Any observer of personal
relations in our social scene cannot fail to be impressed with the amount of
destructiveness to be found everywhere. For the most part it is not conscious as such
but is rationalized in various ways. As a matter of fact, there is virtually
nothing that is not used as a rationalization for destructiveness. Love, duty,
conscience, patriotism have been and are being used as disguises to destroy
others or oneself.
Freud attributed the
destructive impulses to the death-instinct whose
aim is the very destruction of life. He assumed that the death-instinct can be
blended with the sexual energy and then be directed either against one's own
self or against objects outside oneself. He furthermore assumed that the death-instinct
is rooted in a biological quality inherent in all living organisms and
therefore a necessary and unalterable part of life.
Are we then to say that
these are the acts of barbarians, not human at all? Or on the contrary, that
they are eminently human and that we must face the full compass of our nature?
As Freud put it:
These phenomena are
unmistakable indications of the power in mental life which we call the instinct
of ….destruction according to its aim, and which we trace back to the original
death instinct of all living matter. It is not a question of an antithesis
between an optimistic or a pessimistic
theory of life. Only by the concurrent or mutually opposing action of the two primal instincts –
Eros and the death-instinct –
never by one or the other alone, can we explain the rich multiplicity of the
phenomena of life. (Freud
1937 p. 243)
Freud invoked the ―death
instinct’‘ to account for phenomena that did not fit the framework of a
pleasure-seeking, life-affirming organism.
Fromm argues that the amount of destructiveness
to be found in individuals is proportionate to the amount to which
expansive-ness of life is curtailed. By this we do not refer to individual
frustrations of this or that instinctive desire but to the thwarting of the
whole of life, the blockage of spontaneity of the growth and expression of
man's sensuous, emotional, and intellectual capacities. Life has an inner
dynamism of its own; it tends to grow, to be expressed, to be lived. It seems
that if this tendency is thwarted the energy
directed towards life undergoes a process of decomposition and changes into energies directed towards destruction. In
other words the drive for life and the drive for destruction are not mutually
independent factors but are in a reversed interdependence. The more the drive
towards life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive towards destruction; the
more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness.
Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life (Fromm,1941).
Those individual and
social conditions that make for suppression of life produce the passion for
destruction that forms, so to speak, the reservoir from which the particular
hostile tendencies--either against others or against oneself—are nourished.
In individual level he
isolated and powerless individual is blocked in realizing his sensuous,
emotional, and intellectual potentialities. He is lacking the inner security
and spontaneity that are the conditions of such realization. This inner
blockage is increased by cultural taboos on pleasure and happiness, like those
that have run through the religion and mores of the middle class since the
period of the Reformation, Nowadays, the external taboo has virtually vanished,
but the inner blockage has remained strong in spite of the conscious approval
of sensuous pleasure.
At his mega-study of
destructiveness. ‘s ―The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness’‘ (1973 E. Fromm
reports:
If destructiveness is a
vice it is because it leads to an existential failure; the inability to become all that one could according to the possibilities
of one‘s existence.
Fromm draws a clear
distinction between adaptive benign or
defensive, aggression, common to all species, versus maladaptive,
malignant aggression or destructiveness,
its uniquely human form: ―Biologically benign aggression is a response to
threats to vital interests… it is not spontaneous...but reactive and defensive;
its aim is the removal of a threat.’’(Fromm 1973) Biologically non-adaptive,
aggression, i.e., sadism, cruelty, and destructiveness, is socially disruptive:
though not instinctual, ―Malignant aggression is a human potential rooted in
the very conditions of human existence’‘. The fact that destructiveness and
cruelty are not part of human nature
does not imply that they are not widespread and intense.’‘
Having ascribed
to benign aggression a phylogenetic origin in the fight/flight response,
sequestering it from any malignant connotations, he is left to question ―…what
manner and to what degree the specific conditions of human existence are
responsible for the quality and intensity of man‘s lust for killing and torturing.’‘
O. Kernberg‘s in his
book ―Severe personality Disorders’‘ (1984) advanced both the theoretical
understanding and clinical approach to the Borderline and Narcissistic pathologies.
