Cruelty, Violence and Murder

Arthur Hyatt Williams, Paul Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781855752160
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429912443
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The line that separates those who kill from those who only think about it, and from those who injure themselves, is often thinner than we imagine. Convicted murderers serving life-sentences in England are among the subjects of this in-depth psychological study of what makes people kill.

Part I

1
Aggression and Death

Originally, Freud stated that death was unthinkable in the unconscious mind, but was euphemistically felt to have gone away. He was forced to alter this view in light of the curiously lemminglike way in which much of the youth of Europe went to be slaughtered in the impersonal battles of World War I. Dying for their countries seemed to predominate over fighting for their countries, at least in their thoughts and fantasies. When Freud changed his mind about the ideas people have about death, he wrote "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" (1920), in which he set forth his theory of life and death instincts. Later, he seemed to be somewhat doubtful about it all, and at one point said to his followers, "You may accept this theory or not, as you choose" (Hoffer 1952, personal communication).

Melanie Klein took Freud's theory of life and death as one of the cornerstones of her work, both theoretical and clinical. The death instinct and the life instinct, she stated, began from the beginning of extrauterine life (work on prenatal life, particularly in Northern Italy, suggests that these two polarities begin a long time before birth).

Death instinct is manifested actively by destructive and self-destructive behavior, by envy, hatred, and greed, not to mention perversion. Life instinct is associated with construction, love, trust, generosity, and reparation for harm done by the self to others. These two states of being exist in all of us, and in a lifetime there are changes in the balance between the two, an ebbing and flowing of the two opposing tides of life and death. Some people are more grounded and fixed at one end of the scale. In some, "the fierce dispute" between the two is muted, while in others it is fanned into intense conflict by forces from within or outside the self and by interaction between the two. Death instinct escaladons are induced by repeated provocation by the subject in a kind of disturbed reality testing. These evoke a reaction from the victim, regarded by the subject as an unjustified attack, further provoking his attacks until a very serious, even murderous, situation is reached. In it, neither the provoker nor the provoked is able to halt the escalation. Similarly, according to Klein, there can be an escalation of positive attitudes associated with good experiences and derived from the life instinct Klein's basic findings were accepted entirely by Bion. Briefly enumerated, they are:

1. The early fantasy attacks by the infant upon the mother's breast and her inside babies are due to experiences of deprivation as well as being generated from within, mainly by envy. Therefore, a fear of reprisal is incubated.
2. Persecutory and depressive anxiety derived respectively from the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. It was Bion who represented the movement, that is, the transformation between the two positions, with reversible arrows, thus P/S ↔ D.
3. Splitting.
4. Projective identification, which Bion describes as an omnipotent fantasy in which the infant finds it possible in fantasy to split off temporarily undesired but sometimes valued parts of its personality and put them into another person, primarily mother or her surrogate.
5. The importance of envy.
6. Symbol formation. In particular, Melanie Klein's concept of an inside world, in which fantasies and impulses associated with them can be worked upon, is most important as a springboard for Bion's work. There can be a continual process of reality testing, so that it is possible for a mellowing to take place in the inner world, as a consequence of which there may be no need for external action; if action does take place, it is modified toward less violent and more appropriate behavior than the original fan tasy-/impulse-driven impulse. The inner world constitutes a relatively safe harbor of the mind in which states of conflict can be worked through toward some degree of resolution. This working through enables and consists of continual reality testing; also, importantly, there is a degree of internal abreaction that usually saves the individual and the victim from the worst effects of that violence. In some criminals, instead of a maturation in cask, so to speak, a worsening, a fermentation, leads to worse violence.

Between a mindless, pessimistic attitude ("Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die") and a paranoid, suspicious one ("What is this, I don't know, it must be bad—kill it"), the shared component is the demand for immediate relief by evacuation into action or the "disburdening of the self' of accretions of stimuli. There is no evolution of meaning, no understanding, so there can be no learning from the experience of a threatening situation. On the other hand, if the crucial mental decision is the opposite one, a painful state of mind is tolerated long enough for action to be taken to modify the situation in a favorable way, what Freud calls following the reality principle. The outcome is then better in two ways: first, the action taken is likely to be of more durable benefit; second, the ability to sustain a painful situation without rushing to action heightens the ability to put up with psychic pain on subsequent occasions when it becomes necessary or desirable to do so.

