Thus, Robert
declares
that, "As far as home environment, I've had the best.
Adorno-T-Authoritarian-Personality-Harper-Bros-1950
" One lasted six months and was characterized by frequent "disagreements.
" "She tried to get me to quit drinking, and I wouldn't and didn't.
" There was much mutual jealousy, Eugene indicates, with charges such as "in a nightclub, she might keep staring at another guy.
" Also, sometimes "I'd make a date to take her some place and not show up.
" The inhibitory respect for fe- male "purity" is expressed in Eugene's statement that "I have a bad temper when I'm drinking, except toward a woman," and in his report of how some of his fights start-e.
g.
, going out of his way to pick a fight with a stranger at a bar, for "talking dirty" near Eugene when he was with a girl.
2. FASCISTS
The fascists reveal a heterosexual orientation which is even more exter- nalized, contemptuous, exploitative, and dichotomistic than that of the other high scorers. Buck scarcely disguises his contemptuous use of women as mere physical objects. "I always thought," he declared, after having de- scribed his own rather promiscuous sexual activities "that was meant to be tampered with. " He shows an obsessive bitterness toward prostitutes and "loose" women, with whom he indicates he has had a good many ex- periences. Likewise he expresses resentment of his first wife's efforts to ob- tain financial support for their children. His second wife he curses as being extremely promiscuous during their marriage; and as mentioned before, he blames "that damn _ _ " entirely for his present situation. Also mentioned before was his statutory rape of a neighbor's r3-year-old girl, because he
"had to have some sex" and "it was there to get. " Toward "good" women, however, Buck manifests an inhibitory respect. He "never did try to play around with" his first wife before marriage, because "she comes from a pretty good family. " Nor did he have intercourse before marriage with his second wife, who "seemed pretty respectable. " He later decided, after fall- ing out with her, that "she was playin' good to get me to marry her. " Buck formulates his stereotypic dichotomy between "good" and "bad" women in
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a phrase: "Funny as hell-1 always marry , my brothers all got good \vomen. "
Floyd, who was only 21 at the time he was apprehended, refers to "a few" passing heterosexual relationships "here and there," typically with "a married woman as usual. " He describes as an example "one (who) was about 22 years old, married, beautiful, dumb. " But, like Ronald and Robert, Floyd seems to require frigidity in a woman before he can feel respect and be- come attached to her. As reported in the prison case file, "his principal inter- est has been a supposed passionate devotion to one who is almost sexless. " This was again a married woman, whom he wanted to marry if she would divorce her husband. When she "rediscovered her loyalty" to her husband, however, Floyd "got fed up from her sheer stupidity. " Now he wants to marrya"wealthywoman. . . preferablyanywherebetween28and30. . . (of) fair physical attractions" whose personality he is satisfied to "take as it comes. " Specifically, he is "looking forward" to marrying a Jewish actress "I got my eye on," whom he claims to have met once at a party in Hollywood. Her appeal for him he characterizes as only "physical. " (What else? ) "I don't know. She's just 'it,' that's all. " This appears to be stereotypic fantasy express- ing inverted anti-Semitism about "their women," who as Floyd says in re- ferring to the Jewisli. actress "are really all right"; he admittedly has not "communicated" with her and doesn't know what her feelings toward him might be.
Adrian's few heterosexual relationships have been with women "all older than me, and they weren't anything but physical. " "I never get romantic or emotional over a woman. " \Vith women as well as men, "I never had any relations with anyone that didn't have money connected with it. " This applied to the business woman of 30 to whom he was married for a few weeks at the age of 18: "she had money and I didn't. " Like the frigid "pure women" to whom other prejudiced men seem to become attached, she was "cold as a clam sexually. " After an annulment, Adrian continued to correspond with her (as he still does also with his childhood governesses) for over a decade, "until she got married a year ago"; although (or because) "she treats me like a two-year-old. " Adrian's deep-seated inhibitions against expressing genuine sexuality are revealed directly in response to a question whether he has any present heterosexual fantasies: "I don't have fantasies in the sexual sense. . . . I am a lot more sentimental than I am sexy. "
3. LOW SCORERS
All 4 of the low-scoring inmates reveal definite disturbance in their heterosexual adjustment. Specifically, they appear to suffer conflicts based on unsatisfied love-dependency longings directed toward women as mother figures. These longings are associated with reciprocallove-nurturance toward women. At the same time, these men show ambivalence toward women that
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
is near-consciously inhibited (instead of being split off and denied by moralistic dichotomies, as is the high scorers' power-ridden ambivalence to women). Such ambivalence seems in their case to stem primarily from frus- tration of the love-dependency longings rather than from fear-hate, domi- nance-submission conflicts as in the case of the prejudiced men. Moreover, in contrast with the latter's underlying contempt for women, the low scorers show greater basic respect for women as individuals? and as essential equals. Their relationships with women stress common values and interests.
Art partially interprets his "dependency complex" himself. As the re- sult of his "autopsychoanalysis" during his present term in prison, he spon- taneously refers to this problem in the first minutes of the interview. All of the women with whom he has been intimate, he points out, have been older than himself, "business women, wage-earners, and providers," like his mother. He "simply transferred my dependency on my mother" to "my wife" and then "onto the (prison) authorities. " After getting himself fired from his job, he made only half-hearted efforts to secure another one, until his first "wife as provider and support was no longer a tolerable condition consciously. " Then he "got plastered" and wrote some bad checks as "un- consciously a way of transferring dependency. " After a six-months jail term, she took him back. He was "repentant, but soon got plastered and did it again. " This time she divorced him, though apparently on friendly terms. Art reports complete amnesia for his second wife, a woman twelve years older than himself, whom he also put in the position of supporting him. He lived with her only a short time when this situation became intolerable to him: another check-writing episode then landed him in prison. Unlike . Buck, who led the authorities a merry chase before being caught for his check-writing, Art "knew I was going to get caught" and had uncon- sciously "arranged" to "transfer my dependency" to the prison "mother. " . . . Despite Art's conflicts over "dependency," in describing his first mar- riage he emphasizes shared experiences and expressed genuine respect for his former wife: She was "an artist also, and a really thoroughgoing indi- vidual. She had a tremendous amount of scope, both intellectually and in- dividually. . . . I liked her interests, her intellect. " He is self-critical of his role in the marriage: "I wasn't in love with her . . . though I wouldn't admit it to myself. . . . Though I was very fond of her. . . . At that time I was too self-centered to be in love with anyone. . . . I did admire and respect and like
her. . . . Today, I think we could have a better chance of making a go of it . . . because I have grown up sufficiently. " Art's second wife continues to correspond with him, despite his "amnesia," and he is grateful for her "loyalty. " Her letters, he says, indicate that she stresses "social functions" and the like, which are "of little consequence to me. " Although they plan to reunite, he says that he will not remain with her if their interests and at- titudes should prove uncongenial.
