Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

“To an extent, yes.”

“You agree that she has a defect of personality, but as a matter of degree you don’t think that it brings her within the terms of the Act?”

“I certainly don’t consider that she comes within the terms of the Act.”

“But it is a matter of degree?”

“In the last resort, yes.”

“I suggest, doctor,” Benskin said, “that any opinion in this matter of degree, about defect of personality or of responsibility — in the sense we are discussing them in this case — any opinion is in the long run subjective?”

“I am not certain what you mean.”

“I think you should be. I mean, that of a number of persons as highly qualified as yourself; some might agree with your opinion — and a proportion, possibly a high proportion, certainly wouldn’t. Isn’t that true?”

“I have said several times,” said Gough, showing no flicker of irritation nor of being drawn, “that I can speak only within the limits of my professional judgment.”

“And many others, as highly qualified as yourself, would give a different professional judgment?”

“That would be for them to say.”

“You would grant that neither you nor anyone else really has any criterion to go on?”

“I agree that we have no exact scientific criterion. These matters wouldn’t cost us so much pain if we had.”

“That is, your expert opinion is just one opinion among many? You can’t claim any more for it than that?”

“I am giving my own professional judgment.”

“I put it to you, doctor,” said Benskin, flicking his gown round him as though it were a cape, “that your judgment shows a certain predisposition. That is, you are more unwilling than many of your colleagues to accept that people can suffer from diminished responsibility?”

“I do not know that you are entitled to say that. I repeat, I have given my professional judgment. I am responsible for that, and for no one else’s.”

“But cannot a professional judgment betray a certain predisposition, doctor? Or prejudice, as we might say in less lofty circles?”

The judge tapped his pen on the desk. “I think you would do better to avoid words which might suggest that you are imputing motives, Mr Benskin. You are asking Dr Gough about his general attitude or predisposition, and that is permissible.”

“I am obliged to your lordship.” Benskin gave a sharp smile. “Then I put it to you, doctor, that you have betrayed a certain predisposition? That you never considered it probable that Miss Ross — or Miss Pateman — were not fully responsible? And you ignored important signs which point the other way?”

“Will you be more specific?”

“Oh yes. I was intending to. You said in evidence that Miss Ross, and Miss Pateman also, had actually forgotten the act of killing. You said, I think these were your words, that it was genuine amnesia. To most of us that would appear to indicate — very sharply — an abnormal state of mind. Impaired responsibility maybe. But not to you, doctor?”

Gough said, in a tone not argumentative but sad: “I couldn’t regard it so.”

“Why not?”

“I think I also said, this condition is surprisingly common.”

“Surprisingly common?”

“That is, among people who have done a killing, it is common for them to have forgotten the act.”

“Does that signify nothing about them?”

Gough said: “It is specially common among people who have killed a child. In my experience, I have not once known any case when they could recall the act.”

Benskin had gone too far to draw back. Quietly he said: “Might not that suggest then a special state of mind, or lack of responsibility, in such cases?”

Gough answered: “I am afraid not. Not in all such cases. In my experience, that would not be true.”

Benskin was pertinacious. He knew he had lost a point, and was covering it up. He was cleverer than the doctor, quicker witted though not as rooted in his own convictions. I thought later, there were not many better counsel for this type of defence.

Hadn’t Doctor Gough glossed over, or explained away, all the other indications of abnormal personality? Their fantasy life: the gap between fantasy and action: Benskin was using Cornford’s analysis, jabbing the rival case straight at Gough, trying to make him deny it or get involved in psychiatrists’ disputes. Fairly soon Benskin won a point back. Gough hadn’t become rattled, he seemed to be a man singularly free from self-regard: but he wasn’t so good as Benskin, or as Cornford would have been, in seeing a chess move ahead. In replying to a question about their fantasy fugues, Gough let drop the observation: “But of course they are both intelligent.”

Benskin did not let an instant pass. His eyes flashed at his junior, and he said: “Ah, now we have it, perhaps. You are predisposed (there was a stress on the word) to believe that persons of adequate intelligence are automatically responsible for their actions?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“That is, defects of personality don’t really matter, abnormalities of mind don’t really matter, if people have a reasonable IQ?”

“I repeat, I did not say that.”

“Doctor, it was the implication of your remark.”

“In that case, I shall have to withdraw it.”

“I shall have to ask my lord to make a note of what you actually said. And this gets us in a little deeper, Doctor Gough. I suggested, and you didn’t like the suggestion, that you were predisposed to think that Miss Ross and Miss Pateman were fully responsible — perhaps because they were intelligent? No, never mind that. I am now asking you, what sort of persons, in what sort of circumstances, would you ever admit not to be fully responsible? Are there any?”

“I have examined some. And given testimony on their behalf.”

“And what they were like? Were they imbecile?”

“One or two were,” said Gough without hedging. “By no means all.”

“And the rest. They were grossly and obviously inferior mentally to the rest of us, were they?”

“Some were. Not all.”

“You will see the force of my questions, doctor. I am not misrepresenting your position — or predisposition — am I? You are extremely reluctant to admit that persons can be afflicted with a lack of responsibility. And can commit criminal actions in that state. You are reluctant to admit that, aren’t you?”

“I have given my testimony in favour of some unfortunate people.”

“When they are so pitiable that it doesn’t need a doctor to tell us so, isn’t that so? But you won’t give any weight, as your colleagues do, to a history like Miss Ross’ and Miss Pateman’s — which isn’t as obvious but is, I suggest to you, doctor, precisely as tragic?”

As he delivered that question, Benskin sat down with a shrug, so as to cut off Gough’s reply.

Emotions in the court, provoked and stimulated by Benskin, had risen higher. Mrs Pateman, who was sitting in the row in front, gave me a flickering, frightened glance, so like her daughter’s. Whispers were audible all round us, and I could see two of the jury muttering together. As soon as Wilson took his turn to cross-examine, the restlessness became more uncomfortable still: but it seemed to be directed against him, as though the women in the dock had — in the fatigued irritable afternoon — been forgotten. To most spectators, Wilson sounded histrionic, hectoring and false. When he demanded with an angry frown, a vein swelling in his forehead, whether the doctor had deliberately refrained from mentioning Miss Pateman’s adolescent breakdown, it rang out like a brassy, put-on performance. The truth was, he was sincere, too sincere. Benskin had enjoyed the dialectic and been in control of himself throughout: but Wilson wasn’t, he had become involved, in a fashion that actors would have recognised as living the part. Which almost invariably, by one of the perverse paradoxes, gave an effect of sublime artificiality upon the stage: as it did that day in court. Wilson was totally engaged with Kitty. He felt for her and with her. He believed that she had not had a chance, that all her life she had been fated. So he couldn’t repress his anger with Matthew Gough, and almost no one perceived that the anger was real. He even rebuked Gough, Gough of all people, for being flippant. It sounded the most stilted and bogus of rebukes: yet Wilson meant it.