Before considering how these concepts relate to attacks upon life, I would like to emphasize that threats, or persecutions that may result in violence, are generated sometimes inside the self of the individual and sometimes from an overreaction to external provocation, either by accident or intention. The internally generated persecutions may be related to physiological or other needs. The common denominator, however, is the inability of the individual to tolerate frustration, and often an inability to see a means of gratifying a need without seizing it.

Melanie Klein's views about the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, the former associated with part objects, the latter with whole objects, are crucial in the understanding of attacks upon life, the self, and others. Bion's development and use of Klein's views, particularly the theory of projective identification, are valuable in understanding murderer/victim interaction. Bion's chapter "On Arrogance," in Second Thoughts (1967a) describes projective identification as a primitive and essential form of communication between infant and mother. A mother capable of reverie unconsciously works on the communication of the baby, preparing the infant's raw communication in a process of psychic digestion, such that the relatively healthy child is able to accept it and use it for further development. This transaction is the fundamental developmental interchange in which the baby's developmental difficulties and growth crises are coped with and modified, allowing the infant to introject the mother's capacity to carry out the transaction. Thus, in normally favorable circumstances, the infant gradually develops an internal, personal, "do-it-yourself" capacity. Serious consequences can arise when this does not occur. The difficulties or snags can be on both sides. For example, mother may not be capable of reverie. She may, instead of predigesting the communications, block them and return raw frustration to the baby. She may, if she is schizoid, strip the communication of all meaning so that what the baby gets back from her is a nameless dread. On the other hand, the baby may be so intolerant of waiting that, with "majestic instancy," she or he demands immediate and total relief from unpleasant states, or total gratification of wishful needs. One is reminded of Winnicott's term, a good enough mother. Whatever the breakdown of projective identification, the result is a lack of development of the "do-it-yourself" outfit in the baby. Bion's adult clinical cases revealed a triad of symptoms: "arrogance, stupidity and curiosity" (1967a), all of which are widely separated. The importance of the developmental intolerance of psychic pain cannot be overemphasized because it increases the likelihood of distortion in reality testing and leads inevitably to maladaptation, especially from the viewpoint of attacks upon life. In a worsening situation, which of the life-threatening actions takes place depends on a number of factors that will be considered in detail elsewhere. Freud (1917), in "Mourning and Melancholia," described the intrapsychic impact of the loss of a near person, whether loved, hated, or ambivalently regarded. The survivor is posed with the problem of relinquishing the lost person as a result, and the setup of that person inside him-or herself as an internal object image, distinct from but related to the self. This process takes about nine to twelve months. When it is possible to go through mourning fully, few unresolved residues are left to give trouble later. The essential feature is that the survivor moves toward the depressive position.

If, however, there is an ineffective or arrested mourning process, there is identification with the lost person (Freud 1917), and a pitched intrapsychic battle ensues with the haunting internal image. The mourner able to complete the mourning process ends up enriched in personality, "a sadder and a wiser man" (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations 1979, p. 156). This contrasts markedly with the failed mourner, who often becomes psychosomatically ill, hypochondriacal and accident-prone, or, in certain cases, suicidal. Melanie Klein stated that there had to be a thorough working through of the depressive position in the mourning process if there is to be real recovery. What she meant was that if the depressive position can be held on to, that is, sustained, the way is opened up for reparation. In its internal aspect this means restoration of a vital inner world of the subject. In its external aspect, which is evident, there is a turning to good works of various kinds. In manic reparation, the importance of which was stressed by Segal (personal communication 1975), good, external reparative activities can be seen, but not the essential intrapsychic ones. This results in a situation that is glib and unstable intrapsychically. One often sees external reparative activities in criminals; the task of psychotherapy then is to help the individual to sustain the internal work of mourning for damage done to internal and external objects.

