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The conception that criminality no less than insanity is an expression of a diseased personality at the psychological level has been very slow of recognition, not only among the lay and legal public, but even among criminologists and psychiatrists. Still more difficult of appreciation was the conception recently brought forth that in many instances the criminal act instead of being willfully intentioned is in itself motivated by deeply seated unconscious conflicts of the individual criminal. Since these fundamental strivings are not always on the surface or easily elicited, a larger insight into the psychogenic nature of crime can only be gained through an intensive study of the actual clinical material observed that would regard each criminal in his individual aspects and criminality itself as a total life reaction which is expressed in a specific form of behavior in turn conditioned by certain action patterns determined and established for each individual. The cases to be here reported deal with such individuals and it will be seen that their antisocial acts were but the culmination of lifelong difficulties which drove them with the force of an instinct to commit the particular type of crime.
During the major part of 1914 and 1915, the aristocratic circles of N— were much startled as well as annoyed by a series of very obscene and vulgar letters which they had been receiving for some time past.1 These letters were all addressed to the most