The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
Mr. Bachrach: There is evidence of daydreams.
Mr. Crowe: Well, you are not reading about daydreams
now, are you?
Mr. Bachrach: The same thing.
Mr. Crowe: Are they?
Mr. Bachrach: Daydreams as well as night
dreams, if your Honor please, indicate an undirected
functioning of the mind. They, therefore, are not
subject to the conscious guidance of the individual,
and when the psychiatrist has submitted to him the
dreams, night dreams or daydreams, of his patient,
he has material that is spontaneous, uncontrolled
material, and, therefore, material which forms a
basis for a more correct conclusion than merely a
controlled history given by the patient.
Mr. Crowe: Will you pardon me, just another
question?
Mr. Bachrach: Yes.
Mr. Crowe: All this you have been reading about
deals with insanity, does it not?
Mr. Bachrach: Yes.
Mr. Crowe: Is that your defense?
Mr. Bachrach: It is not. The textbook which I
have read deals with nervous and mental diseases,
and under the subject of insanity, as used by those
gentlemen as indicating a mental disease, and not
a legal insanity, they discuss these various symp-
toms.
We do not use the word insanity, if your Honor
please, in this case, for the simple reason that we
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