behaviour is not a new idea; quite the reverse. It is an idea so built into us, and into our thinking and observing processes, that it tends to be overlooked that the consciousness itself may be the subject for observation. We accept as an everyday experience that the impact of someone's personality on us (whether we like him or dislike him) may be so great as to change our consciousness, our view of things and our sense of proportion, at least temporarily. But we regard this process as so deeply built into us, and so much part of ourselves, that we tend to assume that there is no point in trying to analyse it. We tend to accept it just as an experimental error in the observer, when we observe human behaviour.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It is not an experimental error; it is not part of ourselves; it can be analysed.
It is not an experimental error; it is in fact part of the experiment. This is second nature to the lawyer. He knows that he is part of the drama that takes place in a court of law. He is observer, and must plan his examination-in chief and his cross-examination in advance; but when he comes to ask the questions he is a participant. It is useless trying to ask questions in a cold detached manner. There are basically two techniques in cross-examination to destroy a witness's credit (with of course infinite variations on each). The first is bullying the witness, in the hope of making him either go back on something he has said before, or show himself at least to lack conviction in what he says. We no longer imitate the Victorian advocate, whose first question was, “Where did you get that ugly face from?” But bullying still goes on. The other, slightly more subtle, is to give a witness's tongue free rein, in order to see to what absurd lengths he is prepared to go, and finally to trap him. The trap may simply be the lengths of absurdity to which he is prepared to go. I remember a big fat chap, jointly charged with another with rape, explaining the…