The literature on this topic is very extensive, although inaccessible. Even in ancient times, there were mythological and demonological explanations for what is now considered mental illness.
One of the most famous and controversial studies that drew a parallel between genius and insanity was the book of the Italian psychiatrist and criminologist Cesare Lombroso, published in 1863, “Genius and Insanity” 1.
Psychopathology became part of psychiatry. Psychopathologists began applying knowledge from this area to art a long time ago. By the way, the words mania (in Greek), navi and mesugan (in Hebrew), nigrata (in Sanskrit) mean both madness and prophecy. Even ancient thinkers considered it possible to draw parallels between genius and insanity. Aristotle wrote: “It has been noticed that famous poets, politicians and artists were mad. Even today we see the same thing in Socrates, Empedocles, Plato, others, and most strongly in the poets. Mark of Syracuse wrote quite good poetry while he was a maniac, but, having recovered, he completely lost this ability.” Plato argues that delirium is not a disease at all, but, on the contrary, the greatest of the blessings given to us by the gods. Democritus directly said that he does not consider a person of sound mind to be a true poet. Pascal constantly insisted that the greatest genius borders on complete madness, and subsequently proved this by his own example.
2. The essence of Cesare Lombroso's ideas
Epigraph to the book:
“Having established such a close relationship between people of genius and madmen, nature seemed to want to point out to us our duty to treat with condescension the greatest of human disasters - madness - and at the same time give us a warning so that we are not too carried away by the brilliant signs of geniuses, many of them which not only do not rise to the transcendental spheres, but, like sparkling meteors, having flared up once, fall very low and drown in a mass of delusions.”
2.1. Differences between talent and genius
The dependence of genius on pathological changes can explain a curious feature of genius compared to talent: it is something unconscious and manifests itself completely unexpectedly” (13). A talented person acts completely deliberately; he knows how and why he came to a certain theory, whereas this is completely unknown to a genius” (13).
2.2. Basic parallels between geniuses and madmen
Lombroso sees much in common between them in physiology, strange behavior, mania, unconscious actions, the same reaction to climatic and geographical factors, to some differences in the attitudes of subjects of different ethnic groups, etc. etc.
We will present his research on the facts, and from many hundreds of examples we will focus only on the most famous names.
Buffon, immersed in his thoughts, once climbed the bell tower and descended from there by rope completely unconsciously, as if in a fit of somnambulism.”
Many geniuses are characterized by poor muscular and sexual activity, characteristic of all crazy people.“Michelangelo constantly insisted that his art replaced his wife. Goethe, Heine, Byron, Cellini, Napoleon, Newton, although they did not say this, by their actions they proved something even worse.” Heine wrote that it was not genius at all, but illness (of the spinal cord) that forced him to write poetry to assuage his suffering.
Goethe says that he composed many of his songs while in a state of somnambulism. In a dream, Voltaire conceived one of the songs of the Henriade, and Newton and Cardano solved their mathematical problems in their sleep. There is a saying about Leibniz that he thought only in a horizontal position.
Many of the brilliant people abused alcohol. Alexander the Great, Socrates, Seneca, Alcibiades, Cato, Avicenna, Musset, Kleist, Tasso, Handel, Gluck - all suffered from heavy drinking and most of them died from drunkenness due to delirium tremens.
And how early and strongly the passions of brilliant people manifest themselves! The beauty and love of Fornarina served as a source of inspiration for Raphael not only in painting, but also in poetry. Dante and Aliferi were in love at the age of 9, Russo at 11, Kavron and Byron at 8. The latter suffered from convulsions when he learned that the girl he loved was getting married. The painter Francia died of admiration after seeing Raphael's painting. Archimedes, delighted with the solution to the problem, ran out into the street dressed as Adam, shouting “Eureka1.” Boileau and Chateaubriand could not be indifferent to hearing praise from anyone, even their shoemaker.
Morbid impressionability also gives rise to excessive vanity and concentration on oneself and one’s thoughts.