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Art's continued "amnesia" for his second marriage suggests that he has by no means resolved the conflicting feelings involved in his "dependency complex. " Jim's offense illustrates more directly, if gruesomely, the nega- tive side of such an ambivalent attachment. His history includes one ex- tended sexual affair in high school with a girl a year older than himself. When she finally broke off the affair because of his poor prospects (he was struggling to support his mother), he became very despondent and, according to the mother's report, attempted suicide with gas (the mother stopped him). This turned-inward aggression suggests reproachful inhibited hostility toward the girl for withholding love and frustrating his love-dependency needs. Both the emotional dependence and the inhibited hostility are revealed in one of Jim's prison "Progress Reports" when he speaks of "life goals": "Sec- ondly I would like more than anything on this Earth to meet the girl of my dreams. . . . I desire to provide for her and take care of her with Love and Charity in my heart and with a real understanding of whatever little faults she may have. W e all have many defects, but it takes a good man to minimize the defects in others and search his own conscience for whatever bad thoughts dwell in him. When I do meet the one girl for me, I shall explain all my past life to her, because I do not believe that happiness can be based on lies. " (Italics supplied. ) It is interesting that Jim was "out with an older woman with whom he was drinking (as reported in the prison case file), when at
the age of 20 he stole an auto for the night. (This led to a year in a reforma- tory. ) His inhibited, oral-dependent hostility to ambivalently regarded mother-figures was expressed directly in his present offense, committed at the age of 2 1. According to the case record, he "attacked a woman, 50, out for a walk . . . hit her on the head with a club, causing two skull fractures which resulted in her death. The victim's body showed also that he kissed and chewed her breasts. . . . She was totally unknown to him. " This act was committed while Jim was very drunk and apparently in a dazed, fugue-like state-i. e. , while his defenses were weakened to permit a direct expression of near-consciously inhibited impulses: subsequently he seemed to become at least partially amnesic for the episode.
Don, too, shows signs of strong emotional dependence toward loved and respected women. His first wife's death "was quite a blow. I never recovered from it, until I got this jolt" (i. e. , the present incarceration); "I'm getting over it now. " He "got along fine" with his second wife, "until I got involved in Mother's affairs," which broke up the marriage. Don refers here to his series of bank robberies to obtain money for his mother in her neurotic involvements; these will be discussed in the section on parents. "I have al- ways felt guilty about it towards my wife. " Although "I was fortunate in being perfectly mated to my wife-sexually, that is," Don admits directly what might be expected ? from his continuing overattachment to his mother
(see below, page 885): "I have always been rather inhibited about sex. "
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Dick, whose "Mother was much more free about (sex) than Father" and with whom he was "pals more than Father," also verbalizes sexual inhibitions di~ectly in discussing his former wife: "She's very hot-blooded and I'm just the opposite. . . . Sexual intercourse once a month would be okay for me. " Parental pressure had prevented his marrying the boyhood sweetheart to who! Jl he had been engaged (because she was crippled). Dick had then "mar- ried the first white woman I saw," on three weeks' acquaintance, after return- ing from overseas, because he was "lonesome. " This didn't work out "worth a dam. " In particularly they "argued about ho'Y" to take care of the child, mainly . . . she always nagged the kid-wanted to use force on the kid. " When they finally broke up, Dick escaped "into the Marines" where, disconsolate, he "got into the habit of doing a lot of drinking. " While drinking with a
girl-friend, he "picked up a car" (like Jim) and drove with her to Reno, where he "got married again while drunk. " They sold the car. In the after- math, Dick made civil restitution for the theft and had the marriage annulled; he is making additional restitution in prison. Meanwhile, when the crippled girl "back home" had "found out I was married," she too had sought emo- tional consolation by doing "the same thing: married the first man who came along. It turned out equally badly" and also ended in divorce. Now, she and Dick are corresponding again and plan to marry on his release-at last with parental approval. His attitude toward her seems to be genuinely nurturant: "She always used to come to me for advice. At a dance, I was about the only person she would dance with. And we studied together. " At the same time she seems to represent for Dick (who is in other ways, too, more conventional than the other low-scoring men) a somewhat inhibitory mother figure with conventional moral values, on whom he can depend to "steady" him: she is "sort of refined. Not wild-steady. . . . Quiet, settled, doesn't get mad or express her views. . . . Very particular who she associates with. "
4. SUMMARY
The contrasting sexual orientations of the prejudiced and unprejudiced interviewees suggest certain crucial personality differences. The unprej- udiced men seem to seek, above all, love-which they also have some capacity to give. Despite frustration and conflict their approach to life is influenced by basic respect for themselves and other people. This makes for democratic identifications with other people, and for an inclination to identify with underdogs. The prejudiced men, on the other hand, seem to feel basically rejected and to have almost given up hope of experiencing genuine love. They speak as if they dislike and fear themselves as well as others. Their main energies seem to be devoted to defending themselves against any sense of weakness, chiefly by striving for external status and power and "proofs" of masculinity. The result is a power-oriented character structure driven to attack outgroups as symbols of their own suppressed characteristics.
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G. ANTI-INTRACEPTIVENESS AND CHILDHOOD
1. HIGH SCORERS
All of the material so far presented supports what was stated earlier: that the high scorers anxiously avoid letting themselves think and feel freely, especially about psychological matters. For such inner freedom might lead them to "see" things they are afraid of in themselves. So they externalize their feared impulses, weakness, and conflicts with other people, onto outside situations and events and onto scapegoats. To the extent that these men let themselves feel their real feelings and impulses at all, they tend to keep them undifferentiated and to experience them as alien, as coming from out- side their conscious self. Above all, what seems to be the emotional origin of their deepest conflicts-namely childhood and relations with parent figures -tends to be split off by them and regarded as discontinuous with their adult personality.
Thus, Robert declares that, "As far as home environment, I've had the best. " He was "a good child" and "a good boy up until the age of 16. " It was his "carnal self," he believes, that made him commit a few forgeries and thefts at the age of I 8 and lat~r engage in the hostile affair which led to his present term in prison. He regards these actions as quite "accidental," with no rela- tion to life-history conflicts such as ambivalence toward parentally coerced "goodness. "
Wilbur even more clearly denies to himself the childhood roots of his present personality and behavior: (Which one influenced you more-your uncle or your aunt? 22) "Well, that which I have today is that which I have made of my own self. (Q. ) Well, as far as givin' me my own disposition, . . . I more learned it since I have been on my own. " Asked what he was like as a child, his answer is moralistically empty of personal content: He was "just a working boy . . . never in no trouble. "
Eugene, like Robert, was "pretty good up to the time I was about 17 years old-never in trouble, never smoked or drank. " He sees no connection be- tween his submission to self-suppressive "goodness" in childhood and youth and his long history of "trouble" since then. He "can't explain" his violent "temper" or frequent drunken "benders. " Concerning his gambling, he declares mystically that "I haven't got that in my blood. "
Clarence, too, describes himself in childhood as "a good boy" who "didn't run wild" but "started to work" at a very early age. Not only does he deny any causal connection between this moralistic childhood self-suppression and his later avoidance of work (by probably "wrongly drawing government
22 Wilbur's parents separated when he was an infant, and he never knew either of them. He was raised by an uncle and an aunt.
