Read On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears Online
Authors: Stephen T. Asma
On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears (61 page)
18
. Stephen Diamond,
Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic
(State University of New York Press, 1996),
chapter 6
.
19
. Plato,
Republic
, book IX.
20
. Those who wish to maintain the parallels between
Forbidden Planet
and
The Tempest
might read this monster as an updated Caliban, the mongrel creature servant of Pros-pero. Caliban is severely treated in Shakespeare’s play because he once tried to rape Prospero’s daughter, Miranda, so he requires constant surveillance and domination. In Act 5, Scene 3, Prospero says of Caliban, “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.”
21
. Freud is assuming the dualism in his writings as early as the 1924 “The Economic Problem of Masochism,” but Eros and Thanatos dominate the posthumous
Outline of Psychoanalysis
(1940).
22
. See the highly entertaining note 7 in
chapter 4
of
Civilization and Its Discontents
.
23
. Like Leopold and Loeb, who were often later characterized as repressed homosexuals, the Columbine High School murderers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were inseparable mates. Harris and Klebold often suffered “faggot” and “homo” epithets at school. Harris’s own suicide note reveals some of the motive for the attack and explicitly indicts his own repressive and abusive society. “By now, it’s over. If you are reading this, my mission is complete,” Harris writes. “Your children who have ridiculed me, who have chosen not to accept me, who have treated me like I am not worth their time are dead. They are fucking dead.” He continues, “I may have taken their lives and my own—but it was your doing. Teachers, parents, let this massacre be on your shoulders until the day you die.”
24
. See Anthony Chase, “Violent Reaction: What Do Teen Killers Have in Common?”
In These Times
, July 9, 2001.
25
. Martin Luther typifies a common Christian “monsterization” of Jews when says, “They are children of the Devil, condemned to the flames of hell…they have a God…he is called the Devil.” Quoted in Gold,
Monsters and Madonnas
, chapter 17.
26
. Ibid.,
chapter 15
.
27
. Ibid., epilogue.
28
. Peter Gay,
The Cultivation of Hatred
(Norton, 1993),
chapter 1
, section 2.
30
. Strictly speaking, the unemotional monster is older than the twentieth century. It goes back at least to the accusations by Romantics, some of which we’ve looked at, against the cold clinical rationalists of the Enlightenment. But the earlier discussion was largely academic, artistic, and ideological, not usually applied to real criminology issues or cases. See Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1846 short story “The Birthmark” for a fictional version of a scientist who has lost his emotional core in the pursuit of abstraction.
31
. Erle Stanley Gardner, introduction in Leopold,
Life Plus 99 Years
.
33
. One cannot be entirely sure whether Leopold has accurately reported the real meaning of his famous quip. It is possible that he was seeking to revise his own history in a charitable way. Ibid.,
chapter 2
.
34
. Personal communication with Michael Harvey. Harvey’s novel
The Chicago Way
(Knopf, 2007) is based on his real life experiences with John Wayne Gacy. Harvey was also the creator and executive producer of the television documentary series
Cold Case Files
. He explained to me that Gacy and other such murderers have an intense need to dominate others:
It’s all about power and control. Power and control over the victims. Power and control over the police investigating the crimes. Power and control over the media covering the crimes. All of it feeds the serial killer’s massive ego, makes him feel like he is the center of attention, and operates almost as an aphrodisiac for the killer. Many serial killers will go even further, attempting to exert control over their victims even after death. Killers
will keep bodies close by as “trophies,” so they can revisit their victims and relive the crimes. Yes, power and control. The stuff of serial killer fantasy.
35
. See Hare’s now classic book
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of Psychopaths among Us
(Guilford Press, 1999), but also his more recent book, coauthored with Paul Babiak,
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work
(Regan Books, 2006) for an interesting discussion of corporate psychopaths. Now Hare only needs to write an additional volume on
academic
psychopaths.
36
. Quoted in an interview with Kate Hilpern, “Office Hours, Beware: Danger at Work,”
The Guardian
, September 27, 2004.
37
. Quoted in Rose, “Crime.”
38
. Interview with Dick, by John Boonstra, in
Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine
2, no. 3 (June 1982): 47–52.
39
. Is there some additional property that entities must possess if they are to be considered persons? The philosophical strategy of
Blade Runner
is to slowly build up progressive layers of biological traits on originally inanimate objects (the replicants). And the question is tacitly asked at each stage: Do we have a “person” yet? How about if we add memories? How about if we add learning skills? And so on.
40
. One of the crucial traits that
Blade Runner
adds to the replicants is
imagination
, which seems crucial to empathy. When Darwin wrote
The Descent of Man
(1872), he had to argue vehemently that nonhuman animals possess imagination. Prior to Darwin, the idea of animal imagination was both rare (because Descartes had persuaded many that animals had no minds) and heretical (for it seemed to imply some unholy kinship between man and animal). Darwin realized that this trait was a serious hurdle, pronouncing, “The Imagination is one of the highest prerogatives of man. By this faculty he unites former images and ideas, independently of the will, and thus creates brilliant and novel results” (
chapter 3
). But even so high a faculty as imagination, Darwin argued, could be found in animals, and the place to look for it was the dream. Dreaming is the involuntary art of poetry (
chapter 3
). If animals can dream, then they are “uniting former images and ideas” and “creating brilliant and novel results”: they are imagining. Not unrelated is the original title of
Blade Runner
, Philip Dick’s
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The question posed here is whether a computer could ever dream at all.
41
. The vaguely Christian symbolism is reinforced by Roy’s receiving, just prior to the redemption, a nail through his hand.
42
. Of course, Descartes would object that you still do not have certainty because the test itself must be read by the senses, and we know how fallible the senses can be.
