A three-year siege of
meningitis
"busted" this goal.
Adorno-T-Authoritarian-Personality-Harper-Bros-1950
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
? CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS
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
? 866 THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
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. " (Italics supplied. )
F. HETEROSEXUALITY 1. HIGH SCORERS
As was to be expected from their antisexual moralism, their anxious imagin- ings about the "animalism" of Negroes, and their intense fears of sexual approach to "white women" by Negroes, the prejudiced men show an im- paired ability to combine sexual and tender feelings toward the same woman. Moreover, they exhibit signs of underlying resentful disrespect for women generally. These men tend to keep both sexual and hostile feelings toward "respectable" women partly split off from conscious awareness. They do this by making a rigid distinction between two stereotypes, in terms of which they classify all women: "pure," "sweet" (unsexual) women (like "mothers"), and "bad" (sexual) women. Toward "pure" women there are superficial gestures of respect; the artificiality of such attitudes suggests that
they may be based on defenses which hold down sexual and aggressive feelings underneath. This inference is partly confirmed by expressions of open disrespect and hostility toward "bad" women, along with imperson- alized sexual attitudes toward them. Further confirmation appears in some direct break-throughs of hostility to "pure" women, and in the fact that all heterosexual relationships tend to be distant, stereotyped and either domi- nating or submissive-dependent. (See Parts III and IV. )
? CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS
In one form or another, this pattern appears in every prejudiced inter- viewee. Robert formulates succinctly the stereotyped notion of two kinds of women. His mother, he declares, taught him "something that stuck with me all my life, that a woman is the most perfect thing in the world"; he reveals the split-off resentment behind this seeming respect by adding, "that is, the right kind of woman. " His sexually frigid wife, whom he calls "the sweetest wife in the world," apparently represented the "perfect thing" stereotype. What Robert admired most about her, he indicates, was her submissiveness toward him: "that she was willing to do whatever I did. " Their life together is revealed, in his descriptions, as a constant round of mutual accusations of spending money carelessly, jealousy on her part over his going oqt alone, and "every little thing . . . she'd immediately run to mother and stay all night. " She filed suit for divorce on discovering an affair he was having with a waitress, who seemed to represent "the other kind" of woman. The latter relationship was characterized by extreme hostility, exploitation, and dis- respect. The woman was quite promiscuous with other men, Robert says, during the affair with him. Further, "she was often drunk, and liked to battle and fight and argue and fuss. . . . Once this woman climbed a pole and got in my window, and another time she threw whiskey through the window at me in bed. " On discovering his former prison record (for forgery), she began to blackmail him. He finally shot her (unpremeditatedly) in a vio- lent quarrel.
Clarence and Wilbur describe a still more distant, empty relationship to their wives than does Robert, with the difference that they rather than their wives were the more submissive. Although Clarence had "quite a few" ex- periences with prostitutes, he remained unmarried until the age of 38. He was attracted to his wife, he says, mainly by such external features as "her looks and manners. " "We weren't much alike in any way" and were "a little different in taste about things. (Q. ) Most anything! " But Clarence and his wife "got along good," by virtue of his submissiveness: "I let her have her own way . . . in most anything. " Shortly following his wife's death, Clarence, who as a boy would "blush" if he "met a girl on the street," began to "molest" young girls, getting them drunk and attempting rape on them. . . ?
Wilbur's relationship to his wife has likewise been that of a subordinate. He indicates that she managed the finances, the children, and usually made the family decisions. When they disagreed-e. g. , "she likes to stay home on Sun- day and I don't"-Wilbur would "usually do just what she asks me to do. " A few minutes later in the interview, however, when asked in what ways he and his wife are alike, he says: "Well, she don't like to run around so much, and I don't either. " A further, equally external "commonalty" is that "we both like to work. "
Ronald's sexual history is more colorful. In addition to a ? number of "one- night relationships," he has been married three times-each time quite briefly.
? 868 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
With the first wife "the sex relationship was more enjoyable," he declares, "because there was nothing deep between us. " (Italics supplied. ) He left the second wife after a week, because "I just got tired of her"; although he "went back to her after seven or eight months" and stayed with her for a short time until the police caught up with his trail of robberies. The third wife was "pure"-a business woman who "didn't know anything about life. . . . We didn't get along too good sexually, because she was kind of on the frigid line. " But whereas Ronald had been unable to feel tender toward more "sexual" women, this frigid "purity" seemed to attract something in him. He decided that he was "actually in love with her, and I still am," although "I don't know if she was in love with me. . . . I'd like nothing better than to go back to her. "
Eugene's sexual relationships have been "mostly here or there. " 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
? CRIMINALITY AND ANTIDEMOCRA TIC TRENDS
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.