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
compensation for years") and attacks on little girls; his panic makes him deny, by means of paranoid delusions, that he ever exhibited such behavior. In Ronald's case the splitting off of crucial aspects of childhood is more equivocal. For instance, he does criticize the severity of childhood disci- pline by his father: "They say, 'Spare the rod and spoil the child,' but I don't think it worked out in my case. " It is shown in the next section, how- ever, that Ronald is unable to carry through this criticism in a principled way but only in a paranoid-victimization context and by capricious rebellion.
2. FASCISTS
The fascist inmates reveal a similar "split" between childhood and later personality. Adrian shows some "break-through" of childhood conflicts in what sounds at times like the beginnings of insight. But this is negated by lack of emotional realization and by failure to accept responsibility for his own personality. Instead he feels only cynical, ego-alien self-contempt, with no real interest in changing what he despises in himself. Thus, Adrian ob- serves at one point that "my selfishness is something I can almost blame (my father) for. His attitude and that of the whole family led me to believe that I was . . . the whole universe. " In a later discussion, the cynical nature of this superficial "insight" is clearer: "All I want to know is how to put the best into this life. I should say get the best out, not put in, since I am selfish. " Adrian's "explanation" for parental "influence" on deeper impulses behind his symptoms is mystically hereditarian: "If I ever did anything wrong, it was the Latin in me, which is the side I have more of an affinity for-my mother's side: I look more like them. "
Floyd also avoids identifying with his own personality development as a life-experience process. Instead, he adopts hereditarian explanations: "All the inheritance is from the male side of the family for some reason or other. Except for my industriousness . . . that just doesn't exist. ? . . I guess I just got that from the other side of the family. "
Buck, when questioned rather persistently by the examiner as to what he was like as a child, just "doesn't know. " Asked which of his parents had the most influence on his personality, he becomes very defensive, assuming falsely that the examiner must be moralizing about his delinquencies. Ignoring the examiner's efforts to correct this misunderstanding, he persists in his own obsessive moralism: Both parents, he protests, "always tried to teach me the right thing"; being in prison is "not my folks' fault. "
3. LOW SCORERS
More characteristic of the "low" interviewees, with whatever partial in- hibitions, is a generaf',readiness to accept the causal continuity between present emotional problems and childhood emotional conflicts with parents. This has been previously exemplified in Art's self-interpretation of the effect
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of his dependence toward his mother upon his marriages and upon his de- linquence. Similarly, Don volunteers that "in prison this is the first time that I haven't been beset by all sorts of emotional problems" centering around "my mother and father. " No such striking single quotations are available for Jim and Dick, although the "inner continuity" of their lives is implicit in some of the discussion of parents, to be presented shortly.
H. ATTITUDES TO PARENTS
1. HIGH SCORERS
Certain critical aspects of the prejudiced inmates' ideology-"racial," po- litico-economic, and moral-religious-have been explained as attempts to deny personal dispositions by displacing them onto things outside. Their ideology seems to express fearful oversubmissiveness to authority and power, "antiweakness" fac;ades, and displaced hatred of imaginary power figures (e. g. , Jews); as well as desperate fear of their own impulses, especially sexual aggression toward "respected white women. " These men's unconscious, split-off anxieties may in turn be traced to deeper sources, namely fear- ridden attitudes to parents. 23 All of them reveal, above all, a loss of inner integrity by self-negating oversubmissiveness-out-of-fear to parental author- ity. Such an attitude is shown especially toward the parent who is regarded as "stronger," typically the father. This submission is betrayed by a striking inability to criticize parents' basic values; by inhibitions against making principled criticisms of parental harshness; by acceptance of suppression imposed by parents; and by stereotypic overidealization of parents. The last feature seems to be an anxious attempt to suppress hostility by showing the opposite-awed "respect. " The false quality of this "respect" is revealed by its empty cliches, referring mostly to external stereotypes such as the parents' status, the "sacrifices" they made for the family, etc. Positive feelings tend to be oriented not toward "lovable" personal qualities of parents but rather toward what parents have "done" for them, or "given" to them; i. e. , they reflect an exploitative dependence-for-external-things. Self-negating submis- sion and dependence toward parents may well be the ultimate origin of that "weakne~s" in themselves which these men so frantically try to deny. But fear prevents their resentment from leading to real self-assertion or to inde- pendence of their parents or other established authority. Sometimes they express feelings of victimization toward parents and other authorities (recall Ronald's "persecutor for a governor"). But these feelings are overpersonal- ized: the prejudiced men cannot really criticize antidemocraticness as such; instead, they feel themselves singled out-as individuals, as "the poor people" or
23 The statistical comparison of high- and low-scoring interviewees generally, with respect to attitudes toward parents, is reported in Chapter X.
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whatnot-for "persecution. " Their furtive resentment of parents and other authorities can be expressed only in pseudo rebellion, often delinquent or fascist; and in prejudice against mythically "dominant" groups such as Jews, who symbolize the hated parental power and values-i. e. , by "growling" de- fiantly while expressing the very authoritarianism "growled" against. There are signs that, to bolster their weakened masculinity and independence, these men have tried to identify with the external aspects of the resented parents-i. e. , parental authoritarianism, status and power, especially that of the father. This involves, not solidly internalized character traits, but only vicarious participation as a "lieutenant" in the parent-leader's strength. This narcissistic identification is also a way of disguising masochistic sub- missiveness to the parent-leader.
A further consequence of the prejudiced inmates' submission to parents is splitting-off of sexual impulses toward the first heterosexual figure, the mother. These are kept split off by developing reverence for the mother's imagined asexual "purity. " By emphasizing the mother's "sweetness" and "goodness," she is in fantasy deprived of sexuality. Such distortions help to protect these men against their own feared sexual impulses, and provide a basis for their later inability to fuse love and sex. Their fear of Negroes' approach to "white women" may well be a projection of their own repressed impulses toward the mother.
Several questionnaire items indirectly reflect submissiveness to parental authority and denial of any hostility to family figures. These include an overemphasis on "obedience and respect for authority" (Item I), rejection of "rebellious ideas" (Item 2I), condemnation of those who do not feel "love, gratitude, and respect" for parents (Item 27), and rejection of any hostile impulses toward "a close friend or relative" (Item 42). While these items are differentiating, even the low quartile means on them are rather high. It may be suspected that prison has stirred up considerable guilt over rebellion and hostility, in both low and high scorers.
