Baker report, 1968 congressional hearings

acknowledged any such activity. He says he still cannot help but feel that it is an unnatural, perverted practice. Sometimes
he wonders whether he is driven to it by a hormone problem or whether it is because of a mental sickness of some kind. He
used to think that he would not ever be fit to touch a woman if he masturbated. He says he has never been involved in any
homosexual activity, although his Army buddy had once suggested it to him.
His leisure hours are spent watching TV in the bar or in his room, going to movies, either alone or with someone at the
boarding house, and reading an occasional magazine story. He likes to sunbathe on his porch on the weekends. He says that
he still enjoys making up adventure stories and keeps adding to an on-going serial in which he is the only person living in a
desert oasis where he gets into various predicaments and is rescued and nursed back to health by lovely, gracious women
who happen to pass by. He never dreams, he says, and doesn't think he ever has.
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He says he rarely gets angry because he doesn't like the feeling. Once a man in a bar began saying insulting things to him,
unprovoked, and then took a swing at him but the bartender had intervened. He was just plain scared in that situation and
relieved when the tension had abated. A long time ago he had felt like hitting his brother-in-law when the latter had said
something or other cruel to his sister (but instead had walked out of hearing range). He had felt intensely, inexplicably
angry for several days at age 16 when his father died of a stroke; he remembers wishing he could destroy everything in
sight by kicking and pounding it to pieces.
He doesn't see himself as particularly depressed and has no suicidal thoughts, although he acknowledges that after his
mother's death, he wished he could have died with her or instead of her. He never has fantasized actively taking his own
life, however, and feels it would be very wrong to do so. He does say he feels nervous a lot, especially in the last two
months and that certain things upset him more than they used to. For example, noisy laughter at work or in a bar is so
unpleasant lately that he usually tries to find an excuse to leave the room. He feels increasingly impatient, particularly in
waiting lines, and says he has jumped from smoking one to two packages of cigarettes a day. For the first time in his life he
finds himself wishing he could take a whiskey break in the middle of the work day; he then gets preoccupied with the taste
of whiskey and with thoughts of how good swallowing it would feel.
After work, he always stops by a certain bar near the house and has from two to five quiet bourbon and waters before
returning home. Now, he stays longer at the bar and arrives at the boarding house well past the dinner hour. This is because
he isn't hungry, usually, is sick of the food, and finds the commotion at the dinner table disturbing. He does feel he is
treated with more respect and deference at the boarding house than he needs or deserves. About his insomnia, he says
simply that one pill helped until about a month ago but that lately he has been taking four or five over a two-hour period
with no appreciable effect.
He claims he has no notion as to why he should be feeling on edge for these two months, but in the next breath he begins to
talk about his bank boss's interest in acquainting him with his daughter. He uncomfortably describes a scene at the last
Labor Day picnic in which the boss brought his daughter around to meet him and then walked off, leaving him stranded
with her for the rest of the afternoon. Thereafter, some of the people at the bank had teased him about his secret romance
with her (which was non-existent). He senses that his boss now seems less friendly, although the older man made no
known attempt to stop his promotion. He has no desire to advance any further up the bank totem pole, says he never
expected to do even this well, and would be more than satisfied with his present post for the duration of his working days
(though he really liked doing bookkeeping better).
In addition to the information already mentioned, his developmental history has the following other significant points: he
was breast fed for nearly two years because his mother couldn't afford to buy store milk. Toilet training was completed by
age 15 months, but he was enuretic from age two until he was nine. The boys in school found out about it and nicknamed
him "Pee-pee".
[[168]]
Although he was generally unpopular among his schoolmates, he did very well academically, especially in mathematics.
He skipped the third and seventh grades, was first in his boys' parochial high school class and received a full-tuition
scholarship to Boston College, where he took business administration courses. He never was one to participate in
extracurricular activities, but always maintained a part-time job and gave his entire earnings to his mother. He does not see