“Poets are the most vain of people,” Heine wrote, meaning himself.
The poet Lucius did not get up from his seat when Julius Caesar appeared, because in poetry he considered himself superior to him. Schopenhauer became furious and refused to pay bills if his last name was spelled with two “Ps.” Sebuya, an Arabic grammarian, died of grief because Harun al-Rapshid did not agree with his opinion regarding some grammatical rule. Great geniuses sometimes cannot grasp concepts that are accessible to the most ordinary people, and at the same time they express such bold ideas that seem ridiculous to most. A genius has the ability to guess what is not fully known to him: for example, Goethe described Italy in detail without having yet seen it. They often predict death (let us remember how M. Voloshin and K. Balmont predicted Tsar Nicholas’s death on the scaffold, how philosophers Cardano, Rousseau and Haller, poets N. Rubtsov, I. Brodsky, film director A. Tarkovsky, etc. predicted their own death). Cellini, Goethe, Hobbes (he immediately began to see ghosts in a dark room) suffered from hallucinations, Mendelssohn suffered from melancholy, Van Gogh thought he was possessed by a demon, Gounod, Batyushkov, Hölderlin went crazy (he killed himself in a fit of melancholy in 1835) ,Salieri, Edgar Poe. Mozart was convinced that he would definitely be poisoned. Musset, Gogol, Garshin. Rossini suffered from persecution mania. At the age of 46, Schumann lost his mind: he was pursued by talking tables with omniscience. The founder of positivism, Auguste Comte, was treated for mental illness for 10 years, and when he felt better, for no reason he drove away his wife, who, with her tender care, practically saved his life. Before his death, the materialist Comte declared himself an apostle and minister of religion. Tasso once grabbed a knife and, under the influence of hallucinations, rushed at the servant. Already in his youth, Swift predicted his future insanity: while walking one day with Jung, he saw an elm tree, on the top of which there was almost no foliage, and said: “I will begin to die in the same way from the head.” In 1745 he died in complete mental disorder. Newton also suffered from a real mental disorder. The reader will find the most accurate description of the mental anguish of a lipemaniac in the works of Rousseau, especially the latter: “Confession”, “Dialogues” and “Walks of a Lonely Dreamer”. Wherever he was, he suffered from spy mania. The whole life of the great poet Lenau, who died in a mental hospital, has been a mixture of genius and madness since early childhood. Hoffmann suffered from heavy drinking, persecution delusions and hallucinations. Schopenhauer also suffered from persecution mania.
All damaged geniuses have their own special style - passionate, vibrant, colorful; this is confirmed by their own admissions that, after the end of the ecstasy, all of them are incapable not only of composing, but even of thinking. The great Newton, who weighed all the worlds, was not in a state of insanity when he decided to compose interpretations of the Apocalypse?
He considered the most obvious sign of abnormality of the geniuses considered by Lombroso to be an extremely exaggerated manifestation of two intermittent states - ecstasy and atony, excitement or decline of mental strength.
Lombroso notes that the opinion that mental illness is always accompanied by a weakening of mental characteristics is erroneous. In fact, mental abilities, on the contrary, often acquire extraordinary vivacity in crazy people and develop precisely during illness.
Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) - an outstanding Italian psychiatrist, criminologist and criminologist. Born on November 6, 1835 in Verona, then ruled by Austria. In 1858 he received the degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences from the University of Pavia. In 1859-1865 participated as a military doctor in the Italian War of Independence. In 1867 he was appointed professor at the mental health clinic in Pavia, in 1871 he was appointed head of the neurological institution in Pesaro, and in 1876 he was appointed professor of forensic medicine at the University of Turin.
Psychiatrists consider C. Lombroso the forerunner of several scientific schools, in particular the morphological theory of temperament. His book Genius and Madness is a classic of psychiatry. Criminologists see C. Lombroso as one of the creators of the theory of forensic identification. None other than Lombroso, in his book “The Criminal Man,” outlined the first experience of the practical application of the psychophysiological method of “lie detection” (using a device - the prototype of the polygraph) to identify persons who have committed crimes.