Robert's submissiveness is underlined by his insistent repetition that he was "a perfect son to my parents, a perfect brother to my sisters and brothers. " His mother is the "most terrific person in the world to me," and he is quite unable to evaluate her objectively: "I truthfully can't say she has any definite shortcomings. " Yet his conception of her is empty and distant. Probing as to what sort of person she is draws a complete blank, except for references to her antisexual moralism (about "woman" as "the most perfect thing") and her "self-sacrificing" gratification of dependence: "I think she has devoted her life to making her mate (my father) and her children very happy. Has never taken much interest in outside social affairs; is concerned with her fam- ily. " Even this "devotion" is regarded with mixed feelings: "I don't really think she has any (shortcomings)-except maybe too wound up in her home and didn't take more interest in social affairs. " Robert overidealizes his father
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in an equally empty way as "very good-1 couldn't ask for a better father. '' He then proceeds furtively to "undo" this praise by expressions of feeling victimized: "He was a little strict at times," and "I haven't had everything I might have wanted from him. " (Note the dependence-for-things. ) "I would have liked to have a nicer home, better position. " His underlying submission, however, impels him to pull back and "apologize": "Possibly at the time I couldn't realize" the reasons for punishment, and "all in all, I was very happy to be one of his boys. " Most interesting are Robert's comments about his father's economic status: "Not a successful businessman. . . . Instead of im- proving himself, I think he went down a bit. . . . Since I got out of school, he's always worked for wages. " Thinking of the family's frequent moves which deeply upset his mother, Robert has "often tried in later years to analyze my father's wanderlust. " Robert decided that in moving so often, his father was "apparently seeking business success. " In this respect, "My mother," who "always referred to me as her best daughter" because "I've al- ways tried to do everything to make her happy"-(note the submissive feminine identification)-"has remarked that I'm just the opposite of him. " According to Robert, his mother in no way criticized the father's obsession with external status; she objected only that he did not "stay put" in seeking it and was not "successful" enough. But this seems to have provided a ra- tionale for Robert, while submitting to his father's notion of economic "suc- cess" as the end-all of existence, to assert: "To me, looking back now, he's not the type of a man that I want to pattern my business after. " Robert's ambiv- alent ego-ideal of "business success" is, so he likes to think, "the opposite" of his father's ideal. This might help to explain the inversion of his anti-Semitism, in which he expresses mainly envy of Jewish "drive and ambition to get there," with only furtive signs of his hostility against "the Jew. " "The Jew" perhaps symbolizes less his father directly than it does a superficially differ- ing father-ideal toward which Robert's resentment is even more repressed than toward his actual father. This father-ideal is difficult for him to rebel against even by way of displaced resentment against the symbol of "the Jew," because under moralistic pressure from his mother he is deceived into think- ing that his submission to this ideal is itself an assertion of independence from his father's values.
Ronald's resentment has broken through more openly. After the divorce of his parents when he was 3, he lived with his (paternal) grandmother. He was "taught . . . that ( my mother) had deserted my father and brother and 1. " Upon his father's remarriage, Ronald went, at the age of 7, to live with his father and stepmother. From the beginning there seemed to be "a mutual understanding between my brother and myself that we didn't like her. " Her position as only a secondary mother figure seemed to enable Ronald to express resentments toward her directly. His stepmother, he says, "didn't take any interest at all" and "resented us": "We always felt that we were in the
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way. " A hint of possible homosexual fixation on the father is suggested by jealousy that his father "was more interested in her than in me or my brother. " Ronald expresses much disappointment in the father, and feelings of being victimized by him: The father "was dependable, but he changed"; "worked his way up . . . then drinking caused him to go down. " "He never shirked at the idea of anyone helping him, especially financially. . . . I know he used some of my grandmother's money to buy real estate with. And I know he lost it, and it didn't seem to bother him. " The father gave Ronald an allowance of only fifteen cents a week, which Ronald still resents: "I'll never forget that. " For the most part, however, he blames his stepmother for being "never satis- fied" and "greedy. " Even he. re, his guilt makes him pull back, as if sensing that he may be projecting onto her some of his own feelings: "I thought she was greedy. 'Course it might have been for other reasons-wanting to save something. " Most striking is his almost complete displacement of hate for the father's harsh discipline, onto the stepmother. Telling how his father "didn't believe in sparing the rod" and "laid it on pretty thick," he declares: "The hard part about it was that my stepmother would tell him that my brother or I had done things, and he wouldn't give us a chance to explain. " Ronald actually "ran off twice," but "it didn't cause me to hate him. I held it mostly against her. " (Just as Ronald now "holds it mostly against" those of lesser status and weak position, not those who represent real power. )
Wilbur's parents died in his infancy. He was raised by an aunt and uncle, with whom his main satisfactions, he says, were limited to "board and room, a place to sleep. " The aunt was a "good woman" (i. e. , "pure"). Specifically, she gratified Wilbur's dependency-for-things; she was "good to the children: clothed, fed, took care of us when sick. " "I couldn't think of any" faults in her, except perhaps that "she would never like to go no place-stayed at home all the time" (like the woman Wilbur later chose to marry). He is unable to make his "idealization" of his aunt meaningful by any details; she was "just a good woman," "good to me. " He "never did" confide in her. Wilbur's monosyllabic answers to the examiner's inquiry indicate that his childhood was dominated by the harsh rule of his uncle, whose regime he was ap- parently too submissive to think of questioning. He says that his uncle whipped him several times a month: (Did you ever question whether he was right about it? ) "No. " The uncle, he declares, "treated me okay," but from a very early age "made me work pretty hard. (Q. ) Sun-up to sun-down. (Q. How did you take that? ) We did what the elders told us to. (Q. Did you ever question that? ) Well, I never questioned. " Wilbur was able to rebel only when he could create a persecutory rationale by 'feeling singled out: "Only one disagreement-he wanted me to do more work than his own children. " Wilbur reacted to this rationale with explosive defiance-still submissively unable to criticize his uncle's authoritarianism as such-by abruptly leaving home at the age of r5. With all this, Wilbur in another context describes
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8]9
his uncle as "pretty easy to get along with. " Then, in almost the next breath he n~veals that "he would stay away at night and drink, sometimes come home drunk. My aunt went off in a comer. " Wilbur indicates that he didn't dare to think seriously of criticizing the uncle or of protecting the aunt: (What was your reaction? ) "Didn't think much about it. "
Clarence, too, describes his (real) father as "easy to get along with. " What he admired most about the father was "the way he treated me. (Q. ) Never did abuse me or scold me. " Later, Clarence betrays the reason for his freedom from physical discipline, namely, his own cowed submission to stem parental authority. Although the father would "tell us what we should do, what he wanted us to do, and what he expected us to do," "there wasn't much (disci- pline) to exercise," simply because "we just did what they said. " A moment later, Clarence unwittingly reveals the parental intimidation that forced such utter submission from him: bemoaning the independence of children today, he declares that if he had ever answered his parents back the way he thinks children do now, "I wouldn't be able to sit down! " Clarence has justified his parents' intimidation of him by adopting the same general philosophy of authoritarianism: "Children didn't run wild in those days like they do nowadays. . . . If they have to whip them, I believe in whipping them. I don't believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the child.
