Fatal Vision (66 page)

It makes me a little cynical about accepting that particular test form just as it is."

The second test about which the psychologist spoke was the Thematic Apperception Test, in which the subject views a series of nineteen pictures and one blank card and makes up a story about each.

As described by its developer, Dr. Henry A. Murray of the Harvard Psychological Clinic, who devised the test in the early 1940s, "The TAT is a method of revealing to the trained interpreter some of the dominant drives, emotions, sentiments, complexes, and conflicts of a personality. Special value resides in its power to expose the underlying, inhibited tendencies which the subject is not willing to admit, or cannot admit because he is unconscious of them.

"If the pictures are presented as a test of imagination, the subject's interest, together with his need for approval, can be so involved in the task that he forgets his sensitive self and the necessity of defending it against the probings of the examiner, and before he knows it, he has said things about an invented character that apply to himself, things which he would have been reluctant to confess in response to a direct question. As a rule, the subject leaves the test happily unaware that he has presented the psychologist with what amounts to an X ray picture of his inner self."

In analyzing MacDonald's TAT responses, the Walter Reed psychologist found evidence of several areas of inner conflict.

"One was dependence and independence," he said. "Others were sexuality, or lust, and intimacy; affection and strength; hostility and love. It seemed to me that in all of these conflicts there was a unifying theme. And that theme seemed to be power relationships—who's in control, who will control, who will be controlled, who has the influence, who has the clout.

"The other thing that seemed to be of significance was that the subject's view of life was one in which events are thrust upon people and they have to react to them. From these stories that he created to go with the pictures, it didn't seem to be that an individual is one who goes out and so much creates his own way and makes life what he wants it to be. Rather, it seemed to be that events are happening and you have to deal with them. You have to overcome them or surmount them.

"It's a reaction kind of orientation rather than an initiating kind of orientation. That in itself is not to be considered pathological, but that type of person might tend to see life as a series of problems which have to be overcome by himself, and therefore might be resentful and bitter. If it went to an extreme, this person would tend to see himself as victimized, perhaps, or perhaps somewhat of a martyr.

"This would put someone in a rather angry stance toward life, and, again, that's why I was surprised to see so little anger reflected in other areas.

"I mentioned also, in my 1970 report, that 'The subject appears to be quite concerned with the issue of the definition of manliness and the related topics of appropriate behaviors for men and women.' "

His analysis of MacDonald's Rorschach tests, the psychologist said, did not indicate "either schizophrenic or psychopathic thought processes operating." Rather, "the approach to situations that I picked up here was a mixture of both hysteroid and obsessive-compulsive features.

"By hysteroid I mean the tendency to exaggerate the emotional component. For example, what a person who is not hysterical might feel as sorrow, a hysteroid person would experience as grief. And what a non-hysterical person would experience as an agitation in life, a hysterical, or hy steroid-type, person would experience as a major trauma, a major problem to be dealt with.

"As to obsessive-compulsive features, I mean that the person is usually very, very careful to include in his thinking and in his planning all possible angles and all possible details of that particular situation, program, issue that he is dealing with.

"This type of person does not feel at ease saying, well, let's not worry about that.
Everything
needs to be worried about and everything needs to be accounted for. And this type of person gets ill at ease when all things are not accounted for.

"Now it's uncommon to have both of these characteristics presented by the same person, because, typically, we think of them as being opposing views. The hysterical type of person says, oh, what the heck, let's not worry about it at all, and the obsessive-compulsive type says, we've got to worry about every single detail.

"It is possible to have them both together, but when you do, usually the situation is that the person is under a great deal of stress, and his usual ways of handling situations are coming apart."

"Well," asked Victor Woerheide, "does that tend to indicate a pre-psychotic condition? An underlying paranoid condition?"

"Yes, the status when this is present is usually pre-psychotic. Specifically, a paranoid psychosis would most likely develop quickly if the stressful situation were not alleviated in some way."

"What is a paranoid-type psychosis?" Worheide asked.

"The paranoid-type psychosis takes one of two forms. In either case, the individual becomes convinced that his particular view of reality is absolutely the only correct view, and that anybody that disagrees with it is completely out of synch.

"The two forms it usually takes are either persecution or grandiosity. In the classical forms, the persecution type is where the person feels that everybody is out to get them, or kill them, or do them in. The grandiose type that you hear about most often is the person who believes he's Napoleon or Jesus Christ. These are the most dramatic forms, the extremes. There are all kinds of gradations in between.

"My feeling was with Captain MacDonald, if he were to become psychotic, it would probably be more of the grandiose type."

"Let me ask you this question," Victor Woerheide said. "Under a very stressful situation that might occur suddenly, could you have a psychotic phase of short duration and then, let's say, a return to the pre-psychotic condition?"

"I believe so. Yes."

"And let's say, with a paranoid phase of brief duration, would a person with a tendency toward the grandiose type of psychosis, a paranoid condition, be liable to commit an irrational act of violence?"

