Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream: A Forensic Psychiatrist Illuminates the Darker Side of Human Behavior (4 page)

On a more personal scale, can we figure out whether, when, why, and how an element of destructive self-centeredness enters into our everyday social intercourse and causes hurt, misunderstanding, and psychological harm to others? The Golden Rule is an intuitive recognition of the connection between self-centeredness and evil. In adjuring us to do unto others as we would have others do unto us, it exhorts us to sublimate our natural selfishness into empathy for others.

The Hitlers, Stalins, and other mass murderers and torturers are on the extreme end of the continuum of violence and sadism that is common to all of mankind. They know what they are doing. But their counterparts, the most deranged, violently mentally ill criminals, do not conceive and perpetrate horrible crimes while in other regards maintaining “normal” lives. Many are incarcerated in institutions for the criminally insane. Over a million other prisoners populate American jails. The majority of them are not considered mentally ill by current diagnostic standards, though many of them have committed violent acts. Yet there is a surfeit of violence in our society; it may not hold the headlines of history in the way that Hitler’s atrocities do, but terrible things go on daily, such as the psychological and physical maiming and murder of children.

To think that these events have nothing to do with people considered to be normal is to refuse to look at the evidence for my basic thesis: we are all human beings and capable of a grand spectrum of behaviors, both that which is considered good, and that which we know very well to be bad. Although most people are able to curb their sadistic, destructive dark side, that side continues to be present and operative to varying degrees by day and by night. Primitive humans thought that when the moon waned, part of it ceased to exist. Today, we know that the dark part of the moon, though not visible, is still there. We are made up of many goods and bads, and we had better face that fact. Indeed, it is one of the aims of this book to help us do so.

As I review in my mind the experience of treating and evaluating literally thousands of people, I find that I cannot generalize about them. Rather than containing two strands, one good and the other bad, each individual is like a rope with intertwining psychological strands of immense complexity. For the patient, the difficult but often rewarding work of psychotherapy is unraveling some of the more troublesome strands. It is far better to grab hold of one’s rope than be hung by it. To attempt to cast out violence by attributing it to “them” and not to “us” will only enslave us to a greater and more psychologically damaging myth of safety. We must stare our demons in the eye and learn to control them, so that our darkest dreams will never be translated into terrible actions.

The Dalai Lama articulates with beautiful simplicity a major theme of this book: “Many people today agree that we need to reduce violence in our society. If we are truly serious about this, we must deal with the roots of violence, particularly those that exist within each of us. We need to embrace ‘inner disarmament,’ reducing our own emotions of suspicion, hatred and hostility toward our brothers and sisters.”

That all men and women must struggle with their dark side is not reason to despair. Love and kindness are also fundamental parts of ourselves and find expression every second, everywhere on earth. The grand catastrophes of humankind, such as the Holocaust, and the evils of our everyday lives, reveal that the greatest danger comes from denying that there is a beastly part of our humanity. If we can acknowledge the beast and attempt to control it, the beast is less likely to leap out when we least expect it.

“A Light Unto My Path”

A few years ago I was asked by a young psychiatrist to supervise her therapeutic work with a difficult patient. During the course of the supervision, she reported to me an incident with the patient that was deeply troubling her. Therapy sessions with this patient, a single, middle-aged woman with chronic depression, had begun 8 months earlier and were characterized by the patient’s anger and complaints about her life. The patient seemed to find the minor problems in life to be very wounding. My colleague traced these reactions to the patient’s sense of self-importance and entitlement. After the conclusion of an especially difficult therapy session, full of bitter, tearful complaints and recriminations, the patient went into the bathroom of the waiting room area. A few moments later, my colleague opened the door from her office to the waiting room to greet the next patient, but that one had not yet arrived. The previous patient, still in the bathroom, had left her purse on a waiting room chair. My colleague was jolted by an impulse to take something from the patient’s purse. Astounded and ashamed of this impulse, she closed the door and shut herself back in her office to contemplate her urge to steal from the patient.

Later that day, she and I had a regularly scheduled supervisory session. She told me of the incident and felt comfortable enough to examine the unbidden impulse to steal. She had been turning over in her mind what it might possibly mean. It was not money or anything in particular she wanted from the purse, the psychiatrist told me, it was that she just wanted something back from the patient. This deeply selfcentered patient was an inveterate taker, giving nothing in return to any of her relationships. After a time people would drop her, leaving her with a numbing sense of rejection, isolation, and chronic depression. Now, after 8 months of treating the patient, the psychiatrist was experiencing feelings of emotional depletion and reacting against being treated as an object. This patient, of course, aroused similar feelings in nearly everyone with whom she came into sustained contact. The psychiatrist knew that these were also feelings the patient had experienced at the hands of a distant, depressed, rejecting mother and an indifferent father.

But why had she wanted to steal or to possess something from this patient now? After examining her own feelings, the psychiatrist recognized the extent of desolation and emptiness in the wake of the recent breakup of her unhappy marriage. Also, the failure of the marriage had triggered unresolved feelings of loss and loneliness from her childhood, following the sudden death of her mother. Now my colleague realized that she had been subconsciously looking to her patient for nurture and sustenance at a time of her own personal crisis. In this paradigm, the patient stood both for the psychiatrist’s lost mother and her more recently lost spouse, and her yearnings for both of them.

With the insight she had gained about her own mental and emotional situation through examining the singular impulse to steal, the psychiatrist then returned her therapeutic attention to the patient. For the first time, the psychiatrist felt empathy for the patient and pointed out to her the pattern of feelings the patient aroused in others, which enabled the patient to see how she was reversing and reenacting the distant, cold relationship she had experienced with her mother. This insight proved to be of great assistance to the patient.