2. FASCISTS
The fascists reveal a heterosexual orientation which is even more exter- nalized, contemptuous, exploitative, and dichotomistic than that of the other high scorers. Buck scarcely disguises his contemptuous use of women as mere physical objects. "I always thought," he declared, after having de- scribed his own rather promiscuous sexual activities "that was meant to be tampered with. " He shows an obsessive bitterness toward prostitutes and "loose" women, with whom he indicates he has had a good many ex- periences. Likewise he expresses resentment of his first wife's efforts to ob- tain financial support for their children. His second wife he curses as being extremely promiscuous during their marriage; and as mentioned before, he blames "that damn _ _ " entirely for his present situation. Also mentioned before was his statutory rape of a neighbor's r3-year-old girl, because he
"had to have some sex" and "it was there to get. " Toward "good" women, however, Buck manifests an inhibitory respect. He "never did try to play around with" his first wife before marriage, because "she comes from a pretty good family. " Nor did he have intercourse before marriage with his second wife, who "seemed pretty respectable. " He later decided, after fall- ing out with her, that "she was playin' good to get me to marry her. " Buck formulates his stereotypic dichotomy between "good" and "bad" women in
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a phrase: "Funny as hell-1 always marry , my brothers all got good \vomen. "
Floyd, who was only 21 at the time he was apprehended, refers to "a few" passing heterosexual relationships "here and there," typically with "a married woman as usual. " He describes as an example "one (who) was about 22 years old, married, beautiful, dumb. " But, like Ronald and Robert, Floyd seems to require frigidity in a woman before he can feel respect and be- come attached to her. As reported in the prison case file, "his principal inter- est has been a supposed passionate devotion to one who is almost sexless. " This was again a married woman, whom he wanted to marry if she would divorce her husband. When she "rediscovered her loyalty" to her husband, however, Floyd "got fed up from her sheer stupidity. " Now he wants to marrya"wealthywoman. . . preferablyanywherebetween28and30. . . (of) fair physical attractions" whose personality he is satisfied to "take as it comes. " Specifically, he is "looking forward" to marrying a Jewish actress "I got my eye on," whom he claims to have met once at a party in Hollywood. Her appeal for him he characterizes as only "physical. " (What else? ) "I don't know. She's just 'it,' that's all. " This appears to be stereotypic fantasy express- ing inverted anti-Semitism about "their women," who as Floyd says in re- ferring to the Jewisli. actress "are really all right"; he admittedly has not "communicated" with her and doesn't know what her feelings toward him might be.
Adrian's few heterosexual relationships have been with women "all older than me, and they weren't anything but physical. " "I never get romantic or emotional over a woman. " \Vith women as well as men, "I never had any relations with anyone that didn't have money connected with it. " This applied to the business woman of 30 to whom he was married for a few weeks at the age of 18: "she had money and I didn't. " Like the frigid "pure women" to whom other prejudiced men seem to become attached, she was "cold as a clam sexually. " After an annulment, Adrian continued to correspond with her (as he still does also with his childhood governesses) for over a decade, "until she got married a year ago"; although (or because) "she treats me like a two-year-old. " Adrian's deep-seated inhibitions against expressing genuine sexuality are revealed directly in response to a question whether he has any present heterosexual fantasies: "I don't have fantasies in the sexual sense. . . . I am a lot more sentimental than I am sexy. "
3. LOW SCORERS
All 4 of the low-scoring inmates reveal definite disturbance in their heterosexual adjustment. Specifically, they appear to suffer conflicts based on unsatisfied love-dependency longings directed toward women as mother figures. These longings are associated with reciprocallove-nurturance toward women. At the same time, these men show ambivalence toward women that
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is near-consciously inhibited (instead of being split off and denied by moralistic dichotomies, as is the high scorers' power-ridden ambivalence to women). Such ambivalence seems in their case to stem primarily from frus- tration of the love-dependency longings rather than from fear-hate, domi- nance-submission conflicts as in the case of the prejudiced men. Moreover, in contrast with the latter's underlying contempt for women, the low scorers show greater basic respect for women as individuals? and as essential equals. Their relationships with women stress common values and interests.
Art partially interprets his "dependency complex" himself. As the re- sult of his "autopsychoanalysis" during his present term in prison, he spon- taneously refers to this problem in the first minutes of the interview. All of the women with whom he has been intimate, he points out, have been older than himself, "business women, wage-earners, and providers," like his mother. He "simply transferred my dependency on my mother" to "my wife" and then "onto the (prison) authorities. " After getting himself fired from his job, he made only half-hearted efforts to secure another one, until his first "wife as provider and support was no longer a tolerable condition consciously. " Then he "got plastered" and wrote some bad checks as "un- consciously a way of transferring dependency. " After a six-months jail term, she took him back. He was "repentant, but soon got plastered and did it again. " This time she divorced him, though apparently on friendly terms. Art reports complete amnesia for his second wife, a woman twelve years older than himself, whom he also put in the position of supporting him. He lived with her only a short time when this situation became intolerable to him: another check-writing episode then landed him in prison. Unlike . Buck, who led the authorities a merry chase before being caught for his check-writing, Art "knew I was going to get caught" and had uncon- sciously "arranged" to "transfer my dependency" to the prison "mother. " . . . Despite Art's conflicts over "dependency," in describing his first mar- riage he emphasizes shared experiences and expressed genuine respect for his former wife: She was "an artist also, and a really thoroughgoing indi- vidual. She had a tremendous amount of scope, both intellectually and in- dividually. . . . I liked her interests, her intellect. " He is self-critical of his role in the marriage: "I wasn't in love with her . . . though I wouldn't admit it to myself. . . . Though I was very fond of her. . . . At that time I was too self-centered to be in love with anyone. . . . I did admire and respect and like
her. . . . Today, I think we could have a better chance of making a go of it . . . because I have grown up sufficiently. " Art's second wife continues to correspond with him, despite his "amnesia," and he is grateful for her "loyalty. " Her letters, he says, indicate that she stresses "social functions" and the like, which are "of little consequence to me. " Although they plan to reunite, he says that he will not remain with her if their interests and at- titudes should prove uncongenial.