In criminology, C. Lombroso is known for being the founder of the anthropological school. In his work “The Criminal Man” (1876), he hypothesized that a criminal can be identified by external physical signs, reduced sensitivity of the senses and pain sensitivity. Lombroso wrote: “Both epileptics and criminals are characterized by a desire for vagrancy, shamelessness, laziness, boasting of a crime, graphomania, slang, tattoos, pretense, weak character, momentary irritability, delusions of grandeur, rapid changes of mood and feelings, cowardice, a tendency to contradictions, exaggeration, morbid irritability, bad temper, whimsicality. And I myself observed that during a thunderstorm, when epileptics have more frequent seizures, prisoners in prison also become more dangerous: they tear their clothes, break furniture, and beat servants.” Thus, the criminal is in special pathological conditions, determined in most cases by different processes or different special conditions. Impressed by his discovery, C. Lombroso began to study the anthropological characteristics of a large array of criminals. Lombroso studied 26,886 criminals; his control group was 25,447 good citizens. Based on the results obtained, C. Lombroso found out that a criminal is a unique anthropological type who commits crimes due to certain properties and characteristics of his physical build. “The criminal,” wrote Lombroso, “is a special creature, different from other people. This is a unique anthropological type that is driven to crime due to the multiple properties and characteristics of its organization. Therefore, crime in human society is as natural as in the entire organic world. Plants that kill and eat insects also commit crimes. Animals deceive, steal, rob and rob, kill and devour each other. Some animals are characterized by bloodthirstiness, others by covetousness.”
Lombroso's main idea is that the criminal is a special natural type, more sick than guilty. Criminals are not made, but born. This is a kind of two-legged predator, which, like a tiger, makes no sense in reproaching it for bloodthirstiness. Criminals are characterized by special anatomical, physiological and psychological properties that make them, as it were, fatally doomed from birth to commit a crime. To anatomo-physiol. signs of the so-called Lombroso’s “born criminal” includes: irregular, ugly shape of the skull, bifurcation of the frontal bone, slight jagged edges of the cranial bones, facial asymmetry, irregular brain structure, dull susceptibility to pain and others.
The criminal is also characterized by such pathological personality traits as: highly developed vanity, cynicism, lack of a sense of guilt, the ability to repent and remorse, aggressiveness, vindictiveness, a tendency to cruelty and violence, to exaltation and demonstrative forms of behavior, a tendency to highlight the characteristics of a special community (tattoos, speech slang, etc.)
Innate crime was first explained by atavism: the criminal was understood as a savage who could not adapt to the rules and norms of a civilized community. Later it was understood as a form of “moral insanity” and then as a form of epilepsy.
In addition, Lombroso creates a special typology - each type of criminal corresponds only to its characteristic features.
The killers. In the type of killer, the anatomical features of the criminal are clearly visible, in particular, a very sharp frontal sinus, very voluminous cheekbones, huge eye orbits, and a protruding quadrangular chin. These most dangerous criminals have a predominant curvature of the head, the width of the head is greater than its height, the face is narrow (the back semicircle of the head is more developed than the front), most often their hair is black, curly, the beard is sparse, there is often a goiter and short hands. Characteristic features of killers also include a cold and motionless (glassy) gaze, bloodshot eyes, a downturned (eagle) nose, overly large or, on the contrary, too small earlobes, and thin lips.
The thieves. Thieves have long heads, black hair and a sparse beard, and their mental development is higher than that of other criminals, with the exception of swindlers. Thieves predominantly have a straight nose, often concave, upturned at the base, short, wide, flattened and in many cases deflected to the side. Eyes and hands are mobile (the thief avoids meeting the interlocutor with direct gaze - shifting eyes).
Rapists. Rapists have bulging eyes, a tender face, huge lips and eyelashes, flattened noses, moderately sized, tilted to the side, most of them are lean and rickety blonde.