Within his structural
model Kernberg (1984) identifies three broad structural organizations:
neurotic, borderline, or psychotic, classifications based on the individual‘s
overriding characteristics with regard to, i) degree of identity integration or
diffusion, ii) habitual defenses, and, iii) capacity for reality testing. Neurotic organization implies high level
defenses like repression, isolation, reaction formation; relatively stable
identity and superego functioning, and intact reality testing. In contrast
borderline and psychotic structures are characterized by a spectrum of
primitive defense mechanisms impairing judgment, impulse control, and reality
testing, implying identity diffusion, the use of projective, dissociative, or
merger/identification mechanisms, to protect a weak ego from conflict. These
same defenses, especially projection and splitting, operate in psychotic
organization to prevent further boundary disintegration, where they may
complement delusional systems with complete loss of reality testing.
The severe personality disorders we are
addressing - Borderline, Pathological and Malignant Narcissism, and a spectrum
of Antisocial, Paranoid, Psychotic, Psychopathic and Schizoid pathologies –
operate with different primitive defense mechanisms manifesting through
different levels of structural organization. Lower level defenses like
splitting, projective and related mechanisms, protect the conscious ego from
conflict by means of wholesale dissociation, keeping apart contradictory
experiences of self and significant others. When such mechanisms predominate, reality
testing is severely compromised and contradictory ego states are vigorously
segregated from each other, further weakening the ego. Extreme splitting -- the
division of all - good‘ and all bad‘
with complete reversals of feelings towards a particular person-- manifests in
repetitive oscillations between
contradictory perceptions, ideas, affects and self-representations, accompanied
by projection of the hated and/or denied
drive infiltrations.
In addition to types and
levels of defenses in severe personality disorders for our topic the quality
and developmental status of the superego is all important. Severity of superego
pathology is reflected most glaringly in degrees of syntonic antisocial
behavior. More subtly it is also evident in habitual dishonesty and lack of
concern or responsibility towards others. Experiencing an appropriate sense of
guilt and moral responsibility implies an adequately functional superego: pervasive dishonesty, lack of empathy or consideration,
a history of callous exploitative, or many ruptured relationships, are
indicative of an absence or deterioration of superego functions. After Jacobson
(1964) Kernberg lists three stages of superego development in a continuum from
deeply primitive, sadistic, and punitive-imago precursors; a second tier fusing
idealized self- and object-representations which, hopefully, will be toned
down; leading to a third level when a more mature, depersonified, abstract
agency –
a moral compass, as it were -- monitors behavior and self-esteem through
more cognitively mediated affect-regulation.
The most extreme forms of superego pathology
are found in the psychopathic antisocial personality disorder, proper where an
ability to lie, deceive, manipulate, and betray, destroys the possibility of
genuine emotional connections, in either direction. Kernberg finds a continuum
from the passive, exploitative, parasitic psychopath to the frankly sadistic
criminal, whose social conditions may facilitate the gratification of
aggressive/cruel impulses. Examining the narcissistic spectrum he finds that
such personalities invariably reveal antisocial features: even when superficial
interactions and the capacity for some investment in others is somewhat intact,
chronic antisocial tendencies in falsifications, stealing, and deceitful
behaviors, may persist. In such categories ego-syntonic grandiosity combines
with cruelty and sadism and acute paranoid traits. Borderline conditions, on
the other hand, despite the predominance of primitive aggression, condensation
of genital and pregenital strivings, and identity diffusion, may present
remarkably intact, if somewhat primitive, superego functioning.
When a pathological
grandiose self is infiltrated with
aggression, patients may consciously voice ideas of cruelty, violence,
destruction, or a perverse pleasure in
causing others‘ pain.