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Art's continued "amnesia" for his second marriage suggests that he has by no means resolved the conflicting feelings involved in his "dependency complex. " Jim's offense illustrates more directly, if gruesomely, the nega- tive side of such an ambivalent attachment. His history includes one ex- tended sexual affair in high school with a girl a year older than himself. When she finally broke off the affair because of his poor prospects (he was struggling to support his mother), he became very despondent and, according to the mother's report, attempted suicide with gas (the mother stopped him). This turned-inward aggression suggests reproachful inhibited hostility toward the girl for withholding love and frustrating his love-dependency needs. Both the emotional dependence and the inhibited hostility are revealed in one of Jim's prison "Progress Reports" when he speaks of "life goals": "Sec- ondly I would like more than anything on this Earth to meet the girl of my dreams. . . . I desire to provide for her and take care of her with Love and Charity in my heart and with a real understanding of whatever little faults she may have. W e all have many defects, but it takes a good man to minimize the defects in others and search his own conscience for whatever bad thoughts dwell in him. When I do meet the one girl for me, I shall explain all my past life to her, because I do not believe that happiness can be based on lies. " (Italics supplied. ) It is interesting that Jim was "out with an older woman with whom he was drinking (as reported in the prison case file), when at
the age of 20 he stole an auto for the night. (This led to a year in a reforma- tory. ) His inhibited, oral-dependent hostility to ambivalently regarded mother-figures was expressed directly in his present offense, committed at the age of 2 1. According to the case record, he "attacked a woman, 50, out for a walk . . . hit her on the head with a club, causing two skull fractures which resulted in her death. The victim's body showed also that he kissed and chewed her breasts. . . . She was totally unknown to him. " This act was committed while Jim was very drunk and apparently in a dazed, fugue-like state-i. e. , while his defenses were weakened to permit a direct expression of near-consciously inhibited impulses: subsequently he seemed to become at least partially amnesic for the episode.
Don, too, shows signs of strong emotional dependence toward loved and respected women. His first wife's death "was quite a blow. I never recovered from it, until I got this jolt" (i. e. , the present incarceration); "I'm getting over it now. " He "got along fine" with his second wife, "until I got involved in Mother's affairs," which broke up the marriage. Don refers here to his series of bank robberies to obtain money for his mother in her neurotic involvements; these will be discussed in the section on parents. "I have al- ways felt guilty about it towards my wife. " Although "I was fortunate in being perfectly mated to my wife-sexually, that is," Don admits directly what might be expected ? from his continuing overattachment to his mother
(see below, page 885): "I have always been rather inhibited about sex. "
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Dick, whose "Mother was much more free about (sex) than Father" and with whom he was "pals more than Father," also verbalizes sexual inhibitions di~ectly in discussing his former wife: "She's very hot-blooded and I'm just the opposite. . . . Sexual intercourse once a month would be okay for me. " Parental pressure had prevented his marrying the boyhood sweetheart to who! Jl he had been engaged (because she was crippled). Dick had then "mar- ried the first white woman I saw," on three weeks' acquaintance, after return- ing from overseas, because he was "lonesome. " This didn't work out "worth a dam. " In particularly they "argued about ho'Y" to take care of the child, mainly . . . she always nagged the kid-wanted to use force on the kid. " When they finally broke up, Dick escaped "into the Marines" where, disconsolate, he "got into the habit of doing a lot of drinking. " While drinking with a
girl-friend, he "picked up a car" (like Jim) and drove with her to Reno, where he "got married again while drunk. " They sold the car. In the after- math, Dick made civil restitution for the theft and had the marriage annulled; he is making additional restitution in prison. Meanwhile, when the crippled girl "back home" had "found out I was married," she too had sought emo- tional consolation by doing "the same thing: married the first man who came along. It turned out equally badly" and also ended in divorce. Now, she and Dick are corresponding again and plan to marry on his release-at last with parental approval. His attitude toward her seems to be genuinely nurturant: "She always used to come to me for advice. At a dance, I was about the only person she would dance with. And we studied together. " At the same time she seems to represent for Dick (who is in other ways, too, more conventional than the other low-scoring men) a somewhat inhibitory mother figure with conventional moral values, on whom he can depend to "steady" him: she is "sort of refined. Not wild-steady. . . . Quiet, settled, doesn't get mad or express her views. . . . Very particular who she associates with. "
4. SUMMARY
The contrasting sexual orientations of the prejudiced and unprejudiced interviewees suggest certain crucial personality differences. The unprej- udiced men seem to seek, above all, love-which they also have some capacity to give. Despite frustration and conflict their approach to life is influenced by basic respect for themselves and other people. This makes for democratic identifications with other people, and for an inclination to identify with underdogs. The prejudiced men, on the other hand, seem to feel basically rejected and to have almost given up hope of experiencing genuine love. They speak as if they dislike and fear themselves as well as others. Their main energies seem to be devoted to defending themselves against any sense of weakness, chiefly by striving for external status and power and "proofs" of masculinity. The result is a power-oriented character structure driven to attack outgroups as symbols of their own suppressed characteristics.
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G. ANTI-INTRACEPTIVENESS AND CHILDHOOD
1. HIGH SCORERS
All of the material so far presented supports what was stated earlier: that the high scorers anxiously avoid letting themselves think and feel freely, especially about psychological matters. For such inner freedom might lead them to "see" things they are afraid of in themselves. So they externalize their feared impulses, weakness, and conflicts with other people, onto outside situations and events and onto scapegoats. To the extent that these men let themselves feel their real feelings and impulses at all, they tend to keep them undifferentiated and to experience them as alien, as coming from out- side their conscious self. Above all, what seems to be the emotional origin of their deepest conflicts-namely childhood and relations with parent figures -tends to be split off by them and regarded as discontinuous with their adult personality.
Thus, Robert declares that, "As far as home environment, I've had the best. " He was "a good child" and "a good boy up until the age of 16. " It was his "carnal self," he believes, that made him commit a few forgeries and thefts at the age of I 8 and lat~r engage in the hostile affair which led to his present term in prison. He regards these actions as quite "accidental," with no rela- tion to life-history conflicts such as ambivalence toward parentally coerced "goodness. "
Wilbur even more clearly denies to himself the childhood roots of his present personality and behavior: (Which one influenced you more-your uncle or your aunt? 22) "Well, that which I have today is that which I have made of my own self. (Q. ) Well, as far as givin' me my own disposition, . . . I more learned it since I have been on my own. " Asked what he was like as a child, his answer is moralistically empty of personal content: He was "just a working boy . . . never in no trouble. "
Eugene, like Robert, was "pretty good up to the time I was about 17 years old-never in trouble, never smoked or drank. " He sees no connection be- tween his submission to self-suppressive "goodness" in childhood and youth and his long history of "trouble" since then. He "can't explain" his violent "temper" or frequent drunken "benders. " Concerning his gambling, he declares mystically that "I haven't got that in my blood. "
Clarence, too, describes himself in childhood as "a good boy" who "didn't run wild" but "started to work" at a very early age. Not only does he deny any causal connection between this moralistic childhood self-suppression and his later avoidance of work (by probably "wrongly drawing government
22 Wilbur's parents separated when he was an infant, and he never knew either of them. He was raised by an uncle and an aunt.
