In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

American Imago 62.3 (2005) 365-371



[Access article in PDF]

Why Freud Turned Down $25,000:

Mental Health Professionals in the Witness Box

Suite 6
4 Marty's Yard
17 Hampstead High St.
London NW3 1QW
England

I hope that this month readers will indulge my penchant for history, and permit me to relate a tale from the 1920s. Though the events I shall describe occurred nearly a century ago, I suspect that their legacy has remained with us in certain respects.

* * *

On May 21, 1924, two wealthy, academically precocious Jewish-American teenagers attempted to commit the "perfect crime." Nathan Leopold, Jr. (1904–1971), aged nineteen, son of multi-millionaire box manufacturer Nathan F. Leopold, Sr., and Richard Loeb (1905–1936), aged eighteen, son of Albert H. Loeb, a multi-millionaire Vice-President of Sears, Roebuck and Company, kidnapped Robert "Bobby" Franks, a boy of fourteen years of age, as he journeyed home from the Harvard School for Boys in the exclusive Hyde Park district of Chicago, Illinois. The following morning, Bobby Franks's father, Jacob Franks, a Chicago property tycoon, received a ransom letter by special delivery, demanding $10,000 in unmarked twenty-dollar bills and fifty-dollar bills; but before Franks could respond, the police had already located the naked body of Bobby Franks, soaked in blood, its skull bludgeoned by a chisel blow, abandoned in a marsh on the South Side of Chicago.

Although intent on committing the perfect crime, Nathan Leopold had nevertheless dropped his specially manufactured [End Page 365] horn-rimmed spectacles at the scene of the crime, a symptomatic gesture perhaps indicative of the wish to be apprehended and treated. After consulting with Almer Coe and Company, the oculist who made the eyeglasses, the Cook County police eventually captured the killers. Both scions of wealthy Jewish families whose joint estimated wealth amounted to fifteen million dollars, Leopold and Loeb excited tremendous anti-Semitic bloodlust among the American populace, who clamored for the execution of the two young culprits. Both fiercely intelligent, Loeb had become the youngest person ever to graduate from the University of Michigan, while Leopold held a similar distinction as the youngest-ever baccalaureate from the University of Chicago, graduating with Phi Beta Kappa honors, and he had already commenced his postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago Law School. Leopold, in particular, shone as an academic, having studied fourteen languages, both classical and modern, as well as philosophy, enjoying a particular penchant for the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. He also delivered regular addresses to ornithological organizations based on his encyclopedic knowledge of birds, as well as being an "advanced botanist." The press had a field day with such unusual and colorful brainy murderers.

In desperation, the family of Richard "Dickie" Loeb approached the famous lawyer, Clarence Seward Darrow (1857–1938), then sixty-seven years of age, suffering from neuralgia and rheumatism, in the hope that he would represent the defendants and save them from a death sentence by hanging. Though physically weary, and wary of the tide of public opinion against Leopold and Loeb, Darrow agreed to handle the case; and, of course, he proved to be the perfect lawyer to represent the boys. A vocal opponent of capital punishment, Darrow had only recently published a pioneering and prescient book, Crime: Its Cause and Treatment (1922), a hitherto unappreciated classic that anticipates many of the philosophical tenets of contemporary psychoanalytic forensic psychotherapy by insisting on compassionate treatment for offenders and recognizing that criminals will have been victims of their own histories. In his feisty polemic, Darrow spoke about the causal role of poverty and deprivation in the genesis of [End Page 366] criminal behavior. He also argued strenuously for prison reform and he believed passionately that the general public must take responsibility for criminals. As a trial lawyer, Darrow endeavored to introduce the psychological-motivational dimension into the courtroom itself.

Expert psychiatric testimony would be needed before the commencement of the trial in July 1924, and Darrow sought out his preferred witnesses, as did other progressive individuals who attempted...

pdf

Share