Projective identification is a particularly powerful interpersonal weapon‘,
as Kernberg refers to it, as it ―unloads’‘ aggression onto the other, a move
that may provoke counter-aggressive defensiveness thereby facilitating a
triumphant justification to rationalize further aggressive attacks.
For our purposes it is important to understand
that primitive defenses not only distance and sever social relationships by
offensive, betraying, cruel and sadistic, behaviors, they contaminate them with
unmodulated aggression due to unconscious merger with an omnipotent sadistic
internal-object imago. A frequent defense in severe pathology, splitting
prevents integration of good and bad‘ self/object representations weakening the
ego and reality testing and leaving savagely condemning all ―bad’‘ self
representations to be projected onto whoever is around.. In conclusion Kernberg
asserts that the ―study of narcissism cannot be divorced from the study of the
vicissitudes of both libido and aggression and of internalized object
relations.’‘
It is important to note that for Kernberg the
quality of internal object-relations (and ability to maintain a human
connection) go hand in hand with the quality and organization of other mutually
impacting dynamic systems, especially the functional status of the superego, a
concept particularly valuable in understanding the delinquent, sadistic, or
outright antisocial criminal mind. The connection and interrelationship between
maintaining a non exploitative human connection and cultivating adequate
superego functions, is central in the
dividing line between those who are capable and those incapable of doing
atrocious deeds.
Fromm and Kernberg both mark a significant advance in the psychoanalytic understanding of how some
humans can behave in inhuman ways.
Both represent, respectively, the culmination of
the cultural/historical, sociobiological perspective, and the refinement of
clinical diagnostics and treatment approach for those severe personality
disorders we associate with necrophilous characters and their capacity for
nefarious behaviors.
While Fromm transposed
the concept of an innate death instinct into socially, historically, and
developmentally rooted origins for malignant destructiveness, locating its extreme
forms in character traits, Kernberg fine-tuned the integration of Kleinian
primitive affects and pre-oedipal defense mechanisms with internalized
object-relations and contemporary understanding of ego and superego precursors,
in an overall structural approach.
Others diverge at
crucial crisis points becoming oppositional, antagonistic, antisocial, even
criminal. How does someone, equipped at birth with the same basic emotional
repertoire, become capable of hatred, malice, cruel and sadistic behaviors,
heinous deeds? What has gone wrong at the heart of the intricate fabric of
their social commitment to provoke a total disengagement from human relations,
and what are the markers in the potential for evil in the collapse of the human
connection, for that is what we are
looking at — the breakdown of interpersonal sentiments so complete as to leave
a ravaged inner life and a compulsion to compensate by acting out destructive
impulses.
Roots may lie in gross
misattunement at the earliest stages of mother/infant symbiosis resulting in
severe disruption at any one of the sub-phases of the first
separation-individuation process when mnemonic traces for basic trust and
libidinal investment are being laid down. The correlation between borderline
pathology and failures in negotiation of the rapprochement phase in this most
important first psychological birth were pointed out by Mahler (1968, 1975).
Excessively restrictive
societies or those fostering inequality, lack of freedom or opportunity, will
incite rebellion just as early exposure to violence may result in habitual
cruelty. More intimately, at home, antisocial defiance may be traced to
excessive leniency in upbringing leading to narcissistic traits that are
structurally prone to underdeveloped superego functioning and impaired moral
development. Or the complete opposite; excessively strict upbringing may produce a harsh, punitive malformed superego
fueled by aggressive derivatives manifesting in violent defiance, wholesale
identifications, or numbing mindless obedience.
In either case a persecutory, punitive superego will demand
its ―pound of flesh,’‘leading to masochistic needs for punishment. Yet another
cause may have phylogenetic origins in that
precisely because we are such tribal creatures, tied by affiliation and
loyalty to adhere to groups, this automatically creates outsiders -- those who
are not of us — the ―Others’‘.
The opposite of aggression is not love-- a
highly complex, mature, emotion- but empathy.