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compensation for years") and attacks on little girls; his panic makes him deny, by means of paranoid delusions, that he ever exhibited such behavior. In Ronald's case the splitting off of crucial aspects of childhood is more equivocal. For instance, he does criticize the severity of childhood disci- pline by his father: "They say, 'Spare the rod and spoil the child,' but I don't think it worked out in my case. " It is shown in the next section, how- ever, that Ronald is unable to carry through this criticism in a principled way but only in a paranoid-victimization context and by capricious rebellion.
2. FASCISTS
The fascist inmates reveal a similar "split" between childhood and later personality. Adrian shows some "break-through" of childhood conflicts in what sounds at times like the beginnings of insight. But this is negated by lack of emotional realization and by failure to accept responsibility for his own personality. Instead he feels only cynical, ego-alien self-contempt, with no real interest in changing what he despises in himself. Thus, Adrian ob- serves at one point that "my selfishness is something I can almost blame (my father) for. His attitude and that of the whole family led me to believe that I was . . . the whole universe. " In a later discussion, the cynical nature of this superficial "insight" is clearer: "All I want to know is how to put the best into this life. I should say get the best out, not put in, since I am selfish. " Adrian's "explanation" for parental "influence" on deeper impulses behind his symptoms is mystically hereditarian: "If I ever did anything wrong, it was the Latin in me, which is the side I have more of an affinity for-my mother's side: I look more like them. "
Floyd also avoids identifying with his own personality development as a life-experience process. Instead, he adopts hereditarian explanations: "All the inheritance is from the male side of the family for some reason or other. Except for my industriousness . . . that just doesn't exist. ? . . I guess I just got that from the other side of the family. "
Buck, when questioned rather persistently by the examiner as to what he was like as a child, just "doesn't know. " Asked which of his parents had the most influence on his personality, he becomes very defensive, assuming falsely that the examiner must be moralizing about his delinquencies. Ignoring the examiner's efforts to correct this misunderstanding, he persists in his own obsessive moralism: Both parents, he protests, "always tried to teach me the right thing"; being in prison is "not my folks' fault. "
3. LOW SCORERS
More characteristic of the "low" interviewees, with whatever partial in- hibitions, is a generaf',readiness to accept the causal continuity between present emotional problems and childhood emotional conflicts with parents. This has been previously exemplified in Art's self-interpretation of the effect
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of his dependence toward his mother upon his marriages and upon his de- linquence. Similarly, Don volunteers that "in prison this is the first time that I haven't been beset by all sorts of emotional problems" centering around "my mother and father. " No such striking single quotations are available for Jim and Dick, although the "inner continuity" of their lives is implicit in some of the discussion of parents, to be presented shortly.
H. ATTITUDES TO PARENTS
1. HIGH SCORERS
Certain critical aspects of the prejudiced inmates' ideology-"racial," po- litico-economic, and moral-religious-have been explained as attempts to deny personal dispositions by displacing them onto things outside. Their ideology seems to express fearful oversubmissiveness to authority and power, "antiweakness" fac;ades, and displaced hatred of imaginary power figures (e. g. , Jews); as well as desperate fear of their own impulses, especially sexual aggression toward "respected white women. " These men's unconscious, split-off anxieties may in turn be traced to deeper sources, namely fear- ridden attitudes to parents. 23 All of them reveal, above all, a loss of inner integrity by self-negating oversubmissiveness-out-of-fear to parental author- ity. Such an attitude is shown especially toward the parent who is regarded as "stronger," typically the father. This submission is betrayed by a striking inability to criticize parents' basic values; by inhibitions against making principled criticisms of parental harshness; by acceptance of suppression imposed by parents; and by stereotypic overidealization of parents. The last feature seems to be an anxious attempt to suppress hostility by showing the opposite-awed "respect. " The false quality of this "respect" is revealed by its empty cliches, referring mostly to external stereotypes such as the parents' status, the "sacrifices" they made for the family, etc. Positive feelings tend to be oriented not toward "lovable" personal qualities of parents but rather toward what parents have "done" for them, or "given" to them; i. e. , they reflect an exploitative dependence-for-external-things. Self-negating submis- sion and dependence toward parents may well be the ultimate origin of that "weakne~s" in themselves which these men so frantically try to deny. But fear prevents their resentment from leading to real self-assertion or to inde- pendence of their parents or other established authority. Sometimes they express feelings of victimization toward parents and other authorities (recall Ronald's "persecutor for a governor"). But these feelings are overpersonal- ized: the prejudiced men cannot really criticize antidemocraticness as such; instead, they feel themselves singled out-as individuals, as "the poor people" or
23 The statistical comparison of high- and low-scoring interviewees generally, with respect to attitudes toward parents, is reported in Chapter X.
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whatnot-for "persecution. " Their furtive resentment of parents and other authorities can be expressed only in pseudo rebellion, often delinquent or fascist; and in prejudice against mythically "dominant" groups such as Jews, who symbolize the hated parental power and values-i. e. , by "growling" de- fiantly while expressing the very authoritarianism "growled" against. There are signs that, to bolster their weakened masculinity and independence, these men have tried to identify with the external aspects of the resented parents-i. e. , parental authoritarianism, status and power, especially that of the father. This involves, not solidly internalized character traits, but only vicarious participation as a "lieutenant" in the parent-leader's strength. This narcissistic identification is also a way of disguising masochistic sub- missiveness to the parent-leader.
A further consequence of the prejudiced inmates' submission to parents is splitting-off of sexual impulses toward the first heterosexual figure, the mother. These are kept split off by developing reverence for the mother's imagined asexual "purity. " By emphasizing the mother's "sweetness" and "goodness," she is in fantasy deprived of sexuality. Such distortions help to protect these men against their own feared sexual impulses, and provide a basis for their later inability to fuse love and sex. Their fear of Negroes' approach to "white women" may well be a projection of their own repressed impulses toward the mother.
Several questionnaire items indirectly reflect submissiveness to parental authority and denial of any hostility to family figures. These include an overemphasis on "obedience and respect for authority" (Item I), rejection of "rebellious ideas" (Item 2I), condemnation of those who do not feel "love, gratitude, and respect" for parents (Item 27), and rejection of any hostile impulses toward "a close friend or relative" (Item 42). While these items are differentiating, even the low quartile means on them are rather high. It may be suspected that prison has stirred up considerable guilt over rebellion and hostility, in both low and high scorers.
Robert's submissiveness is underlined by his insistent repetition that he was "a perfect son to my parents, a perfect brother to my sisters and brothers. " His mother is the "most terrific person in the world to me," and he is quite unable to evaluate her objectively: "I truthfully can't say she has any definite shortcomings. " Yet his conception of her is empty and distant. Probing as to what sort of person she is draws a complete blank, except for references to her antisexual moralism (about "woman" as "the most perfect thing") and her "self-sacrificing" gratification of dependence: "I think she has devoted her life to making her mate (my father) and her children very happy. Has never taken much interest in outside social affairs; is concerned with her fam- ily. " Even this "devotion" is regarded with mixed feelings: "I don't really think she has any (shortcomings)-except maybe too wound up in her home and didn't take more interest in social affairs. " Robert overidealizes his father
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in an equally empty way as "very good-1 couldn't ask for a better father. '' He then proceeds furtively to "undo" this praise by expressions of feeling victimized: "He was a little strict at times," and "I haven't had everything I might have wanted from him. " (Note the dependence-for-things. ) "I would have liked to have a nicer home, better position. " His underlying submission, however, impels him to pull back and "apologize": "Possibly at the time I couldn't realize" the reasons for punishment, and "all in all, I was very happy to be one of his boys. " Most interesting are Robert's comments about his father's economic status: "Not a successful businessman. . . . Instead of im- proving himself, I think he went down a bit. . . . Since I got out of school, he's always worked for wages. " Thinking of the family's frequent moves which deeply upset his mother, Robert has "often tried in later years to analyze my father's wanderlust. " Robert decided that in moving so often, his father was "apparently seeking business success. " In this respect, "My mother," who "always referred to me as her best daughter" because "I've al- ways tried to do everything to make her happy"-(note the submissive feminine identification)-"has remarked that I'm just the opposite of him. " According to Robert, his mother in no way criticized the father's obsession with external status; she objected only that he did not "stay put" in seeking it and was not "successful" enough. But this seems to have provided a ra- tionale for Robert, while submitting to his father's notion of economic "suc- cess" as the end-all of existence, to assert: "To me, looking back now, he's not the type of a man that I want to pattern my business after. " Robert's ambiv- alent ego-ideal of "business success" is, so he likes to think, "the opposite" of his father's ideal. This might help to explain the inversion of his anti-Semitism, in which he expresses mainly envy of Jewish "drive and ambition to get there," with only furtive signs of his hostility against "the Jew. " "The Jew" perhaps symbolizes less his father directly than it does a superficially differ- ing father-ideal toward which Robert's resentment is even more repressed than toward his actual father. This father-ideal is difficult for him to rebel against even by way of displaced resentment against the symbol of "the Jew," because under moralistic pressure from his mother he is deceived into think- ing that his submission to this ideal is itself an assertion of independence from his father's values.
Ronald's resentment has broken through more openly. After the divorce of his parents when he was 3, he lived with his (paternal) grandmother. He was "taught . . . that ( my mother) had deserted my father and brother and 1. " Upon his father's remarriage, Ronald went, at the age of 7, to live with his father and stepmother. From the beginning there seemed to be "a mutual understanding between my brother and myself that we didn't like her. " Her position as only a secondary mother figure seemed to enable Ronald to express resentments toward her directly. His stepmother, he says, "didn't take any interest at all" and "resented us": "We always felt that we were in the
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way. " A hint of possible homosexual fixation on the father is suggested by jealousy that his father "was more interested in her than in me or my brother. " Ronald expresses much disappointment in the father, and feelings of being victimized by him: The father "was dependable, but he changed"; "worked his way up . . . then drinking caused him to go down. " "He never shirked at the idea of anyone helping him, especially financially. . . . I know he used some of my grandmother's money to buy real estate with. And I know he lost it, and it didn't seem to bother him. " The father gave Ronald an allowance of only fifteen cents a week, which Ronald still resents: "I'll never forget that. " For the most part, however, he blames his stepmother for being "never satis- fied" and "greedy. " Even he. re, his guilt makes him pull back, as if sensing that he may be projecting onto her some of his own feelings: "I thought she was greedy. 'Course it might have been for other reasons-wanting to save something. " Most striking is his almost complete displacement of hate for the father's harsh discipline, onto the stepmother. Telling how his father "didn't believe in sparing the rod" and "laid it on pretty thick," he declares: "The hard part about it was that my stepmother would tell him that my brother or I had done things, and he wouldn't give us a chance to explain. " Ronald actually "ran off twice," but "it didn't cause me to hate him. I held it mostly against her. " (Just as Ronald now "holds it mostly against" those of lesser status and weak position, not those who represent real power. )
Wilbur's parents died in his infancy. He was raised by an aunt and uncle, with whom his main satisfactions, he says, were limited to "board and room, a place to sleep. " The aunt was a "good woman" (i. e. , "pure"). Specifically, she gratified Wilbur's dependency-for-things; she was "good to the children: clothed, fed, took care of us when sick. " "I couldn't think of any" faults in her, except perhaps that "she would never like to go no place-stayed at home all the time" (like the woman Wilbur later chose to marry). He is unable to make his "idealization" of his aunt meaningful by any details; she was "just a good woman," "good to me. " He "never did" confide in her. Wilbur's monosyllabic answers to the examiner's inquiry indicate that his childhood was dominated by the harsh rule of his uncle, whose regime he was ap- parently too submissive to think of questioning. He says that his uncle whipped him several times a month: (Did you ever question whether he was right about it? ) "No. " The uncle, he declares, "treated me okay," but from a very early age "made me work pretty hard. (Q. ) Sun-up to sun-down. (Q. How did you take that? ) We did what the elders told us to. (Q. Did you ever question that? ) Well, I never questioned. " Wilbur was able to rebel only when he could create a persecutory rationale by 'feeling singled out: "Only one disagreement-he wanted me to do more work than his own children. " Wilbur reacted to this rationale with explosive defiance-still submissively unable to criticize his uncle's authoritarianism as such-by abruptly leaving home at the age of r5. With all this, Wilbur in another context describes
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8]9
his uncle as "pretty easy to get along with. " Then, in almost the next breath he n~veals that "he would stay away at night and drink, sometimes come home drunk. My aunt went off in a comer. " Wilbur indicates that he didn't dare to think seriously of criticizing the uncle or of protecting the aunt: (What was your reaction? ) "Didn't think much about it. "
Clarence, too, describes his (real) father as "easy to get along with. " What he admired most about the father was "the way he treated me. (Q. ) Never did abuse me or scold me. " Later, Clarence betrays the reason for his freedom from physical discipline, namely, his own cowed submission to stem parental authority. Although the father would "tell us what we should do, what he wanted us to do, and what he expected us to do," "there wasn't much (disci- pline) to exercise," simply because "we just did what they said. " A moment later, Clarence unwittingly reveals the parental intimidation that forced such utter submission from him: bemoaning the independence of children today, he declares that if he had ever answered his parents back the way he thinks children do now, "I wouldn't be able to sit down! " Clarence has justified his parents' intimidation of him by adopting the same general philosophy of authoritarianism: "Children didn't run wild in those days like they do nowadays. . . . If they have to whip them, I believe in whipping them. I don't believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the child.