Scammers. Fraudsters often have a good-natured appearance, their face is pale, their eyes are small and stern, their nose is crooked, and their head is bald. Lombroso was also able to identify the features of the handwriting of various types of criminals. The handwriting of murderers, robbers and robbers is distinguished by elongated letters, curvilinearity and definite features at the end of letters. Thieves' handwriting is characterized by extended letters, without sharp outlines or curvilinear endings.
The atomistic teaching of Ch. Lombroso was of great importance in the search for ways and means of diagnosing the personality of a criminal, the development of psychology and pathopsychology of a criminogenic personality, in the formation of the foundations of criminology and forensic psychology, and in the search for appropriate measures to influence the personality of a criminal. Many of the results of Lombroso's empirical research have not lost their relevance (experimental data on the genetics of behavior at the end of the 20th century demonstrated that genetic factors are indeed the cause of some types of aggressive, including criminal, behavior). And, most importantly, they are not reduced to primitive schemes for the biological explanation of criminal behavior. C. Lombroso's conclusions are always multivariate and imbued with a constant desire to identify the real mutual influence of biological and social factors on each other in antisocial behavior.
For many people, the portrait of a potential maniac and brutal killer is very stereotypical. And it was formed, as a rule, not without the influence of cinema. Crime films and thrillers, largely thanks to the brilliant acting of the actors, already in childhood plant this very external stereotype in our subconscious
"Gentlemen of Fortune" Associate Professor (E. Leonov)
"Heart of a Dog" Polygraph Polgirafovich Sharikov (V. Tolokonnikov)
Or maybe the emergence of these stereotypes is more scientifically explained by the so-called well-known to many. Cesare Lombroso's theory?
In the nineteenth century, this psychiatrist raised the ears of the entire European society. He insisted that maniacs are already born. A child is born, and he is already a future bandit, because he has the genes of a bandit.
According to Lombroso, even very high-quality education will not correct what nature has laid in the child. He will definitely be a bandit if he has these same genes. The psychiatrist considered such people to be underdeveloped and suggested identifying them in childhood and immediately isolating them from the society of normal people. How?!
Either everyone is not a separate uninhabited island, or even deprive such people of their lives. Absurd?! Lombroso did not think so. He assured that by his appearance, and a person with villain genes has a special appearance, he can easily identify a bandit. What should a bandit look like according to psychiatrist Lombroso?! A narrow forehead, a look from under furrowed eyebrows - all this betrays the criminal.
(Lyonka Panteleev)
Why was Lobroso so fascinated by the topic of the criminal’s appearance?! To answer this question, let us turn to the youth of the future psychiatrist. Lombroso graduated from several prestigious European universities.
And at the age of nineteen he began to publish his first articles. A little later, Lombroso moved from writing scientific articles to practice: he began working as a military surgeon and was a participant in an anti-crime campaign.
It was then that he became interested in what the criminal looked like. He invented the craniograph device and used it to measure the shape of the skull and parts of the face. At the same time, he identified four types of criminals: swindlers, murderers, rapists and thieves. And for each type he made a description of the appearance.
Lomroso then worked as the head of a psychiatric hospital and head of the department of psychiatry at a famous university. It was Lombroso who invented the now world-famous lie detector. It was he who suggested judging how truthfully a person answers by pressure surges.
Lombrose caused a wild stir around his theory about the appearance of the criminal, about his genes. There was a lot of criticism and people disagreed with him. Critics said that the psychiatrist pays too much attention to a person’s appearance and does not take into account the social component at all. True, in his old age he made some amendments to his theory and said that, after all, only forty percent of criminals are completely incorrigible, and sixty percent are amenable to re-education.
The methods of the Jew Lombroso - in particular, measurements of the human skull - were adopted by the Nazis, who tried to adapt the postulates of their criminal theory of racial exclusivity to a scientific basis. And although Lombroso himself died long before this, this fact nevertheless formed a noticeable stain on his theory.
