The psychology of the criminal / by M. Hamblin Smith.

Maurice Hamblin Smith

Date:: [1922]

Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of the criminal / by M. Hamblin Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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of delinquency, any more than are an offender’s nationality or his religious faith. V. THE RISE OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW. From whence then, comes the light upon the stony road which we have to travel ? The answer is, From Psychology. This, the youngest of the sciences, was engaged for many years in the study of academic prob¬ lems, and was not much concerned with matters of ordinary life. Psychology was reproached with its aloofness from the affairs of the world. But the seclu¬ sion of this science was well. For in this seclusion it was studying its methods and perfecting its technique. We must not say learning its limitations. For in its own sphere it has no limitations. Human psychology may, from one point of view, be regarded as the science which investigates human conduct. No nobler study can be conceived. Conduct is the direct result of mental life. None of the causes of delinquency just enumerated can have any effect in this direction except in so far as they affect mental life. Psychology studies human con¬ duct, and the mental elements which produce human conduct, the motives of human conduct in the individual and in the mass. It studies these in the “ normal ”, the “ average ” individual, and then proceeds to the study of them in the pathological, the diseased. This leads directly to the view that the offender must be studied as an individual, and that he must be regarded, not as a constant, but as the most variable element in the problem. Psychology has now emerged from the gloom, and stands ready, with the other sciences, to assist mankind in its struggles. The value of the study of the “ con¬ scious ” mind has long been known. Various methods of mental testing, to be described in some detail in the next chapter, have proved to be of the greatest service