It will be useful here to include a few words about the neural substrate
of empathy‘ specifically the implications of the recently discovery mirror
neuron circuitry‘ in tracing the deep primary roots of human interaction.
(Aragno, 2008, 2009) The uncovering of this hard-wired neural region by Gallese
and Rizzolati underscores the phylogenetic origin and vital role this
non-verbal form of intense emotional attunement has played in the survival of
our species. Space allows for only a very brief mention of the essential themes
of Gallese‘s (2001, 2003, 2007) contributions emphasizing those involving the
sociobiology of attachment, learning, emotional expression, and communication.
The mirror neuron circuits,’‘ are so named because the networks involved in
deliberate (willed) action and experienced emotions/sensations are activated
also when merely witnessing or observing similar emotion/sensations in others.
From these seeds Gallese posits ―a whole range of hardwired different mirror
matching mechanisms’‘ (2003). These centers bypass any representational or cognitive/linguistic
systems by directly feeling into‘ others‘ states. Recognition of the perceived
state or emotion goes straight to the matching emotive state in the viewer
suggesting that the experience is underpinned by activity of a shared neural substrate
providing instantaneous empathic‘ understanding. This unmediated reading‘
takes place by way of ―embodied
simulation’‘ (known to us from Piaget as sensory-motor‘ assimilation). Rapid
unmediated grasp of emotional signals woven through concomitant inter-active
behaviors, and adequate responses to them, are crucial forerunners to social
bonding, verbal communication, and a whole concatenation of signifying and
symbolizing capacities that have essential adaptive value.
Consider, then, how certain primitive schizoid
and narcissistic defenses must contribute to the deterioration of this primary
unspoken emotional connection, gradually eroding the very neural threads out of
which deep human bonds are formed and maintained. The perceptual/emotive component of the neuronal
substrate of empathy suggests that the roots of empathic-attunement are quite
crucial in generating deep interpersonal connections and also in maintaining
solidarity with kin in group cohesion. For this powerful relational glue to
dissolve there have to be overwhelmingly negative emotions at play. Clearly the
spectrum of narcissistic and schizoid defenses that corrode or shut down this
vital interpersonal connective tissue, replacing it with self-generated hostile
or paranoid feelings, has serious consequences not only in relationship to
others and the inner world, but in the capacity to test reality.
Pathologies associated
with overwhelming unmodulated primitive aggression and tendencies to act out
destructive acting out are typified by; a) gross disruption of libidinal ties
in the outer and inner world of object-relations; b) delayed, regressed or
pathological superego
functioning; c), a
retreat from relationships into private grandiose omnipotence, with
corresponding loss of reality testing, correlated with, d) a massive use of
projective mechanisms (especially projective identification) to eject and
project shameful, envious, vengeful, or rageful, impulses. The diagnostic
spectrum includes: antisocial and psychopathic personalities: malignant
narcissists; borderlines with antisocial features; and the full schizoid,
schizotypal spectrum.
Major defenses associated with these disorders
are: primitive, dissociative splitting, whereby objects are experienced as ―all
good’‘ or ―all bad’‘ with correlative complete shifts and reversals in
perceptions of, and feelings about, a particular person. Denial, negation, and
projection, inter-connected defenses often found together, impact significantly
on distortions, or the complete absence, of reality testing and reinforce
splitting, dissociation, and isolation of affect., manifesting in selective
lack of concern and emotional detachment. Projective Identification has
enormous, quasi-mysterious interpersonal consequences so powerfully does it
this wholesale projection infiltrate and ―take over’‘ the recipient. Unlike
simple projection this deeply structured habitual ejection into another
consists of a disavowed internalized object-relations pattern of self-and-object
representations in which both affective aspects of an aggressive/submissive or
sadomasochistic unit are played out. The projection is deeply unconscious and
It serves important functions in keeping negative self-representations and
anxiety at bay, leading, however, to desperate attempts at controlling the
feared object while perpetuating
distrust and provocative self-justifications for continued antagonism and
aggression. Extreme forms of
idealization and devaluation,
often, predictably, following one from the other, frequently oscillating
between identificatory grandiosity and profound shame and dejection. according
to internal states. Lack of superego integration and disturbances of identity, in borderline and psychotics leads to
disturbances in volition, a too little considered human faculty. In addition to
impoverishing object-relations, all These defenses weaken ego functioning, the
development of impulse control, frustration tolerance, and the ability to
engage in appropriate sublimatory channels.
