16 research outputs found
âSupposing that truth is a woman, what then?â The Lie Detector, The Love Machine and the Logic of Fantasy
One of the consequences of the public outcry over the 1929 St Valentineâs Day massacre was the establishment of a Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory at Northwestern University. The photogenic âLie Detector Manâ, Leonarde Keeler, was the Laboratoryâs poster boy and his instrument the jewel in the crown of forensic science. The press often depicted Keeler gazing at a female suspect attached to his âsweat boxâ; a galvanometer electrode in her hand, a sphygmomanometer cuff on her arm and a rubber pneumograph tube strapped across her breasts. Keelerâs fascination with the deceptive charms of the female body was one he shared with his fellow lie detector pioneers, all of whom met their wives â and in William Marstonâs case his mistress too â through their engagement with the instrument. Marston employed his own âLove Meterâ, as the press dubbed it, to prove that âbrunettes react far more violently to amatory stimuli than blondesâ. In this paper I draw on the psychoanalytic concepts of fantasy and pleasure to argue that the female body played a pivotal role in establishing the lie detectorâs reputation as an infallible and benign mechanical technology of truth