The New Psychology in Detective Stories

The New Psychology in Detective Stories

All of the stories of Craig Kennedy published under the title of "The Silent Bullet" are based upon the various chapters of Professor Hugo MUnsterberg's delightful book called "On The Witness Stand:" It is hoped and believed by Professor Miinsterberg that these psychological experiments will yet become a practical means of the conviction of criminals.

They have not as yet obtained official sanction, but as Professor Mtinsterberg writes in a personal letter, "I myself did not expect such changes to come very soon, as on the one side there is still too much difference of opinion and of interpretation among the psychologists, and on the other side the whole problem of the experts before court is still in too confused a condition. An amateurish introduction of fancy experiments by lawyers who are dilettantists in psychology would certainly bring more confusion than help. All that has been gained is that evidently the lawyers and judges have become more conscious of the responsibilities which are involved wherever psychical functions are in play. I

also think that the use of the brutal methods of extorting confessions and so on has been diminished. "

A series of stories called "The Achievements of Luther Trant, " by Edwin Balmer and William MacHarg, details the experiments of a detective who follows even more closely the experiments described in Professor Miinsterberg's book. The Foreword of this series tells its own story:

"Except for its characters and plot, this book is not a work of the imagination.

"The methods which the fictitious Trant—onetime assistant in a psychological laboratory, now turned detective— here uses to solve the mysteries which present themselves to him, are real methods; the tests he employs are real tests.

"Though little known to the general public, they are precisely such as are being used daily in the psychological laboratories of the great universities—both in America and Europe —by means of which modern men of science are at last disclosing and defining the workings of that oldest of world mysteries—the human mind.

"The facts which Trant uses are in no way debatable facts; nor do they rest on evidence of untrained, imaginative observers. Innumerable experiments in our university laboratories have established beyond question that, for instance, the resistance of the human body to a weak electric current varies when the subject is frightened or undergoes emotion; and the consequent variation in the strength of the current depending directly upon the amount of emotional disturbance, can be registered by the galvanometer for all to see. The hand resting upon an automatograph will travel toward an object which excites emotion, however capable

its possessor may be of restraining all other evidence of what he feels.

"If these facts are not used as yet except in the academic experiments of the psychological laboratories and the very real and useful purpose to which they have been put in the diagnosis of insanities, it is not because they are incapable of wider use. The results of the 'new psychology' are coming everyday closer to an exact interpretation. The hour is close at hand when they will be used not merely in the determination of guilt and innocence, but to establish in the courts the credibility of witnesses and the impartiality of jurors, and by employers to ascertain the fitness and particular abilities of their employees.

"Luther Trant, therefore, nowhere in this book needs to invent or devise an experiment or an instrument for any of the results he here attains; he has merely to adopt a part of the tried and accepted experiments of modern, scientific psychology. He himself is a character of fiction; but his methods are matters of fact. "

A similar method is hinted at in "The Thinking Machine" stories. Mr. Futrelle says:

"Finally, with my hand on her pulse—which was normal—I told her as brutally as I could that her husband had been murdered. Her pulse jumped frightfully and as I told her the cause of death it wavered, weakened and she fainted. Now if she had known her husband were dead—even if she had killed him—a mere statement of his death would not have caused that pulse. "