How do you cope on death row? In 1962 two psychiatrists were puzzled by the fact that inmates condemned to death in New York’s notorious Sing Sing prison were not overwhelmed by depression or anxiety. They wrote an article for the American Journal of Psychiatry attempting to explain how 13 prisoners managed the fear of their imminent demise.
It’s an uncomfortable and ill-fitting article in many ways. The two psychiatrists are firmly psychoanalytic in their approach, talking of ‘ego defense’ and ‘projective tests’, which seems odd to the modern forensic eye.
Moreover, the liberal use of the contemptuous language of sixties psychiatry pervades the article. The inmates are described variously as “inadequate”, “obsessed with his own power”, “mentally dull”, “self-pitying”, as if these were facts of the world, rather than the disdainful opinions of two comfortably employed prison psychiatrists.
Disturbingly, several of the condemned prisoners are clearly psychotic, and their madness is invariably explained away as a ‘defense mechanism’, little more than a tool for managing their anxieties.
But despite the filtering and selective reporting, it is possible to catch a glimpse of how the inmates managed their lives as the condemned.
This man stands out in the series as being the one who most successfully employed intellectualization as a means of defending against anxiety and depression. He elaborated a philosophy of life and values in which his own criminal career became not only justifiable, but even respectable. He rationalized his crimes by emphasizing the hypocrisy and perfidy of society on the one hand and by comparing himself with policemen and soldiers and others who live honorably “by the gun” on the other. This system was so effective for him that even when execution appeared imminent he maintained his hero’s martyr role and disdained to request executive clemency.
Of course, we will all die, and in recent years studies on how we live with this knowledge, so called ‘mortality salience’ or ‘terror management theory’ (TMT) research, has become a fertile field of investigation.
Research suggests that when reminded of our own death, we attempt to make ourselves feel better by aligning ourselves more closely with our social groups, cultural values and intimate partners.
But to my knowledge, only one other study has investigated how death row inmates deal with their forthcoming death.
In 2008, two Dutch psychologists, Andreas Schuck and Janelle Ward, analysed the final statements of those executed by the state of Texas to examine how they portrayed themselves and made sense of their situation.
In line with ‘terror management theory’ the majority of the last statements attempted to align the subject with our society’s notion of a ‘good’ person, often in a common pattern or sequence:
subject [reference to the self]; addresses relevant relationships (from closest to furthest); expresses internal feelings (love, hate); defines situation (responsibility, acceptance versus innocence, political statement, denial); deals with situation (self-comfort, religion, wish/hope, forgiveness, self-blame vs. accusation, denial); closure.
It seems that from the prisoner to the public, death makes us conform, and even those who may have been the most callous of killers want to be a good person when they die.
Link to 1962 death row article.
Link to PubMed entry for same.
Link to study on Texas executions last words.
Mind Hacks 