Lombroso Cesare(Cesare Lombroso) (1835 - 1909) - famous Italian forensic psychiatrist and criminologist. He created a new criminal anthropological direction in the science of criminal law. He made a great contribution to the development of legal psychology.
Cesare Lombroso was born on November 6, 1835 in Verona, into a wealthy Jewish family. Coming from a family of wealthy landowners, Lombroso studied Semitic and Chinese languages in his youth. However, a quiet career did not work out. Material deprivation, imprisonment in a fortress on suspicion of conspiracy, participation in hostilities in 1859-1860. awakened in the young man an interest in a completely different area - he became interested in psychiatry. At the age of 19, while studying at the medical faculty of the University of Pavia, Lombroso published his first articles on psychiatry - on the problem of cretinism, which attracted the attention of specialists. Independently mastered such disciplines as ethnolinguistics and social hygiene. In 1862, he was already a professor of mental illness, then director of the clinic for mental illness, professor of legal psychiatry and criminal anthropology. In 1896, Lombroso received the chair of psychiatry at the University of Turin. The philosophy of positivism, which asserted the priority of scientific knowledge obtained experimentally, played a decisive role in the intellectual formation of Lombroso.
Lombroso is the founder of the anthropological trend in criminology and criminal law. The main features of this direction boil down to the following: the method of natural science - experience and observation - should be introduced into criminology, and the personality of the criminal should become the center of study.
He undertook his first anthropometric studies in the early 1860s, when he was a military doctor and took part in a campaign to combat banditry in the southern regions of Italy. The extensive statistical material collected by Lombroso served as an important contribution to the development of social hygiene, criminal anthropology, and, in the near future, the sociology of crime. As a result of generalizing the obtained empirical data, Lombroso concluded that the backward socio-economic conditions of life in Southern Italy led to the reproduction there of an anatomically and mentally abnormal type of people, an anthropological variety, which found its expression in a criminal personality - a “criminal man.” Such an anomaly was identified through anthropometric and psychiatric examination, which opened up opportunities for predictive assessments of the dynamics of crime development. These conceptual approaches of Lombroso posed the problem of the responsibility of society, which reproduced crime, thereby challenging the positions of official criminology, which placed responsibility solely on the person who broke the law.
Cesare Lombroso was one of the first to undertake a systematic study of criminals, relying on strictly recorded anthropometric data, which he determined using a “craniograph” - a device for measuring the size of parts of the face and head. He published the results in the book “Anthropometry of 400 Offenders” (1872).
He belongs to the theory of the so-called “born criminal,” according to which criminals are not made, but rather born. Lombroso declared crime to be a natural phenomenon, like birth or death. Comparing the anthropometric data of criminals with careful comparative studies of their pathological anatomy, physiology and psychology, Lombroso put forward the thesis about the criminal as a special anthropological type, which he then developed into a complete theory (“Criminal Man”, 1876). He came to the conclusion that the criminal is a degenerate who has lagged behind the development of humanity in his development. He cannot inhibit his criminal behavior, so the best strategy for society in dealing with such a “born criminal” is to get rid of him by depriving him of his freedom or life.
According to Lombroso, the “criminal type” is distinguished by a number of innate features of an atavistic nature, indicating a developmental delay and criminal inclinations. The scientist developed a system of physical signs (“stigmata”) and mental traits of this type, which, in his opinion, characterize a person endowed with criminal tendencies from birth. The scientist considered the main signs of such a personality to be a flattened nose, a low forehead, large jaws, a sullen gaze, etc., characteristic, in his opinion, of “primitive man and animals.” The presence of these signs makes it possible to identify a potential criminal before he commits a crime. In view of this, Lombroso advocated the inclusion of doctors, anthropologists and sociologists as judges and demanded that the question of guilt be replaced by the question of social harmfulness.
Now such measurements are carried out in most countries of the world, and not only for the army and special services: knowledge of anthropometry is necessary, for example, for studying labor markets and designing purely civilian objects and things.
