" Nor did he have intercourse before
marriage
with his second wife, who "seemed pretty respectable.
Adorno-T-Authoritarian-Personality-Harper-Bros-1950
" 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
? 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. )
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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.
? 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
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is near-consciously inhibited (instead of being split off and denied by moralistic dichotomies, as is the high scorers' power-ridden ambivalence to women). Such ambivalence seems in their case to stem primarily from frus- tration of the love-dependency longings rather than from fear-hate, domi- nance-submission conflicts as in the case of the prejudiced men. Moreover, in contrast with the latter's underlying contempt for women, the low scorers show greater basic respect for women as individuals? and as essential equals. Their relationships with women stress common values and interests.
Art partially interprets his "dependency complex" himself. As the re- sult of his "autopsychoanalysis" during his present term in prison, he spon- taneously refers to this problem in the first minutes of the interview. All of the women with whom he has been intimate, he points out, have been older than himself, "business women, wage-earners, and providers," like his mother. He "simply transferred my dependency on my mother" to "my wife" and then "onto the (prison) authorities. " After getting himself fired from his job, he made only half-hearted efforts to secure another one, until his first "wife as provider and support was no longer a tolerable condition consciously. " Then he "got plastered" and wrote some bad checks as "un- consciously a way of transferring dependency. " After a six-months jail term, she took him back. He was "repentant, but soon got plastered and did it again. " This time she divorced him, though apparently on friendly terms. Art reports complete amnesia for his second wife, a woman twelve years older than himself, whom he also put in the position of supporting him. He lived with her only a short time when this situation became intolerable to him: another check-writing episode then landed him in prison. Unlike . Buck, who led the authorities a merry chase before being caught for his check-writing, Art "knew I was going to get caught" and had uncon- sciously "arranged" to "transfer my dependency" to the prison "mother. " . . . Despite Art's conflicts over "dependency," in describing his first mar- riage he emphasizes shared experiences and expressed genuine respect for his former wife: She was "an artist also, and a really thoroughgoing indi- vidual. She had a tremendous amount of scope, both intellectually and in- dividually. . . . I liked her interests, her intellect. " He is self-critical of his role in the marriage: "I wasn't in love with her . . . though I wouldn't admit it to myself. . . . Though I was very fond of her. . . . At that time I was too self-centered to be in love with anyone. . . . I did admire and respect and like
her. . . . Today, I think we could have a better chance of making a go of it . . . because I have grown up sufficiently. " Art's second wife continues to correspond with him, despite his "amnesia," and he is grateful for her "loyalty. " Her letters, he says, indicate that she stresses "social functions" and the like, which are "of little consequence to me. " Although they plan to reunite, he says that he will not remain with her if their interests and at- titudes should prove uncongenial.
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Art's continued "amnesia" for his second marriage suggests that he has by no means resolved the conflicting feelings involved in his "dependency complex. " Jim's offense illustrates more directly, if gruesomely, the nega- tive side of such an ambivalent attachment. His history includes one ex- tended sexual affair in high school with a girl a year older than himself. When she finally broke off the affair because of his poor prospects (he was struggling to support his mother), he became very despondent and, according to the mother's report, attempted suicide with gas (the mother stopped him). This turned-inward aggression suggests reproachful inhibited hostility toward the girl for withholding love and frustrating his love-dependency needs. Both the emotional dependence and the inhibited hostility are revealed in one of Jim's prison "Progress Reports" when he speaks of "life goals": "Sec- ondly I would like more than anything on this Earth to meet the girl of my dreams. . . . I desire to provide for her and take care of her with Love and Charity in my heart and with a real understanding of whatever little faults she may have. W e all have many defects, but it takes a good man to minimize the defects in others and search his own conscience for whatever bad thoughts dwell in him. When I do meet the one girl for me, I shall explain all my past life to her, because I do not believe that happiness can be based on lies. " (Italics supplied. ) It is interesting that Jim was "out with an older woman with whom he was drinking (as reported in the prison case file), when at
the age of 20 he stole an auto for the night. (This led to a year in a reforma- tory. ) His inhibited, oral-dependent hostility to ambivalently regarded mother-figures was expressed directly in his present offense, committed at the age of 2 1. According to the case record, he "attacked a woman, 50, out for a walk . . . hit her on the head with a club, causing two skull fractures which resulted in her death. The victim's body showed also that he kissed and chewed her breasts. . . . She was totally unknown to him. " This act was committed while Jim was very drunk and apparently in a dazed, fugue-like state-i. e. , while his defenses were weakened to permit a direct expression of near-consciously inhibited impulses: subsequently he seemed to become at least partially amnesic for the episode.
Don, too, shows signs of strong emotional dependence toward loved and respected women. His first wife's death "was quite a blow. I never recovered from it, until I got this jolt" (i. e. , the present incarceration); "I'm getting over it now. " He "got along fine" with his second wife, "until I got involved in Mother's affairs," which broke up the marriage. Don refers here to his series of bank robberies to obtain money for his mother in her neurotic involvements; these will be discussed in the section on parents. "I have al- ways felt guilty about it towards my wife. " Although "I was fortunate in being perfectly mated to my wife-sexually, that is," Don admits directly what might be expected ? from his continuing overattachment to his mother
(see below, page 885): "I have always been rather inhibited about sex. "
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Dick, whose "Mother was much more free about (sex) than Father" and with whom he was "pals more than Father," also verbalizes sexual inhibitions di~ectly in discussing his former wife: "She's very hot-blooded and I'm just the opposite. . . . Sexual intercourse once a month would be okay for me. " Parental pressure had prevented his marrying the boyhood sweetheart to who! Jl he had been engaged (because she was crippled). Dick had then "mar- ried the first white woman I saw," on three weeks' acquaintance, after return- ing from overseas, because he was "lonesome. " This didn't work out "worth a dam. " In particularly they "argued about ho'Y" to take care of the child, mainly . . . she always nagged the kid-wanted to use force on the kid. " When they finally broke up, Dick escaped "into the Marines" where, disconsolate, he "got into the habit of doing a lot of drinking. " While drinking with a
girl-friend, he "picked up a car" (like Jim) and drove with her to Reno, where he "got married again while drunk. " They sold the car. In the after- math, Dick made civil restitution for the theft and had the marriage annulled; he is making additional restitution in prison. Meanwhile, when the crippled girl "back home" had "found out I was married," she too had sought emo- tional consolation by doing "the same thing: married the first man who came along. It turned out equally badly" and also ended in divorce. Now, she and Dick are corresponding again and plan to marry on his release-at last with parental approval. His attitude toward her seems to be genuinely nurturant: "She always used to come to me for advice. At a dance, I was about the only person she would dance with. And we studied together. " At the same time she seems to represent for Dick (who is in other ways, too, more conventional than the other low-scoring men) a somewhat inhibitory mother figure with conventional moral values, on whom he can depend to "steady" him: she is "sort of refined. Not wild-steady. . . . Quiet, settled, doesn't get mad or express her views. . . . Very particular who she associates with. "
4. SUMMARY
The contrasting sexual orientations of the prejudiced and unprejudiced interviewees suggest certain crucial personality differences. The unprej- udiced men seem to seek, above all, love-which they also have some capacity to give. Despite frustration and conflict their approach to life is influenced by basic respect for themselves and other people. This makes for democratic identifications with other people, and for an inclination to identify with underdogs. The prejudiced men, on the other hand, seem to feel basically rejected and to have almost given up hope of experiencing genuine love. They speak as if they dislike and fear themselves as well as others. Their main energies seem to be devoted to defending themselves against any sense of weakness, chiefly by striving for external status and power and "proofs" of masculinity. The result is a power-oriented character structure driven to attack outgroups as symbols of their own suppressed characteristics.
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G. ANTI-INTRACEPTIVENESS AND CHILDHOOD
1. HIGH SCORERS
All of the material so far presented supports what was stated earlier: that the high scorers anxiously avoid letting themselves think and feel freely, especially about psychological matters. For such inner freedom might lead them to "see" things they are afraid of in themselves. So they externalize their feared impulses, weakness, and conflicts with other people, onto outside situations and events and onto scapegoats. To the extent that these men let themselves feel their real feelings and impulses at all, they tend to keep them undifferentiated and to experience them as alien, as coming from out- side their conscious self. Above all, what seems to be the emotional origin of their deepest conflicts-namely childhood and relations with parent figures -tends to be split off by them and regarded as discontinuous with their adult personality.