"Well, that is possible. You used the term
liable."
"I should have said
possible."

"It is possible, yes. Being of that state of mind does not preclude violence. It makes it possible. But, if I may comment on that, I don't think it's necessary to say that the person who committed these murders must have been either psychotic or psychopathic. I feel that's narrowing things too much."

"Please explain that."

"Well, it's possible for a person who normally lives a very well-contained and controlled life to reach a breaking point where he has an explosion—an explosion of rage. Now, you expect some types of people to be prone to that more than others. The data that I was able to look at in this particular case lends itself to that possibility.

"I refer back now to what I said about hysteroid features and obsessive-compulsive features. The hysteroid features—if a person had those, first of all, he tends to overreact, or dramatize situations.

"The obsessive-compulsive feature has one thing of particular interest to me, and that is that this type of person does not easily express anger. To my way of thinking, that's the main issue. This type of person would not usually exhibit anger by pounding his fist or something like that. He would not be threatening people, but he would still be angry.

"Now this hypothetical type of person would be likely to do a long, slow burn. But at some particular point that anger may just come out."

"Something triggers an explosion?"

"Yes. And you might then—with this type of person—you might then think about rage—if you could distinguish rage from anger—you might expect this person to be full of rage at some point."

"All right," Woerheide said, "now with respect to this person to whom these documents relate, can you think of some incident, occurrence, event, statement—some challenge that might trigger this explosion?"

"Well, it seems likely to me that one of the main themes or values in this person's life could be called manliness. It might be referred to as sexuality, but I think sexuality is a little too narrow. I would call it manliness, which would include sexual behavior, but would include more things, too, like status, power, influence, rank, prestige.

"It seems to me that if this person were to be seriously challenged in terms of his own concept of who he is and how other people see him, he is most vulnerable in this area of manliness. And that if he were pushed in this area—if he's going to explode—that's most likely, I think, where he would explode."

"Let's say, if a woman, his wife, and he have a quarrel, and she said, 'Oh, you're not a man,' or something more specific, could that do it?" Woerheide asked.

"If your question is, could that bring out a rage, I think yes."

"And could it bring out a rage that might be characterized as a temporary paranoid psychosis?"

"Well, I don't know, because that is an academic question, and you have many, many disagreements about that."

"All right. Let's put it in layman's terms. Under the circumstances that I have outlined, is the subject capable of a violent outburst?"

"I think so."

"Which he might very well regret a few minutes later?" "Yes, yes. I think this type of person might be swept up in a rage."

"Well, let's say he had just killed his wife. Do you think he would go so far as to kill his children to cover up the fact that he killed his wife? Do you think he could go to an extreme like that in a rage?"

"I
could only speculate about it, but
I
can imagine that a person like this might commit murder at a point of rage. And the rage might not be over in a period of just a minute. The rage may last for some time. If that occurs, then I'd say that maybe this is possible."

"The whole thing could basically be accomplished in, let's say, two or three minutes," Victor Woerheide said. "There's no problem about a period of rage extending that long, I take it?"

"No, I don't think so. Also, whether subsequent people—like the children in this case—would be murdered at the point of rage,
I
don't know, but I can imagine that the fear at that point might have been an overwhelming, extraordinary fear."

"Now in regard to this particular case," Woerheide asked, "and the paranoid-type psychosis, might this be expressed by, say, in regard to the MPs who came to the house and found an emergency situation, the CID agents who conducted the investigation, the medics who came and gave first aid, the hospital personnel who treated him—taking the attitude they're all bunglers, they're idiots, they're stupid, they are jerks, they didn't do things right, they're incompetent—"

"Yes, it could be conveyed that way. Also, in reviewing the informal psychological data—that is, how did the subject relate to the examiner and to the testing situation, I might say that I felt there were several instances where I had to question—is this man's reality testing amiss somehow? Is there some psychotic process operating here?

"Because his behavior was quite inappropriate, given the data
I
had. And even if some of the comments and the asides that the subject made during the examination were explained away and therefore did not look psychotic or paranoid, there still remains an attitude conveyed by the subject which I would call 'paranoid
-
like.'

"It is the conveying of a contempt, of a disparagement towards the examination, towards the examiner, towards the whole process that was going on at that time.

"In my experience, I have found that to occur usually with people who have a long-standing paranoid orientation toward life. Either-they feel they're being done in or persecuted a lot, or they feel that they are someone very special and have maybe special privileges and this sort of thing. More the grandiose type.

"I call it 'paranoid-like' because I had not enough data nor opportunity to pursue that further, but to me that's a legitimate question."

A grand juror then asked a question: "Does every individual have a certain amount of paranoia?"

"No," the psychologist said. "I disagree with that. There is a school of thought within psychology and psychiatry that would hold that everyone has a little bit of everything in them. But I don't hold to that myself. I think that that really makes our discipline somewhat ridiculous. Because to me it's on the order of saying, well, everything in the world is a shade of yellow, but if you're not yellow, that just means you're a different variety of yellow. I don't find that appealing at all."