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
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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. " (Italics supplied. )
F. HETEROSEXUALITY 1. HIGH SCORERS
As was to be expected from their antisexual moralism, their anxious imagin- ings about the "animalism" of Negroes, and their intense fears of sexual approach to "white women" by Negroes, the prejudiced men show an im- paired ability to combine sexual and tender feelings toward the same woman. Moreover, they exhibit signs of underlying resentful disrespect for women generally. These men tend to keep both sexual and hostile feelings toward "respectable" women partly split off from conscious awareness. They do this by making a rigid distinction between two stereotypes, in terms of which they classify all women: "pure," "sweet" (unsexual) women (like "mothers"), and "bad" (sexual) women. Toward "pure" women there are superficial gestures of respect; the artificiality of such attitudes suggests that
they may be based on defenses which hold down sexual and aggressive feelings underneath. This inference is partly confirmed by expressions of open disrespect and hostility toward "bad" women, along with imperson- alized sexual attitudes toward them. Further confirmation appears in some direct break-throughs of hostility to "pure" women, and in the fact that all heterosexual relationships tend to be distant, stereotyped and either domi- nating or submissive-dependent. (See Parts III and IV. )
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In one form or another, this pattern appears in every prejudiced inter- viewee. Robert formulates succinctly the stereotyped notion of two kinds of women. His mother, he declares, taught him "something that stuck with me all my life, that a woman is the most perfect thing in the world"; he reveals the split-off resentment behind this seeming respect by adding, "that is, the right kind of woman. " His sexually frigid wife, whom he calls "the sweetest wife in the world," apparently represented the "perfect thing" stereotype. What Robert admired most about her, he indicates, was her submissiveness toward him: "that she was willing to do whatever I did. " Their life together is revealed, in his descriptions, as a constant round of mutual accusations of spending money carelessly, jealousy on her part over his going oqt alone, and "every little thing . . . she'd immediately run to mother and stay all night. " She filed suit for divorce on discovering an affair he was having with a waitress, who seemed to represent "the other kind" of woman. The latter relationship was characterized by extreme hostility, exploitation, and dis- respect. The woman was quite promiscuous with other men, Robert says, during the affair with him. Further, "she was often drunk, and liked to battle and fight and argue and fuss. . . . Once this woman climbed a pole and got in my window, and another time she threw whiskey through the window at me in bed. " On discovering his former prison record (for forgery), she began to blackmail him. He finally shot her (unpremeditatedly) in a vio- lent quarrel.
Clarence and Wilbur describe a still more distant, empty relationship to their wives than does Robert, with the difference that they rather than their wives were the more submissive. Although Clarence had "quite a few" ex- periences with prostitutes, he remained unmarried until the age of 38. He was attracted to his wife, he says, mainly by such external features as "her looks and manners. " "We weren't much alike in any way" and were "a little different in taste about things. (Q. ) Most anything! " But Clarence and his wife "got along good," by virtue of his submissiveness: "I let her have her own way . . . in most anything. " Shortly following his wife's death, Clarence, who as a boy would "blush" if he "met a girl on the street," began to "molest" young girls, getting them drunk and attempting rape on them. . . ?
Wilbur's relationship to his wife has likewise been that of a subordinate. He indicates that she managed the finances, the children, and usually made the family decisions. When they disagreed-e. g. , "she likes to stay home on Sun- day and I don't"-Wilbur would "usually do just what she asks me to do. " A few minutes later in the interview, however, when asked in what ways he and his wife are alike, he says: "Well, she don't like to run around so much, and I don't either. " A further, equally external "commonalty" is that "we both like to work. "
Ronald's sexual history is more colorful. In addition to a ? number of "one- night relationships," he has been married three times-each time quite briefly.
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With the first wife "the sex relationship was more enjoyable," he declares, "because there was nothing deep between us. " (Italics supplied. ) He left the second wife after a week, because "I just got tired of her"; although he "went back to her after seven or eight months" and stayed with her for a short time until the police caught up with his trail of robberies. The third wife was "pure"-a business woman who "didn't know anything about life. . . . We didn't get along too good sexually, because she was kind of on the frigid line. " But whereas Ronald had been unable to feel tender toward more "sexual" women, this frigid "purity" seemed to attract something in him. He decided that he was "actually in love with her, and I still am," although "I don't know if she was in love with me. . . . I'd like nothing better than to go back to her. "
Eugene's sexual relationships have been "mostly here or there. " 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
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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.