Summary and Conclusion
"The
capitalist scheme of values in fact transformed five of the seven deadly sins
of Christianity - pride, envy, greed, avarice and lust - into positive social
virtues, treating them as necessary incentives to all economic enterprise;
whilst the cardinal virtues, beginning with love and humility, were rejected as
"bad for business"..."
Lewis Mumford, Technics and
Human Development, 1994, pg.276
The essence of evil
remains embodied in the unmodulated emotions underlying the seven deadly
sins: Envy, greed, wrath, lust,
gluttony, pride and sloth, to which one might add vengeance, rivalry, spite,
laziness, the urge for power and to overpower. All these grow out of the decay
of unproductive lives, disconnection, emptiness, and loss of meaning. These
negative affects stream in and rise, full force, swelling from energies that
ought to be applied to productive, socially embedded and rewarded, efforts.
Inadequate sublimatory channels and the extreme insular, brittle, ego-centrism of malignant narcissism
preclude empathy and often stymie or inhibit
personal effort while misdirecting aggressive energies through malicious
motives.
From a psychoanalytic
perspective evil deeds and behaviors are viewed as manifestations of
pathological personality structure and the nature and level of defenses that
maintain that dynamic organization, fuelling its motives. No psychoanalytic
discussion of aberrant and abhorrent actions
is complete without closing on the issue of super ego pathology. Antisocial
tendencies result from narcissistic rage, envy, entitlement, and primitive
ego-centric attitudes. Without adequate decentration higher levels of moral
development cannot develop. In a subgroup of narcissistic pathology, the
infiltration of an aggressive pathological grandiose self, gives rise
to…―malignant narcissism’‘-- ego-syntonic grandiosity combined with cruelty or
sadism, and severe paranoid traits (Kernberg, 1984). The destruction of the inner and outer world
of object-relations goes hand in hand with irreparable breakdown of super-ego
functions.’‘
Having explored the roots of evil, here are
some of its manifest forms: 1) Sibling rivalry, a malignant envy so universal
as to be considered commonplace. Like vengeance, it is a pernicious, corrosive,
emotional disposition that may, and often does, reach peaks of treachery and
immorality around inheritance. Excessive ambition may also elicit pathological
jealousy but sibling envy constellates specifically around an interpersonal
triangle; the wish to eliminate and replace a hated and resented, rivaled
sibling, who is perceived as being in the way of having the coveted
parents‘exclusive love: 2) The Talionic response: until the New Testament
Christian doctrine of forgiveness an eye for an eye‘ was the Old Testament‘s
recommended retribution for an offense. The problem is it produces a chain of
unending vengeance and destruction: 3) Cult leadership, individuals so
overpowering and convincing in their grandiose delusions as to be able to lead
their flock to wholesale massacre, as in the Jones‘s Town ‘’kool―aid’‘* tragedy:
4) Racism, enslavement, and prejudice, in their dehumanizing debasement of the
―other’‘ are surely the most flagrant examples of justification for the use and
abuse of others, leading to acts of atrocity, to which ought to be added the
youthful versions of; 5) Bullying and Ostracism, the cruel picking on someone,
or excluding them, from a peer group, the tragic consequences of which have
come to public awareness through recent suicides. From another angle the
destructive power of, 5) The Evil Eye,
has been feared for centuries, a testament to our social sensitivity to being
looked upon with benevolent ―gaze.’‘ Close on its heels comes the uniquely
human sadistic passion for: 6) Observing the suffering of others; consider that
ancient Roman spectacles consisted of watching people mauled by lions, combat
unto death, and public crucifixion. All over Europe ,
into the eighteen hundreds, along with common gallows and other marketplace
punishments, public hangings, burnings, and especially beheadings of nobility
provided vivid attraction for bemused crowds. In her book ―Regarding the Pain
of Others’‘ (2003) writing about lynching‘s in the south, Susan Sontag, calls
attention to the fact that not only were these savage killings public but