As for the “look from under his brows,” Cesare Lombroso was mistaken in considering it to be characteristic mainly of criminals and degenerates. In fact, this is one of the most ancient and simple facial reactions, equally accessible to many people in the appropriate environment.
The main drawback of Lombroso's theory was that it ignored the social factors of crime.
The rapid and widespread dissemination of Lombroso's theory and especially the extreme conclusions that were often drawn from it provoked sharp and demonstrative criticism. Lombroso had to soften his position. In later works, he classifies only 40% of criminals as innate anthropological types, whom he calls “savages living in a civilized society.” Lombroso recognizes the important role of non-hereditary - psychopathological and sociological causes of crime. This gave grounds to call Lombroso's theory biosociological.
At the end of the 19th century. At international congresses on criminal anthropology, the theory of anthropological crime was generally recognized as erroneous. Lombroso's opponents were based on the fact that crime is a conditional legal concept that changes its content depending on conditions, place and time.
Despite this, Lombroso's ideas laid the foundation for various biosocial theories in criminology, which have partially found application in criminological practice. They influenced the creation of the morphological theory of temperament by E. Kretschmer.
Lombroso also owns the work “Genius and Madness” (1895). In it, the scientist put forward the thesis that genius corresponds to abnormal brain activity bordering on epileptoid psychosis. The author wrote that the similarity between brilliant people and crazy people in physiological terms is simply amazing. They react equally to atmospheric phenomena, and race and heredity have the same effect on their birth. Many geniuses suffered from insanity: Ampère, Comte, Schumann, Tasso, Cardano, Swift, Newton, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, a whole number of artists and painters. On the other hand, among madmen one can cite many examples of geniuses, poets, humorists, etc. In the appendix to his book, Lombroso gave examples of literary works by madmen, graphomaniacs, criminals, and also described skull anomalies in great people.
The most valuable part of Lombroso's scientific heritage consists of studies on the sociology of political crime - Political crime and revolution (Il delitto politico e le rivoluzioni, 1890), Anarchists. Criminal-psychological and sociological essay (Gli anarchici. Studio di psicologia e sociologia criminale, 1895). The phenomenon of political crime, widespread in Italy at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. in the form of anarchist terrorism, Lombroso explored from the point of view of the individual consciousness of a political criminal - an individual sacrificially devoted to the utopian ideal of social justice. Lombroso convincingly explained the nature of this social behavior, driven by ideas of political vandalism, by the crisis of parliamentary democracy in Italy, the corruption of politicians, and the devaluation of the ideals of social justice.
Other famous works of Lombroso were books about love among the mentally ill (“Love among the Insane”) and about crime among women (“The Female Criminal and the Prostitute”).
Cesare Lombroso was the first in the world to use the achievements of physiology to detect deception. In the 1980s, he began measuring the pulse and blood pressure of suspects while they were being questioned by investigators. He claimed that he could easily tell when suspects were lying. The results of his research indicated that monitoring a person’s physiological reactions can lead not only to the identification of information he is hiding, but also, no less important, help establish the innocence of the suspect.
In 1895, Lombroso first published the results of the use of primitive laboratory instruments in the interrogation of criminals. In one of the cases he described, a criminologist examining a murder suspect using a “plethysmograph” recorded minor changes in his pulse while he was doing mathematical calculations in his head, and found “no sudden changes” in him when the suspect was presented with images of wounded people. children, including a photograph of a murdered girl. Lombroso concluded that the suspect was not involved in the murder, and the results of the investigation convincingly proved the criminologist right. The described case was, apparently, the first example of the use of a “lie detector” recorded in the literature, which resulted in an acquittal. This meant that monitoring a person’s physiological reactions could lead not only to revealing the information he was hiding, but - just as important - to help establish the innocence of the suspect.
