Aug 2, 2023
Psychiatrist Dr. Carl Binger
This Podcast presents the testimony of an eminent
psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Binger. He opined that Whittaker
Chambers suffered from a mental illness, called “Psychopathic
Personality,” which causes its sufferers to make false accusations
that they sincerely believe to be true. Dr. Carl Binger was
supposed to be, to use a baseball metaphor, The Clean-Up Hitter of
The Hiss Defense. The Defense had loaded the bases with Hiss
and his wife (we barely knew Chambers/Crosley), the character
witnesses (Alger is a fine upstanding man), and the Catletts (we
had The Typewriter when The Spy Documents were typed). Binger
was supposed to bring all those runners and himself across home
plate by answering a question so obvious that Hiss was asked it at
his first HUAC appearance: why is Chambers lying? Chambers
had no rational motive to lie, but . . . . maybe an irrational one.
Chambers’ greatest fan would admit that his life was a target-rich
environment of off-the-beaten-path behaviors.
Prosecutor Murphy fought to the bitter end to keep Binger’s
opinion from reaching the jury’s ears. But he had a good Plan
B. His cross-examination of Dr. Binger has been called the
most destructive cross-examination of a psychiatrist in
history. The conventional opinion of scholars is that when
Murphy was through with Binger, there was nothing left, not even
mincemeat. To many, Binger’s testimony seemed a failed
attempt to smear an honest man who was merely strange. See if you
agree.
FURTHER RESEARCH
About Binger’s testimony, see Cooke at 304-13; Smith at
386-93, saying (at 391) that “Murphy cut the poor psychiatrist into
ribbons” and (at 393) that “the psychiatric evidence turned out to
be a boomerang”; and Weinstein at 510-16.
One interesting aspect of this Case is the peek it gives into
the morals and standards of this country’s Establishment in the
late 1940s. Psychiatry had ceased to be new and frightening
and had become, among many of the finest minds, almost a religion
displacing Judaism and Christianity. Forward-looking thinkers
ranked Freud with Aristotle, Copernicus, and Einstein as one of the
giant pioneers of human thought. (Today, most see him as a
great, brave pioneer but dismiss his all theories and techniques.).
Alistair Cooke was so worshipful of psychiatry that he could not
fathom Prosecutor Murphy questioning Dr. Binger’s opinion.
Cooke seems to have thought Murphy outrageous when he demanded that
the exalted expert make sense to the jury.
More broadly, at the time of the Hiss trials, the range of
proper behaviors was much narrower than it is today. Men
worked and women stayed home to run the house and raise the kids; a
web of laws and customs held blacks in inferior positions;
swarthy-complected immigrants from Southern Europe, such as
Italians, were barely considered to be white people; left-handed
people were considered handicapped; people rarely married outside
their religious denominations; homosexuality was a mental illness;
proper citizens wouldn’t dream of going outdoors not in a coat and
tie; and you could tell much more about people’s economic and
social status by their clothing than you can today. Any
deviation from these norms might prompt wrinkled noses, raised
eyebrows, and even suspicions of mental illness. The latter
was unfathomable and would bar you from decent society
forever. The Hiss Defense tried to use such limits on
propriety and decency to make Chambers unbelievable and
despicable. The Defense failed because of Chambers’
articulateness and his cool under fire, and because of the
cross-examination of Dr. Binger. And as Alistair Cooke wrote
(at 312), the magician Binger could pull strange and frightening
objects from his top hat, but he could not make the documents
disappear.
Questions: As you hear Dr. Binger’s direct testimony, do
you think to yourself “My God, he’s got Chambers to a T.
Thank God we have modern psychiatry to explain rare mental
illnesses like Chambers’”? Or do Binger’s words strike you as
modern witchcraft concealed behind two Harvard degrees?
Psychiatry has changed hugely since 1949. If you have any
knowledge of it, what would a mainstream psychiatrist (if there is
such a thing any more) say of Chambers today? One said to me,
“Probably neurotic, but not psychotic by any means.”
Concerning procedure, do you agree with Prosecutor Murphy that
merely allowing the jury to hear the 65-minute long question
listing all of Chambers’ strange acts was itself unfair to Chambers
and The Prosecution, and that the judges should have ruled on the
admissibility of psychiatric testimony before?