Word: wertham
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...last week the council heard new evidence in a tense, six-hour session with famed German-born Fredric Wertham, for 20 years senior psychiatrist in New York City's hospital system. Author of The Show of Violence and The Circle of Guilt, he has a knack of appearing in such cases. Dr. Wertham listed 19 telltale signs of schizophrenia, found all of them in Chapin. One was lack of insight. "When I asked him what made him commit the murders, he answered: 'It's the way I am, I guess.' " Another item: "I had the feeling...
...Cancer of the Mind." Dr. Wertham made his most telling point when he banged his right hand repeatedly on the table, counting the 38 times that Chapin had stabbed the baby sitter and the 23 times he had stabbed the child. "Imagine doing this 38 times," he said. "He slaughtered this little girl, he stabbed her, then the little boy, and then went back and stabbed her again. He certainly acted like a madman that night." To Wertham there was no doubt that Chapin had suffered, at the time of the crime, from schizophrenia -"a malignant disease, the cancer...
...Wertham's say-so, three members of the council reversed themselves and the body voted, 6-3, for commutation. Concluded Wertham: to electrocute Chapin would have been no deterrent to others because "it was a crazy crime and no juvenile on the street associates himself with this...
...Philip's best-known projects is the Lafargue Clinic (TIME, Dec. 1, 1947), where Manhattan Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham and a staff of 25 give psychiatric help, at 25? a session, to anyone, black or white. The clinic began in 1946 as a collaboration between Father Bishop, Psychiatrist Wertham and Negro Author Richard (Native Son) Wright. Nowadays, an average of 60 people a week come to the clinic for help...
From his long experience in New York City, Dr. Wertham was convinced that eight out of ten psychoanalyses should not have been started, and that six out of ten were more harmful than helpful. "I believe . . . that the patients are often right, and so are their relatives," he concluded. "If this be treason, send me to St. Elizabeth...