43
. See Matt Crenson, “What Makes a Sexual Predator?” Associated Press, September 6, 2005.
44
. In
Anger, Madness and the Daimonic
, Stephen Diamond laments that “the most ascendant and widely accepted explanation for psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder (manic depressive illness) is the biochemical model, which presumes that there is an inherited, biochemical abnormality in certain people predisposing them to psychosis” (
chapter 5
).
45
. I will simply state my official embrace of
causal pluralism
and move on to some specific experimental findings. By detailing a couple of brain-based case studies, I am not renouncing or downplaying the spiritual and existential dimensions of mental disorders—dimensions that, I think, can be correlated with rather than reduced to physiochemical events. I tend to agree in principle with George Engel’s pluralistic biopsychosocial model of psychiatry, although its critics have pointed out that it lacks implementable details for a strong research program. See Engel’s “The Need for a New Medical Model,”
Science
196 (1977).
46
. My discussion of Dr. Kiehl’s research is based on Crenson, “What Makes a Sexual Predator?”
47
. Melvin Konner,
The Tangled Wing
(Times Books, 2002),
chapter 10
.
48
. Information on Dr. Gray’s research is taken from Paul Rowland, “Brain Biology of Psychopaths ‘Lack Capacity to Interpret Fear,’ ”
The Western Mail
, December 5, 2006.
49
. The lack of empathy that one finds in parts of the autistic spectrum, such as in Asperger’s syndrome, has led to some highly speculative questions about neurological similarities with psychopaths. In “Does the Autistic Child Have a ‘Theory of Mind’?”
Cognition
21 (1985), psychologists Simon Baron-Cohen, Alan Leslie, and Uta Frith show empirical evidence that autistics have a much harder time than other mentally challenged subjects in their ability to impute beliefs to other people. Suffice it to say that psychopaths are a species unto themselves, and most autistics are entirely humane, loving, and gentle.
50
. Information about Dr. Ralph Adolphs’s research is drawn from his article “Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex Increases Utilitarian Moral Judgments,”
Nature
446 (April 2007).
51
. Linda Mealey, “The Sociobiology of Sociopathy: An Integrated Evolutionary Model,”
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
18 (1995).
52
. Personal communication with Michael Harvey. He went on to say, “There are, of course, many other factors that play into the dynamics here, and those factors will vary greatly from case to case. I just mean to point out that this type of childhood abuse appears to be a common denominator and, perhaps, sets off a chain reaction in certain individuals that leads them to engage in psychopathic behavior as an adult.”
53
. Quoted in Diamond,
Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic
,
chapter 5
. My own thinking on this issue is strongly indebted to Dr. Diamond, who continues throughout his book to develop Jung’s point further. In our haste to eliminate any egregious emotions, we have pursued a medical model of tranquilization rather than finding other, potentially healthy outlets for madness.
54
. Joseph Edward Duncan III described his own struggle with demons on his Internet blog. In April 2005 Duncan wrote, “It is a battle between me and my demons.” He continued, “I’m afraid, very afraid. If they win then a lot of people will be badly hurt.” Quoted in Crenson, “What Makes a Sexual Predator?” A month later Duncan broke into an Idaho family home and tied up the mother, her boyfriend, and the eldest boy. He hammered the three victims to death, then kidnapped the eight-year-old daughter, Shasta, and the nine-year-old boy, Dylan, repeatedly raping and molesting them for six weeks. Eventually Duncan murdered Dylan. Before he committed these horrific acts, Duncan had already established a pattern of sexual predatory behavior. He did time for raping a young boy at gunpoint and was also arrested in 2004 for groping a six-year-old. He appears to be linked to an earlier unsolved homicide in California as well. He was not just a regular guy who had an isolated bad day. Nor does it appear that he made any normal kind of freewill choice to adopt a new lifestyle of killing people and raping children.
Most would agree that Joseph Edward Duncan III is a monster, in the sense that he has abdicated his own humanity. His deeds are unforgivable. It seems extremely doubtful that
any
causal story could be produced (no matter how accurate) that would
explain
Duncan’s actions to most reasonable people. If we could show that Lucifer himself was inside Duncan’s heart, or a virus had eaten part of his brain, or a “bludgeoning gene” had been discovered, or he had grown up in a Skinner box…it would hardly matter. And the idea that Duncan himself knows
why
he did it also seems very hard to believe.
55
. Social psychologists have long recognized a double standard when judging bad behavior. When I commit some awful deed I am apt to attribute my actions to the stresses of a difficult situation, not my character. But if I observe similar bad behavior in another I am apt to ascribe the deviance to the person’s character; I tend to see it as a personality trait rather than a situational response. Most people, Brodsky notwithstanding, have the same inconsistent tendency.
56
. Of course, one of the most odious characters of recent political history is Saddam Hussein. Along with other genocidal leaders, such as Pol Pot, Hitler, and Stalin, Saddam has been psychoanalyzed from afar by many scholars. Whichever psychopathological label eventually sticks to his name, it’s pretty clear that he had a very difficult childhood. His peasant father died shortly after his birth and his mother left him with relatives for many years, finally returning with a stepfather who abused and humiliated him. By all accounts he had a rather lonely childhood and did not seem to keep up with his peers; he could not read or write until he was ten years old. His deprivations seem to have paved the road to later heartlessness. A malignant heart seems to have developed in the context of political justifications and rationalizations. Saddam seems to fit the diagnosis of malignant narcissist (narcissistic personality disorder) in the sense that he had little empathy for others and a grandiose sense of his own importance. The psychologist Erwin Parson claimed that Saddam had a “Nebuchadnezzar imperial complex”; he even had himself photographed in the style of the ancient Babylonian king. Peter Beaumont, “From Tikrit Boy to Butcher of Bagdad,”
The Observer
, December 31, 2006, asks:
