DuBarry came up from a courtesan to be the
indirect
ruler of the country.
Adorno-T-Authoritarian-Personality-Harper-Bros-1950
Actually, "I don't know if there is a God," but the most important thing in religion is "a genuine belief and a faith that things would always turn out all right" (Jim).
Religion involves "a belief, without academic proof, of a higher power-of some- thing you can depend on, of dependency" (Art).
The ultimate optimism hinted in these statements is consistent with findings about low scorers generally. However, the lack of inner self-reliance implied by their dependence on a supernatural power resembles certain trends found to be more typical of high scorers generally. This latter aspect is consistent with the fact that none of the low-scoring interviewees scored extremely low on any of the questionnaire scales.
E. DEFENSES AGAINST WEAKNESS
1. HIGH SCORERS
Defenses against weakness seem to be especially pronounced in the prej- udiced inmates. All of the high-scoring interviewees show deep-seated fears of weakness in themselves. The meaning of weakness to these men seems to be tied up with intense fears of nonmasculinity. To escape these fears they try to bolster themselves up by various antiweakness or pseudomascu- linity defenses. These can be grouped into four general themes, each of which may be expressed in a certain formula: (I) Power-strivings: "I am not on the bottom, I am one of those on top"; or, "I do not weakly submit, I domi- nate and control, I have power. " (2) "Toughness": "I am not weak, I am strong"; "I am not soft, I am tough"; "I am not passive and feminine, I am active and masculine. " (3) Flight into heterosexual activity: "I am not homo- sexual, I am heterosexual"; or "I do not love him, I love her. " (4) Paranoid reactions: "I do not love him, I hate him because he persecutes me"; i. e. , "I do not feel submissive-homosexual desires, I feel aggressive resentment toward men because they persecute me. "21
The questionnaire item which reflects defensive masculinity attitudes (spe- cifically, "toughness" and power) in purest form is number 26, which stereo- typically divides the world into "the strong" (ingroup) and "the weak" (outgroup). This item has the highest D. P. in the F scale. Other items con- taining antiweakness themes are those exalting "will power" (Item 2), "dis- cipline" and "determination" (Item I 3), an exaggerated notion of "honor"
21 The formulae (3) and (4) are adapted from Freud (40).
? CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS
(Item 19), as well as items a1ready mentioned in another context, especially 14 (PEC), 23, 30, and 45 (E).
The relative emphasis placed on different aspects of masculinity fa~ades, in relation to the fears underneath, differs from individual to individual. Therefore, instead of proceeding variable by variable, we shall discuss the weakness-antiweakness complex separately for each inmate.
Robert has centered his efforts to "prove" his "masculinity" around compulsive status-power strivings. He declares that from an early age "my greatest desire was to be somebody in life. . . . I wanted to be a success in business . . . and sometimes worried whether I would. . . . The future goal that I have set up is to own at least three . . . stores of my own . . . I was on my first store at the time of my arrest. " This concern with status and power gives meaning to his anxious fantasy that Negroes "don't have a goal in life" but "just want to exist," and his envious stereotype of Jewish "drive and ambition to get there. " Robert projects this compulsive power-drive onto others and reveals his inability to imagine any alternative to dominance or submission: "Every man has a certain ego that he has to satisfy. You like to be on top. If you're anybody at all, you don't like to be on the bottom. "
(Italics supplied. )
The submissive dependence behind Robert's power-seeking is shown in
his attitudes toward friends and family. (What do friends offer a person? ) "To me, friends offer satisfaction to myself that I've been doing a job well done, that I'm satisfying those people of their expectations. . . . (Q. ) Well, I was referring to the business viewpoint. " (Note the impersonalized use of people as primarily an external prop for what Robert calls his "ego. ") His main satisfaction with his younger brother was "the satisfaction he gave my ego. . . . He's patterned his life after mine. He's in the - - - business, too. " Robert further expresses pride that "my folks have always classed me as a success in the--- business. " The deference toward the examiner ("Do you think I have the right view of things? ") has been mentioned before.
Robert's power drive has apparently not stopped his fears of femininity, of heterosexual impotence, and possibly of latent homosexuality. Underlying identification with a feminine role is suggested by his own admission that "up until the time I left home, (my mother) always referred to me as her best daughter. " The possibility of conflict over latent homosexuality is raised by several cues: e. g. , by Robert's insistence, despite instructions not to bother with details, on exhibitionistically giving to the examiner (a man) a minutely detailed account of his first experience of intercourse; and by indirect "con-
tact" with other men via a hostile affair with a highly promiscuous woman. This last behavior, which finally broke up Robert's marriage, suggests a common type of defense against homosexual wishes, viz. , compulsive flight into heterosexual relationships which are extremely impersonal and hostile.