Melanie Klein contradicted Freud's view that criminals have a weak or deficient superego, stressing that they have a persecutory superego that is often savagely punitive. An aggressive, perhaps destructive child externalizes into dramatic enactments with parents what he or she cannot contain and digest in the way of experiences, provoking parental or other authority figures to treat him or her very severely. These now punishing figures are then internalized and become a further part of the basic personality fabric of the child, worsening a situation that its possessor already cannot contain. In the understanding of this situation, Bion's views of "container and contained" are helpful. Psychoanalysts, beginning with Freud, agree that as a person feels treated by others, so does he tend to treat other people. The rule of talion, that is, the law of retaliation equivalent to an offense, is pervasive. This applies to the inner as well as the outer world. It represents the original paranoid-schizoid position situation before any developmental and maturational advance to the depressive position. An increasing capacity to treat others as one would wish to be treated can occur, but only insofar as the depressive position is achieved. Worse for a person than living by the talion principle is domination by paranoid delusions. In action, this is seen in the way in which, because of their mounting suspicion and fear of an attack, some violent criminals forestall it by attacking first.

Bion, in Elements of Psychoanalysis (1963) and Attention and Interpretation (1970), states how and why he uses an alimentary model of the mind. It represents the first essential process for life and growth. He then considers the question of food for the mind. This food he regards as the truth. He goes on to show that the protein, fat, and carbohydrate breast may, in states dominated by adverse attitudes, become split off and separated from the breast which is associated with containment, alleviation of fears and anxieties, and the giving of the truth and appreciation of beauty. Separation of physical needs from psychic emotional needs—the satisfaction of the former and the starvation of the latter—is the incubator of brutalized children and therefore, later, of criminals. Bion differentiated between the task to be carried out and the intrapsychic apparatus to enable it to be carried out. This is stated in his papers on thought disorders and, in particular, in "On Arrogance" (Bion 1967a).

Early in my study of murderers, prior to the work of Klein, I was puzzled by how something inside the mind of a potential killer sometimes remained in limbo for years and then broke loose into murderous violence. Klein later emphasized to me the nature of the splitting involved and how a person can remain for years dominated by one of his or her selves. Eventually he or she can short circuit, so to speak, and suddenly operate from what seems like a different self. Werthem (1927) described in The Show of Violence how, in his view, murderousness was activated into the deed of murder. Before the deed, conscious efforts—sometimes unconscious ones, too—were designed and devoted to keeping the murderous encapsulations from action. Then something took place internally that broke loose the murderousness from its cordoned-off status so that the whole of the energies of the individual became devoted to enacting the murderous deed, after which a precarious restoration of balance usually took place. To this catastrophic event Werthem applied the term catathymic crisis.

It is over the understanding of the relationships between inner and outer worlds, the interaction of character with traumatic experiences known or thought to have detonated the catastrophic crisis, that I obtained important help from Kleinian and post-Kleinian sources. As a result, I began to envisage a sort of intrapsychic gang, the activities of which militated toward destruction and death. It was a narcissistic organization, closely associated with power obtained and used irresponsibly. This internal organization became evident externally in individuals when they participated in small and large groups and in organizations. Meltzer and Rosenfeld, followed later by many others, described the intrapsychic narcissistic gang associated also with a negative therapeutic response. The patients they described were usually not indictably criminal, and in this respect were not the same as my criminal patients. After several years, as psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy went on, various changes were noted in some of the patients. Depression was expected and occurred, sometimes alarmingly, because of the continuous defensive tendency to act out. Hysterical identification with former victims, hypochondria, and psychosomatic illnesses were frequently encountered. The theoretical framework of Klein, together with the extension by Bion and other close post-Kleinians, provided me with a map and a compass, enabling me to find out more about what was going on in the unknown territory of the criminal mind. In addition, Bion's and, later, Meitzer's views of catastrophic change as a breakthrough, not necessarily a breakdown, helped to give me confidence to press on with the therapy rather than quell the turbulence and avoid a real working through of the underlying encapsulated or psychotic part of their personalities.

