The Circle of Guilt

by Fredric Wertham, William Bush

Overview

In 1955 a New York City court sentenced Puerto Rican immigrant and teenage gang member Frank Santana to twenty-five years to life for second-degree murder. Fredric Wertham (1895-1981), one of the most influential authorities on child psychology in the twentieth century, was outraged and felt compelled to write The Circle of Guilt.

He had conducted multiple interviews with Santana and created an extensive psychological profile on him. Wertham saw unsettling patterns in the ways in which the case was reported, investigated, and deliberated. Media portrayed the victim, a white teenager named Bill Blankenship, as a "model boy" and reported the killing as "unprovoked." In the furor surrounding the case, Santana was often called a "hoodlum." Wertham suspected otherwise.

In The Circle of Guilt, the psychiatrist uncovers a paradigm of fear, racism, distrust, and prejudice. He argues that the press's presentation of the case reflected extreme cultural bigotry. Wertham also reveals Blankenship's activity within teen gangs and asserts that Santana's actions were shaped in part by his unmediated exposure to mass media. This reprinted edition includes a new introduction by history professor William Bush that places both the crime and Wertham's work into cultural and historical context. Bush argues that much of what Wertham decries in mass media and its impact on justice and race applies equally today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781578069835
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	03/26/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Longtime chief of psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital, Fredric Wertham authored Seduction of the Innocent.


William Bush is visiting assistant professor of history at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Table of Contents

Introduction   William Bush     vii
Sidewalk Encounter     1
Contact     17
The Message of Solferino     57
Creeps     83
Terror     95
The Discovery of Puerto Rico     109
Reversal     141
Strike     159
Guilty Justice     177
Index     205