Ronald's ego-alien weakness is more transparent than Robert's. Mentioned
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
earlier was his unsatisfied dependent longing for authoritarian religious belief as "the thing that holds you together. " Similar extreme dependence is shown in his conception of "friends" as "someone that you can . . . talk to about your troubles, and vice versa" and "know that he's there at all times, and if you need any help at any time. " Also, like Robert, he asked the exam- iner to reassure him at the close of the interview that he is not "too radical" in some of his ideas. This "too radical" was apparently a euphemism for "too aggressive" toward outgroups. Ronald has a history of severe chronic bed- wetting until the age of 12, for which he has no explanation to offer beyond an extemalization of the symptom onto "my kidneys. " He has no idea why his enuresis suddenly stopped at the age of 12. That bed-wetting may have represented in part a passive mode of sexual gratification is suggested by his homosexual conflicts. Earlier mention has been made of his righteous condemnation of "sexual perversion" including, explicitly, fellatio. He de- nies that he has ever "felt any desire of any kind" for homosexual relations, yet subsequently admits to having several times had such relations with a fellow inmate. He implicitly denies any "real" homosexuality in this (blam- ing it exclusively on prison sex deprivation), and says that he had no special reaction to the experiences except to lose respect for the other man. Ron- ald's paranoid "toughness" toward Negro men might perhaps be a defense against homosexual excitement aroused by them. Ronald's promiscuous heterosexuality, including several impersonalized, unusual marriage cere- monies, may also be understood as an attempt to deny homosexual impulses. "I always get married spectacularly"-e. g. , "in a taxicab" or "my partner in a dance walkathon-married on the floor-no love, but received money for it from the spectators. " Both weakness and compensatory "toughness" seem to be combined in Ronald's thefts and gang robberies carried out "as a business. "
The chief prop of Eugene's defenses is a fac;ade of toughness. He has repeatedly been involved in petty trouble, especially by fighting when drunk. "I've got quite a temper," and "I like to fight once in a while . . . usually when I'm drinking. " Moreover, "I'm proud of my people," the "Scotch-Irish," whose most prominent characteristic, according to Eugene, is that "most of them like to fight. " When the examiner points out that this is precisely what Eugene resentfully says about Negroes, he differentiates on the basis that Negroes "go around looking" for fights, while he himself merely "likes" to fight (and does so frequently). The psychological reason why he likes to fight and has "quite a temper" seems to be largely uncon- scious; he "can't explain it. " He explains, however, that Negroes "go around picking trouble" because they've "got an inferiority complex" and "try to be big shots"-which may be a projection of his own inferiority feelings and the "big shot" way he tries to compensate for them. The situations which . evoke
Eugene's temper suggest possibly more specific causes, namely homosexual
? CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS
impulses, against which his impulsive aggressiveness may be a paranoid defense: "I was with a girl at a bar, and a guy got a little out of line . . . talkin' dirty-not to her, but he was talkin' loud. . . . "; or "maybe some guy calls me a name. " Eugene himself associates his propensity for "trouble" with fear of heterosexual adjustment: "I'm just a little too wild to get married. I'm scared of it. "
Clarence shows ,more obvious signs of ego-alien "weakness," and has less effective defenses against it. The army, he declares, "makes a man of you," but it did not succeed in overcoming Clarence's fear of rising above a private, because that would have meant "too much responsibility"- although "I'm pretty good at takin' orders. " Discharged for tuberculosis, he drew government compensation for seventeen years and then lived "on the county. " According to the prison physician, Clarence "claimed he still had T. B. , but . . . we failed to find any evidence of any active T. B. whatever. . . . We felt that he was wrongly drawing government compensation for
years. " This avoidance of work contrasts strikingly with Clarence's moralistic glorification of the disciplinary value of hard work. Moreover, to the prison physician Clarence appeared "very neurasthenic and enlarged on minor and rather normal aches and pains; was very feministic. " He did not marry until he was 38, to a woman 39, toward whom he was apparently quite submissive. Although "we weren't much alike in any way . . . we got along good" be- cause "I let her have her own way. Takes two to start an argument. " It was only a few months after her death, eleven years later, that he was arrested for "molesting" four girls, ages 8 to 10, who testified that he felt of their genitals. Such behavior could well be a panicky attempt to deny homosexual impulses by "proving" heterosexual masculinity. Clarence claimed that the girls made up the entire story just to "get even" with him because he "wouldn't give them candy. " Three years later, he was again arrested on a charge of getting two little girls drunk and attempting intercourse with one ot them. He escaped conviction on these two occasions, but two years later the half-sister (age 12) of one of the last two little girls was picked up by the police at Clarence's home. This time he was convicted of attempted rape. Clarence seems to have denied this episode to himself by developing a system of persecutory delusions: He protests that he "worked for the people in politics in order to clean up the city," and that when his candidates were not elected the police "went after" him. This paranoid reaction is consistent with the interpretation that his heterosexual delinquency was a defense against homosexual panic.
1Vilbur has also worked out a rigid system of paranoid delusions, but shows less obvious signs of underlying weakness than Clarence. For him, as for Robert and Ronald, friends mean primarily dependence; they offer "help in lots of needs, sickness, money-well, a friend can just help you in most any way. " He indicates that, like Clarence, he has a very submissive relationship
? 86o THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
to his wife: His wife manages finances, gives the discipline to the children, and, when he and his wife disagree, "I usually do just what she asks me to do. " In view of his reactions to the landlord, Wilbur may well have experi- enced a deep threat to his masculinity and possible homosexual panic directed toward a "persecuting" father figure, when he and his family were evicted following a controversy. He felt compelled to "fight back" in desperation; he sought out the landlord, who happened to be of Greek descent, and attacked him fatally. Apparently unable to face emotional conflicts stirred up by this episode, Wilbur stereotypically impersonalized the relationship by imagining himself as an unfortunate victim of "the Greek people, who like to punish the poor people. "
These men are distinguished not only by the intensity of their conflicts about weakness, but also by a special feature of their defenses against weak- ness in themselves: In addition to the pseudomasculine attitudes which they share with prejudiced men in other groups, the high-scoring inmates express antiweakness themes overtly in delinquent behavior. This behavior has a superficial appearance of being an uninhibited expression of basic impulses. But closer observation reveals that the acts referred to are by no means free or expressive; they have an aspect of desperate compulsion, and can be understood as a defensive attempt to deny weakness. This defensiveness actually conceals intense inhibitions (as is shown elsewhere in this chapter) against genuine heterosexuality and against straightforward aggression against real authority and parent figures. It seems as if these men's uninternalized conscience combines with especially intense disturbance about weakness to produce delinquency, as an extreme type of antiweakness defense. Such actions are perhaps even more unrestrained in those interviewees we have called openly fascist.
2. FASCISTS
The antiweakness defenses appear in more extreme form in the fascists, with more unconcealed anxiety about inner weakness. Buck's deep fear that he may be a "sex maniac," his delinquent heterosexual behavior toward a
I 3-year-old girl and toward his own small children, have been discussed. Further hints of an obsessive fear of homosexuality are given in his reply to the questionnaire item asking what are the worst possible crimes. Besides rape and murder, Buck lists homosexual intercourse per anum. In the inter- view, he reveals graphic fantasies suggesting preoccupation with "any man that abuses any part of another man's body. . . . I could never see (he refers in profane language to sodomy and fellatio). Buck exhibits vain blustering in almost complete disregard of reality. He repeatedly interrupted the in- terview to protest, inappropriately, that "I can make money as well as the next guy. " His emotional involvement in these unreal fantasies is sug- gested by his asking the examiner, "Do you think I can make it? "; and
? CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS 861
by his interview explanation of his response "worry" to the questionnaire item asking "What might drive a person nuts? ": "Well, I'm worryin' here, I gotta make it now, or I'm not gonna make it. I'm gettin' pretty old. Well, not old-but it can't be done by foolin' around in the penitentiary. " His greatest ambition, he declares, is to "buy more cattle, more land. " Buck, as will be recalled, "made it" by leaving a trail of bad checks up and down the state.
Floyd says "I laugh at homosexuals," and he agrees very much with the questionnaire item that "homosexuals . . . ought to be severely punished. " His promiscuous sexuality has already been described. Nonetheless, his feminine identifications are almost conscious. Asked on the question- naire what great people he admires most, he lists "Salome, Madame DuBarry, Mata Hari. " In the interview, he reveals that what he identifies with is their opportunistic rise from feminine submergence to positions of power. "Yeh, they did their share. (How do you mean? ) I am particularly fond of women. . . . I like a woman who is capable. . . .
DuBarry came up from a courtesan to be the indirect ruler of the country. " Floyd's feminine-submis- sive-homosexual identifications appear also in his attitude toward his "crime partner," to whom he is deeply attached. Note the peculiar context in which status considerations irrelevantly intrude: "He's 30, but I guess we are intel- lectual equals if nothing else. " And observe the preoccupation with physical relationships, with a consequently inappropriate response: (What sort of person is he? ) "Well, he is short and heavy and light. I'm tall and'lean and dark. We're physical opposites. " Floyd is so preoccupied with his dependent role toward the other man that even further probing fails to elicit any real description of the latter's personality: (What sort of a guy is he? ) "The best. (Can you give an example? ) If he says something, he means it. And the thing that I thought most about him: the night-well, we walked into a police trap. The other fellow ran off, but he tried to come back and get me. . . . He's loyal. " Thus, Floyd's devoted "lieutenant" relationship to his crime partner possibly enabled him indirectly to gratify submissive-homosexual wishes, at the same time as he was bolstering his masculinity as a "big oper- ator" engaged in armed robberies.
For Adrian, the feminine-submissive-homosexual identifications require no inference. Since leaving school, he has lived as a homosexual prostitute, and "I look at all things from a feminine viewpoint. " There is abundant evidence that his homosexuality is an acting-out of hate-filled power conflicts. Not only do "men irritate me by what I think is a superior attitude," but "I never did like homosexual affairs. . . . The actual physical act always repelled me and still does. " It is as if Adrian is driven by some inner compulsion to "prove" to men again and again, by ingratiating effeminate behavior, that he is submissive and self-emasculated. He "could pet all night. " But since he "found you can't get away with that," he submits further by doing "just whatever they want to. " Adrian's resentment against such utter submission
? 862 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
is expressed in opportunistic exploitation of the men who "kept" him: "I wasn't interested in anything except clothes and the rent. " Frequent disagree- ments arose "about money-1 never had as much money as I thought I ought to have. I'd always threaten to leave and go somewhere else. I usually got my way. " The underlying wish to turn the tables and dominate the very men to whom he submitted is plain: "I ruled those roosts. (How do you mean? ) I cooked what I wanted to cook and did what I wanted to do. "
Adrian's "feminine viewpoint" is thus fundamentally sexless and loveless. He presents an extreme caricature of the fac;ade which helps greatly to dis- tinguish certain high-scoring women (see Chapter XI): exaggerated effem- inacy of manner, ingratiating coyness, flirtatiousness, excessive attention to dress, ostentatious display of physical weakness with vague hypochon- driacal complaining and appeal for pity, etc. The cynical exploitiveness hidden behind this fac;ade is further exemplified in his favorite heroes of fiction-"Becky Sharp, Madame Bovary, and Ivy Lashton. . . . I don't admire anything in any of them. Y ou asked me ? who I liked the best. Because they were all decidedly-what do you call it? -designing women. " The power motif is even clearer in his identification with Mary Baker Eddy, whom he regards as "neurotic" and "I don't have much faith in (her) personally," but "I admire (her) immensely" as a "shrewd business woman. "
Even Adrian, with his self-emasculated homosexual submission, made a stab at compensatory "toughness" in his present offense. While drinking in a bar, "I read in True Detective Stories about a girl who got herself up a bunch of hoodlums and raised herself a lot of hell. . . . And I figured if a little tiny thing like this girl could, I could. " He proceeded to pick out from the customers at the bar the man who seemed "the most mean looking and cor- rupt," and suggested they do a robbery together. "I didn't intend to play the active role. " "I thought he would do the dirty work but he wouldn't. So I had to. " The man got Adrian a cap pistol and, by standing outside, gave
him the moral courage to enter a store, where he held up "a very big man" and escaped with the cash register contents. Referring to this incident in dis- cussing Hitler, Adrian himself formulates its fascistic implications: "I'm no leader, but I can follow. . . . Though I led when I had that gun, didn't I? . . . When you make people lead you, that means the same thing, doesn't it? "
Implicit in the "moralism-immorality" and "weakness-antiweakness" com- plexes of the pseudodemocratic high scorers, is a feature that becomes ex- plicit in the fascists, namely, externalized self-contempt. This is termed externalized because what is despised is not regarded as really a part of the self but as somehow alien or accidental, something for which the subject does not really accept responsibility. Floyd's self-contempt is expressed in such remarks as "Only reason (anyone is) unemployed is they're lazy like me," and "My industriousness . . . just doesn't exist . . . just a black horse. " He speaks of this as if it were an isolated trait unrelated to his personality as a whole-an ac-
? CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS
cident of heredity "from the other (maternal) side of the family. " Floyd says he was as a child "a typical fresh Irish kid. . . . Snot-nosed they used to call it"; "I didn't grow up"; "Everything I do is an act. " . . . Buck, even in the same breath in which he blames all his troubles on "some damn b _ , " de- clares that "I'm kind of ashamed; I'm the only black sheep in the family. " Mention has been made earlier of his concern that "You don't think I'm a sex maniac, do you? " and "Do you think I can make it? " (i. e. , money). This anxiety, combined with Buck's previous sex offenses, his gross financial mis- management and fabricated financial exploits, suggests intense, externalized self-contempt. Adrian exhibits the most profound self-contempt of all. He describes himself as "spoiled," "selfish," "neurotic," dominated by "moral laxness," etc. Further, "I get along very well with old maids. I guess I'm kind of an old maid in my mental make-up. " About homosexuality: "The whole subject is repulsive to me now. I'd just as soon forget I ever lived that sort of life. " This last statement was made just before a short-lived parole, m which he quickly reverted to drinking and to homosexual prostitution.
3. LOW SCORERS
As mentioned before, the low-scoring interviewees, too, show some signs of conflicts about "weakness," but usually with this difference: Such conflicts are in these men more ego-accepted, instead of being denied by the anti- weakness pretenses appearing in the prejudiced men. The greater capacity of the low scorers to face these emotional problems seems to facilitate more constructive attempts at solving them, especially through persistent achieve- ment-strivings (not a quest for external success only, but a striving to satisfy inner standards of self-expressive attainment). Related to this is a more general feature of their approach to life: the development of self- expressive interests that seem to be more than escapist distractions or ways of gaining status. Likewise, these men's more relaxed attitude toward mas- culinity (as compared with the prejudiced men) seems to have permitted them to develop soft-passive-feminine character traits and sublimated ex- pressions of love-oriented homosexual impulses (not the ego-alien, hostile- submissive homosexual conflicts of the prejudiced men).
Art's "weakness" has been expressed primarily in his search for a nurturant mother figure on whom he could be dependent. When frustrated in this, he "arranged" to get himself into prison by writing bad checks and taking no precautions against being caught-in order to satisfy his dependency needs by using the prison as "mother. " This is his own interpretation-worked out by consciously trying to understand his behavior in retrospect-by "auto- psychoanalysis. " Art also verbalizes openly his "feeling of inferiority. " His compensatory ambition is expressed in striving to satisfy inner values, to dem- onstrate his inner "abilities and capacities," to an extent that seems neurotically insistent: "I don't like to think of limits . . . on my own abilities and capaci-
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
ties. " Deeply admiring his mother's "intellectual ability," Art was "very con- scientious" in school and "was disappointed one time when I got a 'B' instead of all 'A's. ' " Having been "imbued" by his mother "with the idea that my body was a precious possession and that I should take care of it," he trained himself rigorously as "an athlete" and set a world's record while still in high school. A leg injury at this time interrupted his further athletic career and prevented his entry into Annapolis; he was in bed with a cast on his leg for nine months. Significantly, during this period of enforced, and com- plete, dependency on his mother (and to a lesser extent an older sister), Art "broke training" by "smoking for the first time in my life" and also "started drinking. " It was as if, unable to accept this dependence and deprived of an important part of his male ego identity as "an athlete," he needed to assert his independence of maternal moral precepts and to prove that he was a "big guy. " . . . Art prefers "fine art" to his (and his father's) vocation of commercial art. The former arouses real enthusiasm in him: "I'm immensely happy in that type of work . . . tremendously interested in it. " His main interests are (as he describes them) explicitly intellectual and aesthetic.
Jim has a more disorganized background. His father, after years of vio- lently maltreating the entire family, deserted them when Jim was I3? The main burden of supporting the family now fell upon Jim. Although he had done well enough in school to skip a grade, he now played truant for two semesters, while struggling along on a paper route, odd jobs, and relief allot- ments. The mother reports that when a doctor urged that she eat more fruit for the sake of her health, Jim sometimes went without eating in order to buy fruit for her. It was during this period that he engaged in several petty thefts; he was arrested once, but the case was dismissed. Not long after the father returned, following an eight-year absence, Jim began to work for him. But when the father "scolded and nagged him one day," according to the mother's report, "he refused to work for his father any more. " This may help to explain Jim's apparent resistance to the two employers he has had: the one private employer he worked for (as a messenger-clerk, for about fifteen months) reported a generally uncooperative work adjustment. Also, Jim was discharged from a C. C. C. camp for refusing to work (no details avail- able). In contrast with this resistance to father-figure authorities, is be- havior suggesting a quest for a "good father" who might deserve his love: a government relief investigator refers to Jim's "disposition to stay with a man much older . . . than himself. This man . . . supposedly took an interest in
(Jim) and was attempting to lend every aid at his disposal . . . was somewhat of a drinking man, but according to (Jim), during (Jim's) stay with (him) he stopped drinking; and so the living together was considered mutually bene- ficial. " In prison, where Jim has been given increasing responsibility, his work adjustment is reported as "excellent. " When last seen, he was working as a kind of counselor to other inmates coming to the psychiatric department
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for advice. He declared that most of 'them seemed to feel much better after releasing their feelings to a sympathetic person (such as himself), and ex- pressed the feeling that he himself had grown in self-insight and maturity as a by-product of listening to other inmates' problems. Meanwhile, his earlier expressed wish to achieve success as a "business executive" has given way to a desire to do some sort of personnel work when he is paroled.
The conventional "drive for success" motive has played a larger role in the thinking of Don and Dick, even though this seems to be integrated into an internalized value-system. From the time Dan's parents were divorced, when he was 12, he has been fully self-supporting. Through high school he lived with a group of other youngsters who were also working, and somehow found time to play in the school band and on the football team. Meanwhile, h~ving earned the grades necessary for entering college, he had saved $4,ooo with the intention of working toward a medical degree. A three-year siege of meningitis "busted" this goal. His subsequent work-history, he says, has been "more or less accidental. " Going to work in his stepfather's busi- ness, Don became a salesman. This has been his main occupation, for a period of some years as manager of his own business, in which he was "very successful. " His primary goal was "security," which he lost when he began to loan money heavily to his mother, and finally to steal for her-an episode to be described later. Since being in prison, he has seriously developed a boyhood hobby of photography, which he now plans to continue as a vocation in partnership with his son-in-law. As an inmate he has worked into a position that involves photographic work with some supervisory capacity. Photography represents "a form of salesmanship-meet people and analyze them"; it has a "terrific future" as a result of technical advances accomplished during the war. Don's other interests include a va- riety of sports and reading a great deal. He is described in the initial prison psychiatric interview as "one of the most talkative inmates to cross this inter- viewer's desk," as showing "a genuine curiosity" and continually "interrupt- ing the interview to ask questions . . . regarding prison life, inmates, and characteristics of various officials. "
Through the interview with Dick there seems to run the theme of being what he calls "too easy-going" (suggesting open passivity as an inhibitory defense against expressing aggression). He "never did like to argue with any- one. " (This may well be related to his fear of "agitators" and his anxiety that unions "shouldn't agitate. ") Thus, Dick avoided having "any fights with other kids. " Later, when his parents objected strenuously to his marrying a girl with whom he was in love, because she had a crippled leg, he "didn't argue -just listened to them and told them my side. I couldn't agree with them. " Apparently unable to withstand their pressure, he subsequently married an- other girl while he was in the Navy. Despite continuous conflict, they stayed together seven years for the sake of their child, and then separated. Dick
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then "broke loose" from some of his inhibitions and "got a little wild . . . doing a lot of drinking" which led up to the present term in prison. (More of this later. ) Dick might have been better able to sublimate his inhibited aggres- sions if his early ambition to become a doctor had not been blocked by finan- cial difficulties: he "used to dream I was a doctor delivering babies and cutting people open. " While in prison, however, he has developed a thor- oughgoing interest in watchmaking as both vocation and hobby. It is inter- esting to speculate whether the focus on close detail in such work may serve as a compulsive means of holding down certain (aggressive) feelings-per- haps allowing less (indirect) expression of those feelings than medicine, but nonetheless a highly sublimated form of control. It is of interest that Dick has learned watchmaking during his spare time from "one real close friend," who is a sex offender. His accepting attitude to the latter contrasts with the prejudiced men's hostile righteousness on such matters. At the same time, the question may be asked whether this friendship involves some indirect satis- faction of latent homosexual impulses, as was suggested for Jim's close friend- ship with an older man. Such impulses are hinted in a slip that Dick made in describing his childhood friendship with the crippled girl whom he later wanted to marry: "She always used to come to me for advice. . . . If a boy asked her for a date, she would come to me to ask whether l-or rather she should go out with him.
The ultimate optimism hinted in these statements is consistent with findings about low scorers generally. However, the lack of inner self-reliance implied by their dependence on a supernatural power resembles certain trends found to be more typical of high scorers generally. This latter aspect is consistent with the fact that none of the low-scoring interviewees scored extremely low on any of the questionnaire scales.
E. DEFENSES AGAINST WEAKNESS
1. HIGH SCORERS
Defenses against weakness seem to be especially pronounced in the prej- udiced inmates. All of the high-scoring interviewees show deep-seated fears of weakness in themselves. The meaning of weakness to these men seems to be tied up with intense fears of nonmasculinity. To escape these fears they try to bolster themselves up by various antiweakness or pseudomascu- linity defenses. These can be grouped into four general themes, each of which may be expressed in a certain formula: (I) Power-strivings: "I am not on the bottom, I am one of those on top"; or, "I do not weakly submit, I domi- nate and control, I have power. " (2) "Toughness": "I am not weak, I am strong"; "I am not soft, I am tough"; "I am not passive and feminine, I am active and masculine. " (3) Flight into heterosexual activity: "I am not homo- sexual, I am heterosexual"; or "I do not love him, I love her. " (4) Paranoid reactions: "I do not love him, I hate him because he persecutes me"; i. e. , "I do not feel submissive-homosexual desires, I feel aggressive resentment toward men because they persecute me. "21
The questionnaire item which reflects defensive masculinity attitudes (spe- cifically, "toughness" and power) in purest form is number 26, which stereo- typically divides the world into "the strong" (ingroup) and "the weak" (outgroup). This item has the highest D. P. in the F scale. Other items con- taining antiweakness themes are those exalting "will power" (Item 2), "dis- cipline" and "determination" (Item I 3), an exaggerated notion of "honor"
21 The formulae (3) and (4) are adapted from Freud (40).
? CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS
(Item 19), as well as items a1ready mentioned in another context, especially 14 (PEC), 23, 30, and 45 (E).
The relative emphasis placed on different aspects of masculinity fa~ades, in relation to the fears underneath, differs from individual to individual. Therefore, instead of proceeding variable by variable, we shall discuss the weakness-antiweakness complex separately for each inmate.
Robert has centered his efforts to "prove" his "masculinity" around compulsive status-power strivings. He declares that from an early age "my greatest desire was to be somebody in life. . . . I wanted to be a success in business . . . and sometimes worried whether I would. . . . The future goal that I have set up is to own at least three . . . stores of my own . . . I was on my first store at the time of my arrest. " This concern with status and power gives meaning to his anxious fantasy that Negroes "don't have a goal in life" but "just want to exist," and his envious stereotype of Jewish "drive and ambition to get there. " Robert projects this compulsive power-drive onto others and reveals his inability to imagine any alternative to dominance or submission: "Every man has a certain ego that he has to satisfy. You like to be on top. If you're anybody at all, you don't like to be on the bottom. "
(Italics supplied. )
The submissive dependence behind Robert's power-seeking is shown in
his attitudes toward friends and family. (What do friends offer a person? ) "To me, friends offer satisfaction to myself that I've been doing a job well done, that I'm satisfying those people of their expectations. . . . (Q. ) Well, I was referring to the business viewpoint. " (Note the impersonalized use of people as primarily an external prop for what Robert calls his "ego. ") His main satisfaction with his younger brother was "the satisfaction he gave my ego. . . . He's patterned his life after mine. He's in the - - - business, too. " Robert further expresses pride that "my folks have always classed me as a success in the--- business. " The deference toward the examiner ("Do you think I have the right view of things? ") has been mentioned before.
Robert's power drive has apparently not stopped his fears of femininity, of heterosexual impotence, and possibly of latent homosexuality. Underlying identification with a feminine role is suggested by his own admission that "up until the time I left home, (my mother) always referred to me as her best daughter. " The possibility of conflict over latent homosexuality is raised by several cues: e. g. , by Robert's insistence, despite instructions not to bother with details, on exhibitionistically giving to the examiner (a man) a minutely detailed account of his first experience of intercourse; and by indirect "con-
tact" with other men via a hostile affair with a highly promiscuous woman. This last behavior, which finally broke up Robert's marriage, suggests a common type of defense against homosexual wishes, viz. , compulsive flight into heterosexual relationships which are extremely impersonal and hostile.
Ronald's ego-alien weakness is more transparent than Robert's. Mentioned
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earlier was his unsatisfied dependent longing for authoritarian religious belief as "the thing that holds you together. " Similar extreme dependence is shown in his conception of "friends" as "someone that you can . . . talk to about your troubles, and vice versa" and "know that he's there at all times, and if you need any help at any time. " Also, like Robert, he asked the exam- iner to reassure him at the close of the interview that he is not "too radical" in some of his ideas. This "too radical" was apparently a euphemism for "too aggressive" toward outgroups. Ronald has a history of severe chronic bed- wetting until the age of 12, for which he has no explanation to offer beyond an extemalization of the symptom onto "my kidneys. " He has no idea why his enuresis suddenly stopped at the age of 12. That bed-wetting may have represented in part a passive mode of sexual gratification is suggested by his homosexual conflicts. Earlier mention has been made of his righteous condemnation of "sexual perversion" including, explicitly, fellatio. He de- nies that he has ever "felt any desire of any kind" for homosexual relations, yet subsequently admits to having several times had such relations with a fellow inmate. He implicitly denies any "real" homosexuality in this (blam- ing it exclusively on prison sex deprivation), and says that he had no special reaction to the experiences except to lose respect for the other man. Ron- ald's paranoid "toughness" toward Negro men might perhaps be a defense against homosexual excitement aroused by them. Ronald's promiscuous heterosexuality, including several impersonalized, unusual marriage cere- monies, may also be understood as an attempt to deny homosexual impulses. "I always get married spectacularly"-e. g. , "in a taxicab" or "my partner in a dance walkathon-married on the floor-no love, but received money for it from the spectators. " Both weakness and compensatory "toughness" seem to be combined in Ronald's thefts and gang robberies carried out "as a business. "
The chief prop of Eugene's defenses is a fac;ade of toughness. He has repeatedly been involved in petty trouble, especially by fighting when drunk. "I've got quite a temper," and "I like to fight once in a while . . . usually when I'm drinking. " Moreover, "I'm proud of my people," the "Scotch-Irish," whose most prominent characteristic, according to Eugene, is that "most of them like to fight. " When the examiner points out that this is precisely what Eugene resentfully says about Negroes, he differentiates on the basis that Negroes "go around looking" for fights, while he himself merely "likes" to fight (and does so frequently). The psychological reason why he likes to fight and has "quite a temper" seems to be largely uncon- scious; he "can't explain it. " He explains, however, that Negroes "go around picking trouble" because they've "got an inferiority complex" and "try to be big shots"-which may be a projection of his own inferiority feelings and the "big shot" way he tries to compensate for them. The situations which . evoke
Eugene's temper suggest possibly more specific causes, namely homosexual
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impulses, against which his impulsive aggressiveness may be a paranoid defense: "I was with a girl at a bar, and a guy got a little out of line . . . talkin' dirty-not to her, but he was talkin' loud. . . . "; or "maybe some guy calls me a name. " Eugene himself associates his propensity for "trouble" with fear of heterosexual adjustment: "I'm just a little too wild to get married. I'm scared of it. "
Clarence shows ,more obvious signs of ego-alien "weakness," and has less effective defenses against it. The army, he declares, "makes a man of you," but it did not succeed in overcoming Clarence's fear of rising above a private, because that would have meant "too much responsibility"- although "I'm pretty good at takin' orders. " Discharged for tuberculosis, he drew government compensation for seventeen years and then lived "on the county. " According to the prison physician, Clarence "claimed he still had T. B. , but . . . we failed to find any evidence of any active T. B. whatever. . . . We felt that he was wrongly drawing government compensation for
years. " This avoidance of work contrasts strikingly with Clarence's moralistic glorification of the disciplinary value of hard work. Moreover, to the prison physician Clarence appeared "very neurasthenic and enlarged on minor and rather normal aches and pains; was very feministic. " He did not marry until he was 38, to a woman 39, toward whom he was apparently quite submissive. Although "we weren't much alike in any way . . . we got along good" be- cause "I let her have her own way. Takes two to start an argument. " It was only a few months after her death, eleven years later, that he was arrested for "molesting" four girls, ages 8 to 10, who testified that he felt of their genitals. Such behavior could well be a panicky attempt to deny homosexual impulses by "proving" heterosexual masculinity. Clarence claimed that the girls made up the entire story just to "get even" with him because he "wouldn't give them candy. " Three years later, he was again arrested on a charge of getting two little girls drunk and attempting intercourse with one ot them. He escaped conviction on these two occasions, but two years later the half-sister (age 12) of one of the last two little girls was picked up by the police at Clarence's home. This time he was convicted of attempted rape. Clarence seems to have denied this episode to himself by developing a system of persecutory delusions: He protests that he "worked for the people in politics in order to clean up the city," and that when his candidates were not elected the police "went after" him. This paranoid reaction is consistent with the interpretation that his heterosexual delinquency was a defense against homosexual panic.
1Vilbur has also worked out a rigid system of paranoid delusions, but shows less obvious signs of underlying weakness than Clarence. For him, as for Robert and Ronald, friends mean primarily dependence; they offer "help in lots of needs, sickness, money-well, a friend can just help you in most any way. " He indicates that, like Clarence, he has a very submissive relationship
? 86o THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
to his wife: His wife manages finances, gives the discipline to the children, and, when he and his wife disagree, "I usually do just what she asks me to do. " In view of his reactions to the landlord, Wilbur may well have experi- enced a deep threat to his masculinity and possible homosexual panic directed toward a "persecuting" father figure, when he and his family were evicted following a controversy. He felt compelled to "fight back" in desperation; he sought out the landlord, who happened to be of Greek descent, and attacked him fatally. Apparently unable to face emotional conflicts stirred up by this episode, Wilbur stereotypically impersonalized the relationship by imagining himself as an unfortunate victim of "the Greek people, who like to punish the poor people. "
These men are distinguished not only by the intensity of their conflicts about weakness, but also by a special feature of their defenses against weak- ness in themselves: In addition to the pseudomasculine attitudes which they share with prejudiced men in other groups, the high-scoring inmates express antiweakness themes overtly in delinquent behavior. This behavior has a superficial appearance of being an uninhibited expression of basic impulses. But closer observation reveals that the acts referred to are by no means free or expressive; they have an aspect of desperate compulsion, and can be understood as a defensive attempt to deny weakness. This defensiveness actually conceals intense inhibitions (as is shown elsewhere in this chapter) against genuine heterosexuality and against straightforward aggression against real authority and parent figures. It seems as if these men's uninternalized conscience combines with especially intense disturbance about weakness to produce delinquency, as an extreme type of antiweakness defense. Such actions are perhaps even more unrestrained in those interviewees we have called openly fascist.
2. FASCISTS
The antiweakness defenses appear in more extreme form in the fascists, with more unconcealed anxiety about inner weakness. Buck's deep fear that he may be a "sex maniac," his delinquent heterosexual behavior toward a
I 3-year-old girl and toward his own small children, have been discussed. Further hints of an obsessive fear of homosexuality are given in his reply to the questionnaire item asking what are the worst possible crimes. Besides rape and murder, Buck lists homosexual intercourse per anum. In the inter- view, he reveals graphic fantasies suggesting preoccupation with "any man that abuses any part of another man's body. . . . I could never see (he refers in profane language to sodomy and fellatio). Buck exhibits vain blustering in almost complete disregard of reality. He repeatedly interrupted the in- terview to protest, inappropriately, that "I can make money as well as the next guy. " His emotional involvement in these unreal fantasies is sug- gested by his asking the examiner, "Do you think I can make it? "; and
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by his interview explanation of his response "worry" to the questionnaire item asking "What might drive a person nuts? ": "Well, I'm worryin' here, I gotta make it now, or I'm not gonna make it. I'm gettin' pretty old. Well, not old-but it can't be done by foolin' around in the penitentiary. " His greatest ambition, he declares, is to "buy more cattle, more land. " Buck, as will be recalled, "made it" by leaving a trail of bad checks up and down the state.
Floyd says "I laugh at homosexuals," and he agrees very much with the questionnaire item that "homosexuals . . . ought to be severely punished. " His promiscuous sexuality has already been described. Nonetheless, his feminine identifications are almost conscious. Asked on the question- naire what great people he admires most, he lists "Salome, Madame DuBarry, Mata Hari. " In the interview, he reveals that what he identifies with is their opportunistic rise from feminine submergence to positions of power. "Yeh, they did their share. (How do you mean? ) I am particularly fond of women. . . . I like a woman who is capable. . . .