Essential to the analysis of psychotic and borderline patients, as Bion stated, is the use of countertransference. Linked with this is the need for the psychoanalyst or therapist to preserve what Bion describes as the indispensable aloofness necessary for the study and elucidation of the unknown. The therapist acting as a container allows deeper meaning to accrue, thus giving back a fuller understanding to the patient without too much of the therapist's psyche being added to it as a contaminant. The many snags and obstacles in this include idealization of the therapist and using him or her as a container for excitement, thus ensuring that the therapist is entertained.

2
The Death Constellation (I)

Introduction to the Problem

For many years I have been endeavoring to disentangle the complicated ingredients that contribute to the relatively uncommon crime of homicide. Although I have collected startling and at times shocking data in great quantities, there appeared to be no precise, underlying formula. Years ago I suggested the possibility of an intrapsychic patterning to which, naively, I gave the name blueprint for murder. Although this phrase was too sensational perhaps, it may be useful here. What I used to term a "blueprint" is quite common in people who do not commit discernible attacks on life processes. It also seems to be present in more people who commit crime than is readily recognized. What goes on in the inner worlds of conscious, and especially, unconscious, fantasy in these people requires investigation. Is homicide only one of the possible end points? Attempted suicide is common in the premurderous histories of persons incarcerated for homicide. Also, a large number of murderers attempt to or actually commit suicide after committing homicide. During the course of serious and persistent attempts to give psychotherapy to convicted murderers in one of Great Britain's prisons, I observed that when the responsibility for the crime begins to be recognized and owned, the murderer usually develops hypochondriacal complaints accompanied by an increased incidence of psychosomatic illness ranging from colds to rectal bleeding or even, in one case, a radiologically confirmed peptic ulcer. Another man developed leukemia and died, though cause and effect cannot be proved.

In studying previous records of people convicted of homicide, one notes a high incidence of accidents in which someone else has died, though the responsibility for the actual death is usually not easy to designate. Here we have a situation in which there are attacks upon life. How widespread they are can be inferred from the behavior of human beings, especially men, in settings in which attacks on life receive encouragement and approval by an acknowledged authority, as in war or in guerrilla activities such as those in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. When one looks at the low incidence of homicide in England, only 0.6 per 100,000 of population per annum, and even in Colombia, the world's highest for homicide, the figures are 34.4 per 100,000 (Wolfgang and Ferracuti 1967), one wonders if what one is seeing in homicide itself is merely the visible tip of an iceberg. Perhaps the invisible seven-eighths of this complex psychological condition could be brought into focus by looking at other kinds of attacks upon life processes.

It may well be that some attacks are expressed harmlessly or are even sublimated. I am thinking of the wide appeal of crime reports in the press, and also of the mass readership of crime fiction, especially murder mystery paperbacks. Is there a continuum from thoughts and fantasies about murder to actual attacks on life? Or is there a break in the scale or spectrum at some point so that on one side there is no risk of an attack being carried out and on the other, great risk? The individual may be pushed one way or another by external circumstances, or may gravitate to one end or the other because of what is going on in his inner world of fantasy, thought, feeling, and impulse.

It may be useful to assume that everyone begins life by being at risk. The difficulty in symbolizing and the tendency to slip from depressive anxiety to paranoid-schizoid anxiety causes the not fully developed capacity to symbolize to revert to concrete thinking (symbolic equation, described by Segal [1981]). At this point there is a tendency to act out concretely. The polarization between life and death instincts normally achieves a better balance; also, as psychic conflict between life and death instincts can be managed less dan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• PART I
• PART II
• PART III
• PART IV
• PART V
• 25 Othello
• 26 Life-Threatening Illness
• 27 Restoring the Balance
• References
• Index