My colleague’s breakthrough with the patient was made possible because she was willing to face directly the black pain of her own losses and to insist on understanding why it had erupted as a wish to steal in this particular situation. The ability to face, hold, and examine antisocial thoughts and feelings is not just a requirement for psychiatrists and their patients. It is necessary for everyone. I am not naïve enough, however, to believe that the vast majority of humankind can or will examine their darker impulses, consciously control these brooding forces, or harness them for good purposes. History suggests the unlikelihood that most of us will perform that task. This book is for the few who can look inward.

Restraint of antisocial impulses is learned from the cradle, within the family and through many other social structures. Parents and caretakers help children internalize the ethical, philosophical, cultural, and religious values that also restrain antisocial impulses. Later on, a society’s political system attempts to ensure through law and custom that destructive tendencies remain curbed—and largely unexamined. But even the healthiest genes, the warmest parents and family, the most morally unassailable community, the best education, and the most humane society cannot eradicate the dark and destructive forces in our personalities. Nor should they, for our dark side is an inextricable part of our humanity. When it is denied or run from, there is always some price to be paid. Moreover, the darker side of men and women cannot be snuffed out by building more prisons and carrying out more executions. This is not society’s purpose; rather, its goal is to deter, punish, restrain, and reform.

As in the first law of thermodynamics, which explains the conservation of energy, our darker side can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only change form. It can be retained in thoughts and feelings, it can be rechanneled into productive activity, or it can be acted out in a destructive way. In my work with patients, I have learned that we essentially have two courses to follow: either struggle to recognize, control, and channel our basic conflicts and impulses, or allow them to luxuriate and perhaps to dominate us. Unfortunately, much of humankind takes the latter road, which is strewn with many of life’s perturbations and miseries.

It is far better to choose, as my colleague did, to walk in the path that leads to the light, to confront the dark side, and to work through it. In that particular instance, the light was revealed reasonably swiftly. But as psychiatrists know from working with patients, insight and intuition for self-discovery is not accessible to everyone, neither is it an unmitigated good, whenever it does become accessible. For some, psychological insight can be a peak transforming experience. When our antisocial impulses are buried alive, like vampires, they can emerge to harm us. Exposing our dark side to the light does not make our personal vampires disappear as in legend. But doing so offers the possibility that we can develop constructive options once we are clearly able to see the inhabitants of our dark side. This empowering idea is expressed in John 7:28: “For you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

In a sense, our patients are never the same after an insight is achieved—it is hoped they are changed for the better. For others, insight may be undesirable. For still others, it is ineffective in alleviating certain behaviors. To add insight to the injury already present may worsen some patients’ conditions. The American poet Robinson Jeffers wryly observed that most people would rather face a tiger on the road than confront the truth. We must remember that the majority of people get by passably well in controlling their most dangerous and antisocial impulses through reasonably effective internal controls and such pragmatic restraints as the police officer on the next corner.

But when we walk the path of light, we are able to see where we are going. We will recognize the landscape around us for what it is, be it beautiful or threatening. My colleague, willing to shed noonday light on a dark corner of the road, channeled a destructive impulse into a constructive growth experience that helped her and her patient. The path that leads to the light is open to anyone who has a native capacity for insight, intuition, and a natural curiosity about his or her behavior. Along this path, we shed light on our demons and discover our humanity. We may understand that dark impulses can be channeled and used to enrich and empower our lives through art, literature, humor, athletics, or simply through the sheer zest and enjoyment of the hurlyburly of life that comes from channeled aggression. In fact, much of life’s work and play involves controlling and redirecting aggressive impulses. It is a path that permits us to take responsibility for our actions by facing and acknowledging our feelings. Because it discards disabling myths and illusions, it enables us to make freer choices. It is a path that, like this book, leads through patches of darkness so we may better understand and appreciate the light. One of the greatest, most ennobling human characteristics is the ability to turn one’s mind back upon itself in a momentous act of personal discovery. We can celebrate, with the psalmist’s song of praise, that personal knowledge is “a light unto my path.”

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Human Killing Machines and Us

A Psychology of Evil

There is no sin, no crime I could not be guilty of. —
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Serial Killer Next Door

Why are people fascinated by serial killers? The plethora of books, movies, and television documentaries about them attests to the public’s obsession with these human killing machines. Yet compared to the number of spouses who kill their partners, or drunken drivers who commit vehicular homicide, there are relatively few serial killers: the FB I estimates that at any given time, between 200 and 500 serial killers are at large and that they kill 3,500 people a year. (See Chapter 11 for an in-depth discussion of serial killers.)

My hunch is that people are fascinated by serial killers because of their perceived resemblance to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. As with Dr. Jekyll, most serial killers appear outwardly quite ordinary, like your neighbor or mine, living normal everyday lives in which, just as we do, they fill the car with gas, hold down a job, pay taxes. Then, from behind this veneer of ordinariness, their Mr. Hyde personality, representative of the darkest aspect of humanity, jumps out to kill their victims—and to transfix us.

Prime examples uphold the stereotype. They all hid in plain sight. Dennis Rader worked for 14 years as a security company employee,
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then as a census taker, and for another 14 years as an animal control and zoning employee of his Wichita, Kansas, suburb. He had been married for decades, had two grown children, was a long-term member of his Lutheran church, and had served as president of its congregation council, as a member of the zoning board of appeals, and as a Cub Scout leader. He looked harmless, neighbors exclaimed when he was arrested as the “BTK” killer in 2005, but soon he confessed to having murdered 10 people in incidents dating back to the 1970s. BTK, which he had suggested as one of the names by which he could be called, was used in taunting letters and missives to the police and the media; it stood for Bind, Torture, and Kill. The packages he sent contained dolls bound in plastic as well as graphic evidence of the murders.