Strange to Say, but Neurotics Are Preferable
The recent outbreak of mass violence in Atlanta and Los Angeles, after the carnage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., has shocked and frightened Americans into wondering what has broken down in our society. Still, it is remarkable how well psychological regulators of aggression have worked in the United States, a largely free and open society. While it is appropriate to account for the apparent erosion of social controls, it is equally important to ask how we have been so effective in containing violence.
According to Sigmund Freud, human beings are animals motivated primarily by their sexual and aggressive impulses. In his “Civilization and Its Discontents,” the psychoanalyst argued that civilization, through principles of morality, law and order and social propriety, controls human aggression to protect us from each other. These learned regulators, however, do not guarantee that our basic animal nature will not rear its ugly head, particularly in a democracy in which aggression is widely tolerated. Nonetheless, mass murder in America is quite rare.
So what, if anything, has broken down in the American psyche?
Since the perpetrators of recent attacks have had severe psychological problems, perhaps part of the answer lies in the radical shift in the diagnosis of mental-health patients since the 1960s, from inhibited neurosis to impulse-ridden and narcissistic disorders. Neurotics are overly controlled by strict consciences, right and wrong, and their fears of disapproval for expressing sexual and aggressive impulses.
Through the guilt-ridden 1950s, the American nuclear family was the primary emissary of society’s moral values. Outbreaks of violence were largely confined to an isolated murder here and there. In the ‘60s, the rising divorce rate undercut the nuclear family. American values embraced the freedom to pursue pleasure: sexual, drug-induced, etc. Guilt became bad, impulsivity good.
From the late ‘60s till now, therapists have noticed that their patients no longer mainly suffer from inhibition and guilt. Instead, impulse disorders, drug and sexual addictions, eating disorders and victims of sexual and physical abuse have proliferated. These patients are much more difficult to treat than neurotics. They tend to be extremely egocentric, infantile, filled with aggression and possessing little empathic sensitivity toward their fellow man.
Their family histories are strewn with parental neglect, abandonment and abuse. Many come from broken homes and thus lack the regulatory experience of a united, parental couple whose moral standards they can emulate and internalize.
A flagrant absence of guilt and a lack of empathic sensitivity were certainly evident in the minds of Buford O. Furrow Jr., who confessed to wounding five at a Jewish community center in Granada Hills and to slaying a postal worker, and Mark O. Barton, a day trader in Atlanta whokilled 12, including his family, before taking his own life. For these killings, the primary psychological mechanism was projective identification. Furrow, who has a history of job problems and a failed marriage to the ex-wife of a founder of the racist group the Order, and who had threatened to kill her and himself, displaced his homicidal impulses onto Jews. By identifying with the “racially superior” Aryan Nations, he compensated for his inferior self-image, which he then projected into Jews. In trying to kill Jews, Furrow was attempting to kill off the hated, disowned parts of himself. Similarly, Barton’s slaying of day traders, whom he described as out to “greedily destroy” him, was an effort to kill his own greedy, destructive impulses that were causing him so much anguish.
Projective identification is a powerful instrument for the discharge of murderous rage since it involves the denial of victims’ separate existence, thereby eliminating the possibility of empathizing with another person. Accordingly, the perpetrator can freely use the victim for his or her own exploitative homicidal purposes without being impeded by guilt or remorse.
But do these individual murderous acts highlight a more general breakdown of the regulators that society uses to control aggression? The overwhelming majority of mental patients are not violent. They are more likely to be withdrawn and fearful than to attack others, as indicated by the behavior of the insane homeless on our streets. Our extreme fear and panic over the shootings in Granada Hills and Atlanta may have been due to our lack of preparation for such violent outbreaks precisely because they are so infrequent.
Some have contended that the media, because of television’s immediate, unrelenting coverage of violent events, and the Internet instigate copy-cat killings or may even help potential perpetrators procure and use lethal weapons. On the other hand, saturation coverage incidentally informs the public how to best protect itself. In this sense, the media serve the function of an ubiquitous, societal superego, monitoring our lives for potential threats. For example, as a result of the public being informed about recent shootings, there has been a crescendo of calls for tougher gun control, for stronger standards of propriety and more empathic sensitivity to isolated loners.
It is fascinating to note that after Furrows’ rampage, the conversations among hate-group members over the Internet were extremely divided, with a majority of participants critical of Furrow’s action, not from a sense of conscience but from the standpoint of reason. Many thought his actions were self-defeating and likely to provoke a backlash against their group. This open, diverse exchange, made possible by the Internet, may modulate the more violent members of these groups.
In addition, superego controls have been strengthened through a resurgence of interest in religion. Marriage is on the rise, and the divorce rate is declining, which may buttress moral values. In high-crime areas, community policing has increased. Unfortunately, since guilt no longer plays a prominent regulatory role in the American psyche, society must rely more on external controls than on internal ones.
We are responding in part to the challenge of a weakened moral fiber with a greater emphasis on family values and education. Nonetheless, even with its fissures, the thin veneer of American civilization is thicker than one might think.*