Lombroso's criminological ideas gained wide popularity in Russia. They are represented by numerous both lifetime and posthumous Russian editions of his scientific works. In 1897, Lombroso, who participated in the congress of Russian doctors, received an enthusiastic reception in Russia. In his memoirs dedicated to the Russian episode of his biography, Lombroso reflected a sharply negative vision of the social structure of Russia, typical of contemporary Italian leftists, which he severely condemned for police brutality (“suppression of thought, conscience and personal character”) and authoritarian methods of exercising power.
During the Soviet period, the term “Lombrosianism” was widely used to designate the anthropological school of criminal law - one of the directions in the bourgeois theory of law (according to the criteria of the class approach). Lombroso's doctrine of the born criminal was particularly criticized. According to Soviet lawyers, it contradicted the principle of legality in the fight against crime and had an anti-people and reactionary orientation, since it condemned the revolutionary actions of the exploited masses. With such a deliberately biased, ideological approach, Lombroso’s merits in studying the root causes of extremist, protest forms of social struggle, which were expressed in political terrorism, and, more generally, in political crime, were ignored.
Despite fair criticism and the fallacy of some provisions of his theory, Cesare Lombroso is an outstanding scientist who became one of the pioneers of introducing objective methods into legal science. His works played an important role in the development of criminology and legal psychology.
Main works in the field of legal psychology (in Russian):
Anarchists. Criminal-psychological and sociological essay, 1895;
Female Criminal and Prostitute, 1902;
Political crime and revolution in relation to law, criminal anthropology and state science, 1906;
Crime. The latest advances in the science of the criminal, 1892;
Criminal Man, Studied on the Basis of Anthropology, Forensic Science, and Prison Science, 1876;
Psychology of evidence in legal proceedings, 1905.
November 6, 1835 was born in Italy Cesare Lombroso – famous psychiatrist and forefather of the anthropological trend in criminology and criminal law. The main idea of this direction was to prove the existence of born criminals.
“Study the personality of the criminal...Then you will understand that crime is not a random phenomenon, but a completely natural act.” - Cesare Lombroso
Lombroso argued that criminals are not made, but rather born. The psychiatrist was convinced that there was a special connection between a person’s physique and his character. And in order to understand this connection, which will help expose the criminal, he only needs a caliper and a ruler. These devices are needed in order to take measurements of certain parts of the human body and, after analyzing the measurements obtained, to reveal all the secrets that physiology hides.
One of the most significant works for medicine was the study of glycolysis process .
In order to declare his theory of identifying criminals, the doctor had to study thousands of thieves and murderers. When it was impossible to study living criminals, Lombroso studied their skulls. He was searching for objective morphological criteria. The collection of criminals he collected became a terrifying reality for many.
| Lombroso identified four types of criminals: murderer, thief, rapist and swindler. And for each type he made a description of the appearance. |
| Appearance of a typical rapist |
| Large bulging eyes, plump lips, long eyelashes, a flattened and crooked nose. Most often they are lean and rickety blonde, sometimes hunchbacked. |
| Appearance of a typical thief |
| An irregular small skull, an elongated head, a straight nose (often turned up at the base), a running or, conversely, tenacious gaze, black hair and a sparse beard. |
| Appearance of a typical killer |
| Large skull, short head (width greater than height), sharp frontal sinus, voluminous cheekbones, long nose (sometimes curved down), square jaws, huge eye orbits, protruding quadrangular chin, fixed glassy gaze, thin lips, well-developed fangs. The most dangerous killers most often have black, curly hair, a sparse beard, short hands, excessively large or, on the contrary, too small earlobes. |
| Appearance of a typical scammer |
| The face is pale, the eyes are small and stern, the nose is crooked, the head is bald. In general, the appearance of scammers is quite good-natured. |
This theory does not exactly apply to women, because it is not physiological deformity that allows identifying criminals among women, as in men, but psychological deformity, which includes:
- Tendency to antisocial behavior.
- Lack of maternal feelings.
- “Promiscuous” sex life, etc.
