of which he squandered aimlessly and unexcitingly while on houseparties with a group he liked to impress. Though he worried little about getting caught, he had proceeded with some caution and cunning.