would
give one a still clearer insight into the subject under discussion, but
to do so would lead us considerably beyond the scope of this paper. From
what has been said thus far it will be seen that the mental processes
underlying the mental state of malingering differ in no essential from
those operative in the human mind generally; that man in his endeavor to
reach a satisfactory compromise between the two underlying principles of
his conduct,--_i.e._, that of pleasure and reality,--frequently resorts
to his fantasy; that malingering in its broader sense,--_i.e._, the
attempt to evade reality,--is a common mode of reaction in primitive
man, the child of today and in the undeveloped mind, in all of these
instances signifying an inability to meet stern reality in the face, and
that, therefore, malingering, when it does occur, should at least not be
looked upon as an aggravating circumstance, which is not infrequently
the case when the malingerer happens to be facing a court of law.

That this mode of reaction is at times resorted to by individuals who
had always been looked upon as being far from incompetent only proves
that under special stress, especially mental stress, man readily sinks
to a lower cultural level and resorts to the defensive means common at
this level.

Clinically, malingering is to be considered from three distinct
viewpoints:--

1. Malingering in the frankly insane;

2. Malingering in those apparently normal mentally; and

3. Malingering in that large group of border-line cases which should
rightly be looked upon as potentially insane and as constantly verging
upon an actual psychosis.

It may be difficult to convince the lay mind, and especially the legal
mind, that an individual may be suffering from an actual psychosis and
at the same time malinger mental symptoms. It is the legal mind
especially, working as it does with well-differentiated,
sharply-defined, and wholly artificial concepts, that demands a sharp,
strict differentiation between the mentally well and the mentally sick.
By means of man-made statutes a line has been created, on one side of
which they would place all the mentally well and on the other side all
the mentally diseased. By the same token they cannot conceive how an
individual placed on one side of the line may be able to manifest a type
of reaction, a form of conduct, which is by common consent considered as
being something essentially characteristic of the man on t