TRIALS: Some People Can Taste It

All the world is queer but me and thee, dear; and sometimes I think thee is a little queer.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Murphy moved his large legal bulk in counterattack last week. Down on the record in the somber courtroom was some of the most dangerous testimony yet presented in the defense’s effort to destroy the case against Alger Hiss. Dr. Carl Binger had labeled the star Government witness, Whittaker Chambers, a “psychopathic personality” (TIME, Jan. 16); all of Chambers’ accusations against Hiss, Dr. Binger had indicated, might very well be a pack of pathological lies.

On the 32nd day of the trial in Manhattan’s federal court, the mountainous Murphy in cross-examination fell upon the self-assured doctor.

A Certain Vagueness. Who was Dr. Binger and how was he qualified to make such judgments? The doctor admitted that he had had no full-time training in a mental institution, had specialized in psychiatry for only “about three years.” But he had studied “half medicine and half psychiatry” in London and Heidelberg and had studied psychiatry in Zurich, where he himself had been psychoanalyzed by Dr. Carl Jung. He admitted that he had known Alger Hiss since 1947 and that his wife was on the staff of the same private school where Hiss’s wife had taught. But he denied any prejudices in the case.

Murphy demanded: What would be a precise definition of psychopathic personality, the kind of definition which might be applied, for instance, to diabetes? How would the doctor describe diabetes? “That is a . . . particularly difficult one,” said the doctor. “Take dandruff,” Murphy suggested. The doctor preferred to take diabetes. But when Murphy brought him around again to a precise definition of psychopathic personality, the best the doctor could do was: “A disordered mental and emotional make-up.”

Psychopathic personality, Dr. Binger agreed under Murphy’s grilling, was a “wastepaper-basket classification of a lot of symptoms.” It covered a type of human behavior somewhere between mere oddness and out & out insanity. “I think that psychiatric diagnosis has a certain vagueness,” said the doctor.

Einstein’s Sweat Shirt. Piece by piece, Murphy went about rescuing his star witness from the wastebasket. The doctor had labeled Chambers with such tags as instability, insensitivity, untidiness and bizarre behavior.

Wasn’t the fact that Chambers had held the same job at TIME for ten years, working at it sometimes 48 hours at a stretch, strong evidence against a diagnosis of instability? “No,” said Dr. Binger. Didn’t the fact that Chambers had stayed married to the same woman for 19 years also indicate stability? “It could be,” said Dr. Binger without interest.

Did Chambers’ statement that he had testified with pity for Hiss and remorse over his own past indicate insensitivity? “It reflects grandiosity,” said Dr. Binger.

Speaking of untidiness, had Dr. Binger ever met Dr. Einstein when he was wearing his sweat shirt? Had he ever met Will Rogers, Bing Crosby, Owen D. Young, Thomas Edison? Dr. Binger never had. Or Heywood Broun? Apparently he had met the late Heywood Broun. “Oh, dirty!” exclaimed the doctor. Were these people psychopathic? “No,” the doctor said.

Dr. Binger had said that hiding the stolen documents in a pumpkin was bizarre behavior. Was it bizarre for Benedict Arnold, when he sold out West Point to the British, to hide the plans in Major Andre’s shoe? “No,” said the doctor. Was it bizarre for Moses’ mother to hide him in the bulrushes? “She could scarcely put him in a safety-deposit box,” said the doctor brightly.

Absinthe in a Daiquiri. For 2½ days a fascinated jury listened before a finally exhausted Dr. Binger was allowed to step down. But Defense Attorney Claude B. Cross immediately wheeled up reinforcements: Dr. Henry Alexander Murray. Like both Dr. Binger and Alger Hiss, Dr. Murray was a graduate of Harvard. He had also studied under Dr. Jung. He testified that he had had lots of opportunity to observe psychopathic personalities at Harvard University, where he was director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic. He backed up his colleague, Binger. Chambers, he said, was a psychopathic personality.

He had never seen Chambers, but this did not faze him. He had psychoanalyzed Adolf Hitler in absentia, correctly predicting that Hitler would commit suicide. He said: “We have what is known as blind analysis”—analyzing the results of another psychologist’s tests.

He had read some of Chambers’ writing, particularly noting Chambers’ use of imagery (e.g., “Like a toad in a pool of petroleum”). All images, explained Dr. Murray, “are vehicles of thought in dreaming and fantasy.” He had found other “indefinable qualities [of psychopathy] that experts recognize. It’s like tasting absinthe in a Daiquiri . . . Some people can taste it and some people can’t.”

“My head is going round & round,” said Murphy. But next day he doggedly arose to cross-examine, wearily pursuing the authoritative Dr. Murray through imagery, absinthe, Jung and Sigmund Freud.

Like Dr. Binger, Dr. Murray had all the answers, except for one question to which Dr. Binger also had no answer. How did Chambers happen to have the notes in Hiss’s handwriting and the stolen State Department documents typed out on Hiss’s machine? “That is outside my province,” said the expert witness. Early this week the defense rested.