someone actually recorded them in pictures taken as souvenirs, many revealing
honest to goodness grinning spectators. Thousands more spectators were drawn to
a New York Jerusalem
It goes without saying
how important it is not only to realize the dynamic role of destructiveness in the
social process but also to understand what the specific conditions for its
intensity are. We have already noted the hostility which pervaded the middle
class in the age of the Reformation and which found its expression in certain
religious concepts of Protestantism, especially in its ascetic spirit, and in
Calvin's picture of a merciless God to whom it had been pleasing to sentence
part of mankind to eternal damnation for no fault of their own. Then, as later, the
middle class expressed its hostility mainly disguised as moral indignation, which
rationalized an intense envy against those who had the means to enjoy life. In
our contemporary scene the destructiveness of the lower middle class has been an
important factor in the rise of Nazism which appealed to these destructive
strivings and used them in the battle against its enemies. The root of
destructiveness in the lower middle class is easily recognizable as the one
which has been assumed in this account: the isolation of the individual
and the suppression of individual expansiveness, both of which were true to a
higher degree for the lower middle class than for the classes above and below.
Ideology and Personality
Psychoanalysts since the
1930s have tried to analyze the authoritarian, destructive ideologies that came
forward in the 20th century, Nazism and fascism. For Wilhelm Reich, a crucial
question was why masses of people were attracted to National Socialism and
anti-Semitic ideology. What type of personality is drawn to these ideas? This
is the question posed by Reich in The Mass Psychology of Fascism (Reich, 1933),
and by the Frankfurt
School
In brief, according to
these studies, the psychological attraction of Nazism may be explained by an
authoritarian education of children within a patriarchal family structure
characterized by denial of sexuality, producing an authoritarian character type
with aggressive feelings. Aggression cannot, however, be directed toward
parents or powerful people, but are instead directed against weak minority
groups.
A disquieting question
arising from these studies is whether the individual may actually wish to be
part of hierarchical, authoritarian structures, i.e., that the individual may
harbor an “authoritarian longing” (Hagtvet et al., 2011). Erich Fromm's
suggestive title Escape from Freedom (Fromm, 1941) captures the same motive
from another angle: the wish to escape from burdensome personal responsibility.
The motive of “authoritarian longing” is elaborated in recent psychoanalytic
studies, seeking to identify deep structures that are common to authoritarian
ideologies (Bohleber, 2010). According to Bohleber (2010), the essence seems to
be fantasies of unity and purity. Unity refers to ideas of being one with
something bigger: Nazism contained ideas about the nation and the Aryan “Volk”
(people); fundamentalist Islam has the conception of ummah ; radical right-wing
ideologies have the idea about a homogeneous Europe
restraining Eurabia. In this perspective, the “flight from freedom” comes
forward as an expression of the deeply rooted human need for safety and
attachment. On an unconscious level “the fatherland,” “the native country” may
represent safe parental figures: safety is obtained through belonging to a
troop, submitting to the rules of the group, maybe under the leadership of a
father figure.
A closely linked idea is
that of purity. Within the group, individual distinctive stamps are denied and
substituted by identification with group members of one's “own” kind—difference
and otherness is experienced as impure. Within Nazi ideology, it was the Jews
that became the carrier of impurity, Nazi propaganda producing a vast range of
metaphors relating to the Jews as “parasites” and scroungers attaching
themselves as leeches to the “ethnic body” ( Volkskörper) , or as contaminating
“vermin” and a “pestilence.” Within radical right-wing ideologies of today,
Muslims are the carrier of impurity. When fantasies of unity and purity
dominate a group, identity is affirmed through mirroring from group members
identical to oneself. Groups of this kind tend to become increasingly radical.
No deviations are tolerated; purity is maintained through exclusion and finally
through ethnic cleansing. In this way, ideals of uniformity and homogenization
via purification trigger persecutory aggression, persecution, and violence.
Endorsement of
an ideological worldview often takes place in young adulthood, at a point of
time when it is expected that the individual separates from their parents and
establishes an independent social identity through occupation and choice of a
partner. When analyzing adherence to ideological movements it may be fruitful
to take as a point of departure this separation—and individuation process,
which always unfolds within a specific social environment. Maybe identification
with the nation and a “pure” people represents a “solution” if the individual
identity project appears too complicated? The question of “Who am I?” is
replaced by “Where do I belong?” (Bohleber, 2010), and the young adult is
spared the challenge of forming a separate, individual identity—in a world of
rivalry, competition, and plurality.
In my view, it should be
emphasized that in an ideology worshipping one's own people, banishing “the
other”/“the stranger” often comes as a response to real social and political
frustration and experience of loss, e.g., of jobs or status as a man.
Therefore, ideological motivation has to be analyzed in a social and cultural
context as well. The loss of traditional privileges in relation to women,
family, and society experienced by a lot of white, Western men, may be a
stronger motive than we would like to think.
That right-wing young
adults project their dreams and longings into a uniform, homogenous, and pure
Europe bears witness to how difficult it is to “find oneself” in a
multicultural society. However, although ideologies may apparently represent
“solutions” to real social problems, the intensity with which they are defended
testifies to unconscious motives being actualized: the way “the others” as a
group is portrayed, undifferentiated and without individual variations,
suggests that the very perception of them as well as of the historical and
social circumstances they are embedded in is colored by fantasies and
projections.
Certainly, the wish to
belong to a pure unity is relevant to grasp why people are attracted to
authoritarian ideologies. Symbiotic fantasies of melting together—yearning for
abandonment or for being embedded in a safe embrace—these are universal human
longings, and many people harbor such fantasies without being attracted to
authoritarian ideas. From a psychological perspective the question is not
whether one has such fantasies, but rather how they are organized within the
personality as a whole.
*The Jonestown Cult Massacre
Was a mass suicide of more than 900 people, followers
of the Jonestown cult (officially named the "People's Temple") in the
middle of a South American jungle which took place on November 18, 1978.
"People's Temple", was
founded in 1955 by Indianapolis preacher James Warren Jones, based on a
combination of religious and socialist philosophies.
After relocating to California in
1965, the church continued to grow in membership and began advocating their
political ideals more actively. With an I.R.S. investigation and a great deal
of negative press mounting against the radical church, Jones urged his
congregation to join him in a new, isolated community where they could escape criticism
and practice a more communal way of life.
In 1977, Jones and many of his
followers relocated to Jonestown, located on a tract of land the People's
Temple had purchased and begun to develop in Guyana three years earlier
Relatives of cult members soon grew
concerned and requested that the U.S. government rescue what they believed to
be brainwashed victims living in concentration camp-like conditions under
Jones's power.
In November 1978, California
Congressman Leo Ryan arrived in Guyana to survey Jonestown and interview its
inhabitants. After reportedly having his life threatened by a Temple member
during the first day of his visit, Ryan decided to cut his trip short and
return to the U.S. with some Jonestown residents who wished to leave. As they
boarded their plane, a group of Jones's guards opened fire on them, killing
Ryan and four others.
Some members of Ryan's party escaped,
however. Upon learning this, Jones told his followers that Ryan's murder would
make it impossible for their commune to continue functioning. Rather than
return to the United States, the People's Temple would preserve their church by
making the ultimate sacrifice: their own lives. Jones's 912 followers were
given a deadly concoction of purple Kool-Aid mixed with cyanide, sedatives, and
tranquilizers. Jones apparently shot himself in the head.
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