DuBarry came up from a courtesan to be the indirect ruler of the country. " Floyd's feminine-submis- sive-homosexual identifications appear also in his attitude toward his "crime partner," to whom he is deeply attached. Note the peculiar context in which status considerations irrelevantly intrude: "He's 30, but I guess we are intel- lectual equals if nothing else. " And observe the preoccupation with physical relationships, with a consequently inappropriate response: (What sort of person is he? ) "Well, he is short and heavy and light. I'm tall and'lean and dark. We're physical opposites. " Floyd is so preoccupied with his dependent role toward the other man that even further probing fails to elicit any real description of the latter's personality: (What sort of a guy is he? ) "The best. (Can you give an example? ) If he says something, he means it. And the thing that I thought most about him: the night-well, we walked into a police trap. The other fellow ran off, but he tried to come back and get me. . . . He's loyal. " Thus, Floyd's devoted "lieutenant" relationship to his crime partner possibly enabled him indirectly to gratify submissive-homosexual wishes, at the same time as he was bolstering his masculinity as a "big oper- ator" engaged in armed robberies.
For Adrian, the feminine-submissive-homosexual identifications require no inference. Since leaving school, he has lived as a homosexual prostitute, and "I look at all things from a feminine viewpoint. " There is abundant evidence that his homosexuality is an acting-out of hate-filled power conflicts. Not only do "men irritate me by what I think is a superior attitude," but "I never did like homosexual affairs. . . . The actual physical act always repelled me and still does. " It is as if Adrian is driven by some inner compulsion to "prove" to men again and again, by ingratiating effeminate behavior, that he is submissive and self-emasculated. He "could pet all night. " But since he "found you can't get away with that," he submits further by doing "just whatever they want to. " Adrian's resentment against such utter submission
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is expressed in opportunistic exploitation of the men who "kept" him: "I wasn't interested in anything except clothes and the rent. " Frequent disagree- ments arose "about money-1 never had as much money as I thought I ought to have. I'd always threaten to leave and go somewhere else. I usually got my way. " The underlying wish to turn the tables and dominate the very men to whom he submitted is plain: "I ruled those roosts. (How do you mean? ) I cooked what I wanted to cook and did what I wanted to do. "
Adrian's "feminine viewpoint" is thus fundamentally sexless and loveless. He presents an extreme caricature of the fac;ade which helps greatly to dis- tinguish certain high-scoring women (see Chapter XI): exaggerated effem- inacy of manner, ingratiating coyness, flirtatiousness, excessive attention to dress, ostentatious display of physical weakness with vague hypochon- driacal complaining and appeal for pity, etc. The cynical exploitiveness hidden behind this fac;ade is further exemplified in his favorite heroes of fiction-"Becky Sharp, Madame Bovary, and Ivy Lashton. . . . I don't admire anything in any of them. Y ou asked me ? who I liked the best. Because they were all decidedly-what do you call it? -designing women. " The power motif is even clearer in his identification with Mary Baker Eddy, whom he regards as "neurotic" and "I don't have much faith in (her) personally," but "I admire (her) immensely" as a "shrewd business woman. "
Even Adrian, with his self-emasculated homosexual submission, made a stab at compensatory "toughness" in his present offense. While drinking in a bar, "I read in True Detective Stories about a girl who got herself up a bunch of hoodlums and raised herself a lot of hell. . . . And I figured if a little tiny thing like this girl could, I could. " He proceeded to pick out from the customers at the bar the man who seemed "the most mean looking and cor- rupt," and suggested they do a robbery together. "I didn't intend to play the active role. " "I thought he would do the dirty work but he wouldn't. So I had to. " The man got Adrian a cap pistol and, by standing outside, gave
him the moral courage to enter a store, where he held up "a very big man" and escaped with the cash register contents. Referring to this incident in dis- cussing Hitler, Adrian himself formulates its fascistic implications: "I'm no leader, but I can follow. . . . Though I led when I had that gun, didn't I? . . . When you make people lead you, that means the same thing, doesn't it? "
Implicit in the "moralism-immorality" and "weakness-antiweakness" com- plexes of the pseudodemocratic high scorers, is a feature that becomes ex- plicit in the fascists, namely, externalized self-contempt. This is termed externalized because what is despised is not regarded as really a part of the self but as somehow alien or accidental, something for which the subject does not really accept responsibility. Floyd's self-contempt is expressed in such remarks as "Only reason (anyone is) unemployed is they're lazy like me," and "My industriousness . . . just doesn't exist . . . just a black horse. " He speaks of this as if it were an isolated trait unrelated to his personality as a whole-an ac-
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cident of heredity "from the other (maternal) side of the family. " Floyd says he was as a child "a typical fresh Irish kid. . . . Snot-nosed they used to call it"; "I didn't grow up"; "Everything I do is an act. " . . . Buck, even in the same breath in which he blames all his troubles on "some damn b _ , " de- clares that "I'm kind of ashamed; I'm the only black sheep in the family. " Mention has been made earlier of his concern that "You don't think I'm a sex maniac, do you? " and "Do you think I can make it? " (i. e. , money). This anxiety, combined with Buck's previous sex offenses, his gross financial mis- management and fabricated financial exploits, suggests intense, externalized self-contempt. Adrian exhibits the most profound self-contempt of all. He describes himself as "spoiled," "selfish," "neurotic," dominated by "moral laxness," etc. Further, "I get along very well with old maids. I guess I'm kind of an old maid in my mental make-up. " About homosexuality: "The whole subject is repulsive to me now. I'd just as soon forget I ever lived that sort of life. " This last statement was made just before a short-lived parole, m which he quickly reverted to drinking and to homosexual prostitution.
3. LOW SCORERS
As mentioned before, the low-scoring interviewees, too, show some signs of conflicts about "weakness," but usually with this difference: Such conflicts are in these men more ego-accepted, instead of being denied by the anti- weakness pretenses appearing in the prejudiced men. The greater capacity of the low scorers to face these emotional problems seems to facilitate more constructive attempts at solving them, especially through persistent achieve- ment-strivings (not a quest for external success only, but a striving to satisfy inner standards of self-expressive attainment). Related to this is a more general feature of their approach to life: the development of self- expressive interests that seem to be more than escapist distractions or ways of gaining status. Likewise, these men's more relaxed attitude toward mas- culinity (as compared with the prejudiced men) seems to have permitted them to develop soft-passive-feminine character traits and sublimated ex- pressions of love-oriented homosexual impulses (not the ego-alien, hostile- submissive homosexual conflicts of the prejudiced men).