It is worth noting that thanks to Cesare Lombroso also appeared the first “prototype” of a lie detector. The basis for detecting lies was measuring a person's blood pressure while he was answering questions. Pressure surges indicated false answers.
The famous Italian forensic psychiatrist and criminologist of the 19th century, Cesare Lombroso, called for types with “non-photogenic” faces to be executed or isolated: they say, a person’s criminal predilections are written on their faces. His theories have long been recognized as erroneous, but many of his developments are still valuable today. For example, a method for recording human anthropological data.
Mikhail Vinogradov: psychics in the service of the special services
Lombroso, born in 1836 in Verona, went down in history as one of the most famous criminologists of the century before last - he created the criminal anthropological direction in the science of criminal law. It is believed that he made a great contribution to the development of legal psychology. True, there is little practical benefit from his research today: often the most terrible maniacal criminals were no scarier or more beautiful than average citizens.
At the age of 19, while studying at the medical faculty of the University of Pavia, Lombroso published his first articles on psychiatry - on the problem of cretinism, which attracted the attention of specialists. He independently mastered such disciplines as ethnolinguistics and social hygiene.
In 1862, he was already a professor of mental illness, then director of the clinic for mental illness, professor of legal psychiatry and criminal anthropology. In 1896, Lombroso received the chair of psychiatry at the University of Turin.
While a military doctor back in the early 1860s, Lombroso had the opportunity to take part in campaigns to combat banditry in the south of the country - then he undertook his first research on anthropometry. Summarizing them, he came to the conclusion that the hardships of life in poor Southern Italy led to the appearance of an “abnormal” type of people with various anatomical and mental abnormalities. He classified them as a special anthropological variety - “criminal man.”
Cesare Lombroso strictly recorded the anthropometric data of lawbreakers, using a special device - a craniograph, with which he measured the size of parts of the face and head. He published his findings in the book “Anthropometry of 400 Offenders,” which became something of a textbook for many detectives of that time.
According to Lombroso's theory of the “born criminal,” criminals are not made, but rather born: criminals are degenerates. Therefore, it is impossible to re-educate them; it is better to preventively deprive them of freedom or even life.
How to determine criminal tendencies by appearance? This is served by distinctive signs - “stigmata”: a set of psychological and physical characteristics. For example, a flat nose, low forehead, massive jaws - all of them, from the scientist’s point of view, are characteristic of “primitive man and animals.”
However, Lombroso also had critics. Many of his contemporaries have already noted that his theory overlooks the social factors of crime. Therefore, at the end of the 19th century, the theory of anthropological crime was recognized as generally erroneous.
It is worth mentioning the curious work of Lombroso - “Genius and Madness” (1895). In it, the scientist put forward the thesis that genius is the result of abnormal brain activity on the verge of epileptoid psychosis. He wrote that the similarity between brilliant people and crazy people in physiological terms is simply amazing. Well, many agreed with him then - they still agree now: after all, often people of genius are truly “not of this world.”
By the way, it was Lombroso who was the first in the world to use knowledge of physiology to detect deception, that is, he used a kind of lie detector. In 1895, he first published the results of using primitive laboratory instruments to interrogate criminals.
Cesare Lombroso died on October 19, 1909 in Turin, despite all his mistakes and delusions, remaining in the memory of posterity as an outstanding scientist, one of the pioneers of introducing objective methods into legal science. His works played an important role in the development of criminology and legal psychology.
Cesare Lombroso's contribution to criminology was told to Pravda.Ru by a psychiatrist-criminologist, Doctor of Medical Sciences, professor of psychiatry, creator and director of the Center for Legal and Psychological Assistance in Extreme Situations Mikhail ViktorovichVinogradov:
“Cesare Lombroso laid the foundation of modern psychiatric criminology. But at that time he did not have the opportunity to conduct a clear mathematical analysis of the signs that he identified. With what is written on a person’s face, in gestures, in gait, facial expressions, all this reflects its essence. But Lombroso shifted the concepts of man in a special way. After all, man is like a dual being: social and biological.