Psychopathic Personality

A large, assertive man wearing thick-lensed spectacles took the witness stand last week in the perjury trial of Alger Hiss. He identified himself as Dr. Carl A. L. Binger; he had been awaiting this moment for about seven months.

Judge Samuel Kaufman had barred him from testifying at the first trial. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Murphy had objected to his testifying this time. "This is the first time in the history of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence that psychiatric testimony has been allowed to impeach a witness," Murphy pointed out. But Federal Judge Henry Goddard waved Murphy aside. Perhaps such testimony had never been admitted in a federal court but it had been in state courts, said the judge. So Dr. Binger was allowed to talk. He was there to attack the credibility of the Government's chief witness and Hiss's accuser, Whittaker Chambers.

Dr. Binger was a graduate of Harvard Medical School (1914), he testified, and the author of three books on psychiatry. He had sat through all but one half day of Chambers' seven days of testimony at the first trial, ceaselessly tapping his fingers, and through one day of Chambers' testimony at the second. He had read some of Chambers' undergraduate writing, some of his translations, book reviews and an essay, The Devil, in the Feb. 2, 1948 issue of LIFE. Now, fortified with this research and his psychiatric training but without ever having talked to Chambers (unnecessary, he said), Dr. Binger sat and listened while Hiss's attorney Claude B. Cross read, as part of one question, a selection of the most damning statements (true or false) made about Chambers during the trial. The question went on for 78 minutes. "Assuming these facts to be true," asked Cross, what did Dr. Binger think of Chambers' mental condition?

Catalogue of Characteristics. Well, then, said Dr. Binger, Chambers suffered from a "psychopathic personality," a recognized disease and duly entered, he believed, on page 601 of the Mental Hygiene Laws of New York. A victim of the disease, said Dr. Binger, "always plays a role . . . must act as if the situation were true though it is true only in his imagination."

"Would it be consistent for him to tell of trips, visits, etc., which never occurred?" Cross inquired.

"Anything is consistent," Dr. Binger agreed. "He must tell what needs to be true."

What was the basis for Dr. Binger's judgments? Dr. Binger settled down to explain. Chambers had stolen books from the library when he was a student at Columbia; stealing is one of the characteristic behaviors of a psychopath. In the beginning of the case Chambers had "withheld the significant truth" about his relationship with Alger Hiss--a behavior known to psychiatrists as "withholding truth." Other characteristics revealed to Dr. Binger by Chambers' career: "pathological lying," "insensitivity for the feelings of others," "bizarre behavior," "vagabondism."

Chambers had been an atheist, an Episcopalian, a Quaker: "inability to make stable attachments." He had touched Julian Wadleigh for $20 and Hiss for small sums which he had never repaid: "panhandling."

With the look of a large angry cat, Prosecutor Murphy rose for the crossexamination. He had thrown only one question at the witness before it was announced that a juror had been taken sick. Court was adjourned for a few days. Temporarily balked, Tom Murphy retired to his office to sharpen his teeth on a thick file labeled "Dr. Carl Binger."

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