Art's "weakness" has been expressed primarily in his search for a nurturant mother figure on whom he could be dependent. When frustrated in this, he "arranged" to get himself into prison by writing bad checks and taking no precautions against being caught-in order to satisfy his dependency needs by using the prison as "mother. " This is his own interpretation-worked out by consciously trying to understand his behavior in retrospect-by "auto- psychoanalysis. " Art also verbalizes openly his "feeling of inferiority. " His compensatory ambition is expressed in striving to satisfy inner values, to dem- onstrate his inner "abilities and capacities," to an extent that seems neurotically insistent: "I don't like to think of limits . . . on my own abilities and capaci-
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ties. " Deeply admiring his mother's "intellectual ability," Art was "very con- scientious" in school and "was disappointed one time when I got a 'B' instead of all 'A's. ' " Having been "imbued" by his mother "with the idea that my body was a precious possession and that I should take care of it," he trained himself rigorously as "an athlete" and set a world's record while still in high school. A leg injury at this time interrupted his further athletic career and prevented his entry into Annapolis; he was in bed with a cast on his leg for nine months. Significantly, during this period of enforced, and com- plete, dependency on his mother (and to a lesser extent an older sister), Art "broke training" by "smoking for the first time in my life" and also "started drinking. " It was as if, unable to accept this dependence and deprived of an important part of his male ego identity as "an athlete," he needed to assert his independence of maternal moral precepts and to prove that he was a "big guy. " . . . Art prefers "fine art" to his (and his father's) vocation of commercial art. The former arouses real enthusiasm in him: "I'm immensely happy in that type of work . . . tremendously interested in it. " His main interests are (as he describes them) explicitly intellectual and aesthetic.
Jim has a more disorganized background. His father, after years of vio- lently maltreating the entire family, deserted them when Jim was I3? The main burden of supporting the family now fell upon Jim. Although he had done well enough in school to skip a grade, he now played truant for two semesters, while struggling along on a paper route, odd jobs, and relief allot- ments. The mother reports that when a doctor urged that she eat more fruit for the sake of her health, Jim sometimes went without eating in order to buy fruit for her. It was during this period that he engaged in several petty thefts; he was arrested once, but the case was dismissed. Not long after the father returned, following an eight-year absence, Jim began to work for him. But when the father "scolded and nagged him one day," according to the mother's report, "he refused to work for his father any more. " This may help to explain Jim's apparent resistance to the two employers he has had: the one private employer he worked for (as a messenger-clerk, for about fifteen months) reported a generally uncooperative work adjustment. Also, Jim was discharged from a C. C. C. camp for refusing to work (no details avail- able). In contrast with this resistance to father-figure authorities, is be- havior suggesting a quest for a "good father" who might deserve his love: a government relief investigator refers to Jim's "disposition to stay with a man much older . . . than himself. This man . . . supposedly took an interest in
(Jim) and was attempting to lend every aid at his disposal . . . was somewhat of a drinking man, but according to (Jim), during (Jim's) stay with (him) he stopped drinking; and so the living together was considered mutually bene- ficial. " In prison, where Jim has been given increasing responsibility, his work adjustment is reported as "excellent. " When last seen, he was working as a kind of counselor to other inmates coming to the psychiatric department
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for advice. He declared that most of 'them seemed to feel much better after releasing their feelings to a sympathetic person (such as himself), and ex- pressed the feeling that he himself had grown in self-insight and maturity as a by-product of listening to other inmates' problems. Meanwhile, his earlier expressed wish to achieve success as a "business executive" has given way to a desire to do some sort of personnel work when he is paroled.
The conventional "drive for success" motive has played a larger role in the thinking of Don and Dick, even though this seems to be integrated into an internalized value-system. From the time Dan's parents were divorced, when he was 12, he has been fully self-supporting. Through high school he lived with a group of other youngsters who were also working, and somehow found time to play in the school band and on the football team. Meanwhile, h~ving earned the grades necessary for entering college, he had saved $4,ooo with the intention of working toward a medical degree. A three-year siege of meningitis "busted" this goal. His subsequent work-history, he says, has been "more or less accidental. " Going to work in his stepfather's busi- ness, Don became a salesman. This has been his main occupation, for a period of some years as manager of his own business, in which he was "very successful. " His primary goal was "security," which he lost when he began to loan money heavily to his mother, and finally to steal for her-an episode to be described later. Since being in prison, he has seriously developed a boyhood hobby of photography, which he now plans to continue as a vocation in partnership with his son-in-law. As an inmate he has worked into a position that involves photographic work with some supervisory capacity. Photography represents "a form of salesmanship-meet people and analyze them"; it has a "terrific future" as a result of technical advances accomplished during the war. Don's other interests include a va- riety of sports and reading a great deal. He is described in the initial prison psychiatric interview as "one of the most talkative inmates to cross this inter- viewer's desk," as showing "a genuine curiosity" and continually "interrupt- ing the interview to ask questions . . . regarding prison life, inmates, and characteristics of various officials. "
Through the interview with Dick there seems to run the theme of being what he calls "too easy-going" (suggesting open passivity as an inhibitory defense against expressing aggression). He "never did like to argue with any- one. " (This may well be related to his fear of "agitators" and his anxiety that unions "shouldn't agitate. ") Thus, Dick avoided having "any fights with other kids. " Later, when his parents objected strenuously to his marrying a girl with whom he was in love, because she had a crippled leg, he "didn't argue -just listened to them and told them my side. I couldn't agree with them. " Apparently unable to withstand their pressure, he subsequently married an- other girl while he was in the Navy. Despite continuous conflict, they stayed together seven years for the sake of their child, and then separated. Dick
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then "broke loose" from some of his inhibitions and "got a little wild . . . doing a lot of drinking" which led up to the present term in prison. (More of this later. ) Dick might have been better able to sublimate his inhibited aggres- sions if his early ambition to become a doctor had not been blocked by finan- cial difficulties: he "used to dream I was a doctor delivering babies and cutting people open. " While in prison, however, he has developed a thor- oughgoing interest in watchmaking as both vocation and hobby. It is inter- esting to speculate whether the focus on close detail in such work may serve as a compulsive means of holding down certain (aggressive) feelings-per- haps allowing less (indirect) expression of those feelings than medicine, but nonetheless a highly sublimated form of control. It is of interest that Dick has learned watchmaking during his spare time from "one real close friend," who is a sex offender. His accepting attitude to the latter contrasts with the prejudiced men's hostile righteousness on such matters. At the same time, the question may be asked whether this friendship involves some indirect satis- faction of latent homosexual impulses, as was suggested for Jim's close friend- ship with an older man. Such impulses are hinted in a slip that Dick made in describing his childhood friendship with the crippled girl whom he later wanted to marry: "She always used to come to me for advice. . . . If a boy asked her for a date, she would come to me to ask whether l-or rather she should go out with him.