Thus, Robert declares that, "As far as home environment, I've had the best. " He was "a good child" and "a good boy up until the age of 16. " It was his "carnal self," he believes, that made him commit a few forgeries and thefts at the age of I 8 and lat~r engage in the hostile affair which led to his present term in prison. He regards these actions as quite "accidental," with no rela- tion to life-history conflicts such as ambivalence toward parentally coerced "goodness. "
Wilbur even more clearly denies to himself the childhood roots of his present personality and behavior: (Which one influenced you more-your uncle or your aunt? 22) "Well, that which I have today is that which I have made of my own self. (Q. ) Well, as far as givin' me my own disposition, . . . I more learned it since I have been on my own. " Asked what he was like as a child, his answer is moralistically empty of personal content: He was "just a working boy . . . never in no trouble. "
Eugene, like Robert, was "pretty good up to the time I was about 17 years old-never in trouble, never smoked or drank. " He sees no connection be- tween his submission to self-suppressive "goodness" in childhood and youth and his long history of "trouble" since then. He "can't explain" his violent "temper" or frequent drunken "benders.
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. . . . At that time I was too self-centered to be in love with anyone. . . . I did admire and respect and like
her. . . . Today, I think we could have a better chance of making a go of it . . . because I have grown up sufficiently. " Art's second wife continues to correspond with him, despite his "amnesia," and he is grateful for her "loyalty. " Her letters, he says, indicate that she stresses "social functions" and the like, which are "of little consequence to me. " Although they plan to reunite, he says that he will not remain with her if their interests and at- titudes should prove uncongenial.
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Art's continued "amnesia" for his second marriage suggests that he has by no means resolved the conflicting feelings involved in his "dependency complex. " Jim's offense illustrates more directly, if gruesomely, the nega- tive side of such an ambivalent attachment. His history includes one ex- tended sexual affair in high school with a girl a year older than himself. When she finally broke off the affair because of his poor prospects (he was struggling to support his mother), he became very despondent and, according to the mother's report, attempted suicide with gas (the mother stopped him). This turned-inward aggression suggests reproachful inhibited hostility toward the girl for withholding love and frustrating his love-dependency needs. Both the emotional dependence and the inhibited hostility are revealed in one of Jim's prison "Progress Reports" when he speaks of "life goals": "Sec- ondly I would like more than anything on this Earth to meet the girl of my dreams. . . . I desire to provide for her and take care of her with Love and Charity in my heart and with a real understanding of whatever little faults she may have. W e all have many defects, but it takes a good man to minimize the defects in others and search his own conscience for whatever bad thoughts dwell in him. When I do meet the one girl for me, I shall explain all my past life to her, because I do not believe that happiness can be based on lies. " (Italics supplied. ) It is interesting that Jim was "out with an older woman with whom he was drinking (as reported in the prison case file), when at
the age of 20 he stole an auto for the night. (This led to a year in a reforma- tory. ) His inhibited, oral-dependent hostility to ambivalently regarded mother-figures was expressed directly in his present offense, committed at the age of 2 1. According to the case record, he "attacked a woman, 50, out for a walk . . . hit her on the head with a club, causing two skull fractures which resulted in her death. The victim's body showed also that he kissed and chewed her breasts. . . . She was totally unknown to him. " This act was committed while Jim was very drunk and apparently in a dazed, fugue-like state-i. e. , while his defenses were weakened to permit a direct expression of near-consciously inhibited impulses: subsequently he seemed to become at least partially amnesic for the episode.
