A couple of years ago now, Karl Menniger, the pre-eminent psychiatrist, wrote of seeing a stern-faced, plainly-dressed man (perhaps he was a crazed street person) standing one day on a street corner in the busy Chicago loop. As pedestrians hurried by on their way to lunch or business, the man would solemnly lift his right arm, and pointing to some person near him, would shout at the top of his voice the single word, “Guilty!” Then, without any change of expression, he would stand stiffly for a few moments, and, then again, would repeat the gesture. He would raise his right arm, point at someone hurrying by, and shout the word, “Guilty!”
“The effect,” wrote Menniger, “of this strange … pantomime on the passing strangers was extraordinary, almost eerie. They would stare at him, hesitate, look away, look at each other, and then at him again; then hurriedly continue on their ways.
“One man, turning to another … exclaimed, ‘But how did he know?’” [1]
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Theodore J. Wardlaw
1. Karl Menniger, Whatever Became of Sin? (New York: Hawthorne, 1973), pp.1-2.