Don, too, shows signs of strong emotional dependence toward loved and respected women. His first wife's death "was quite a blow. I never recovered from it, until I got this jolt" (i. e. , the present incarceration); "I'm getting over it now. " He "got along fine" with his second wife, "until I got involved in Mother's affairs," which broke up the marriage. Don refers here to his series of bank robberies to obtain money for his mother in her neurotic involvements; these will be discussed in the section on parents. "I have al- ways felt guilty about it towards my wife. " Although "I was fortunate in being perfectly mated to my wife-sexually, that is," Don admits directly what might be expected ? from his continuing overattachment to his mother
(see below, page 885): "I have always been rather inhibited about sex. "
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Dick, whose "Mother was much more free about (sex) than Father" and with whom he was "pals more than Father," also verbalizes sexual inhibitions di~ectly in discussing his former wife: "She's very hot-blooded and I'm just the opposite. . . . Sexual intercourse once a month would be okay for me. " Parental pressure had prevented his marrying the boyhood sweetheart to who! Jl he had been engaged (because she was crippled). Dick had then "mar- ried the first white woman I saw," on three weeks' acquaintance, after return- ing from overseas, because he was "lonesome. " This didn't work out "worth a dam. " In particularly they "argued about ho'Y" to take care of the child, mainly . . . she always nagged the kid-wanted to use force on the kid. " When they finally broke up, Dick escaped "into the Marines" where, disconsolate, he "got into the habit of doing a lot of drinking. " While drinking with a
girl-friend, he "picked up a car" (like Jim) and drove with her to Reno, where he "got married again while drunk. " They sold the car. In the after- math, Dick made civil restitution for the theft and had the marriage annulled; he is making additional restitution in prison. Meanwhile, when the crippled girl "back home" had "found out I was married," she too had sought emo- tional consolation by doing "the same thing: married the first man who came along. It turned out equally badly" and also ended in divorce. Now, she and Dick are corresponding again and plan to marry on his release-at last with parental approval. His attitude toward her seems to be genuinely nurturant: "She always used to come to me for advice. At a dance, I was about the only person she would dance with. And we studied together. " At the same time she seems to represent for Dick (who is in other ways, too, more conventional than the other low-scoring men) a somewhat inhibitory mother figure with conventional moral values, on whom he can depend to "steady" him: she is "sort of refined. Not wild-steady. . . . Quiet, settled, doesn't get mad or express her views. . . . Very particular who she associates with. "
4. SUMMARY
The contrasting sexual orientations of the prejudiced and unprejudiced interviewees suggest certain crucial personality differences. The unprej- udiced men seem to seek, above all, love-which they also have some capacity to give. Despite frustration and conflict their approach to life is influenced by basic respect for themselves and other people. This makes for democratic identifications with other people, and for an inclination to identify with underdogs. The prejudiced men, on the other hand, seem to feel basically rejected and to have almost given up hope of experiencing genuine love. They speak as if they dislike and fear themselves as well as others. Their main energies seem to be devoted to defending themselves against any sense of weakness, chiefly by striving for external status and power and "proofs" of masculinity. The result is a power-oriented character structure driven to attack outgroups as symbols of their own suppressed characteristics.
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G. ANTI-INTRACEPTIVENESS AND CHILDHOOD
1. HIGH SCORERS
All of the material so far presented supports what was stated earlier: that the high scorers anxiously avoid letting themselves think and feel freely, especially about psychological matters. For such inner freedom might lead them to "see" things they are afraid of in themselves. So they externalize their feared impulses, weakness, and conflicts with other people, onto outside situations and events and onto scapegoats. To the extent that these men let themselves feel their real feelings and impulses at all, they tend to keep them undifferentiated and to experience them as alien, as coming from out- side their conscious self. Above all, what seems to be the emotional origin of their deepest conflicts-namely childhood and relations with parent figures -tends to be split off by them and regarded as discontinuous with their adult personality.
Thus, Robert declares that, "As far as home environment, I've had the best. " He was "a good child" and "a good boy up until the age of 16. " It was his "carnal self," he believes, that made him commit a few forgeries and thefts at the age of I 8 and lat~r engage in the hostile affair which led to his present term in prison. He regards these actions as quite "accidental," with no rela- tion to life-history conflicts such as ambivalence toward parentally coerced "goodness. "
Wilbur even more clearly denies to himself the childhood roots of his present personality and behavior: (Which one influenced you more-your uncle or your aunt? 22) "Well, that which I have today is that which I have made of my own self. (Q. ) Well, as far as givin' me my own disposition, . . . I more learned it since I have been on my own. " Asked what he was like as a child, his answer is moralistically empty of personal content: He was "just a working boy . . . never in no trouble. "
Eugene, like Robert, was "pretty good up to the time I was about 17 years old-never in trouble, never smoked or drank. " He sees no connection be- tween his submission to self-suppressive "goodness" in childhood and youth and his long history of "trouble" since then. He "can't explain" his violent "temper" or frequent drunken "benders.
