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PARTISAN REVIEW
of such volcanic proportions can repeatedly paralyze and overrule the
individual ego-perhaps even against one's conscious will-points
emphatically to the participation of a drive. The unpredictable,
unbridled character of such outbreaks, which have victimized whole
peoples and races, can hardly be explained by resorting to notions of
learning processes or frustrations aroused by the ordinary hardships of
life . Yet beyond all this , we must also state that cruelty can often be
found in camouflaged situations. The moment we stop observing
human behavior from the outside alone, and begin to understand it in
its conscious and unconscious motivational entanglements, we dis–
cover our self-deceptions . A severe and rigorous father, for exampIe,
may be unaware that he not only does no good by his educational
methods of sharp punishment, but, in fact, acts our unconsciously his
own disappointments when he was at the bottom of the hierarchical
pyramid. Many such acts of bullying, and the like, prove to be deter–
mined not by the requirements of the circumstances, bur by concealed
motives which are satisfied by means of .. rationalization" of the wish
for self-assertion.
Let us now touch briefly on a question which is more complicated
than one might expect. Has severe criminality increased? This is obvi–
ously a matter of real importance . People who think of destructive
aggressivity as primarily an instinct-motivated behavior tend to
answer, ..No. " People who think aggressive behavior between human
beings is largely a consequence of frustrating experiences tend to
answer, "Yes." My own hypothesis emphasizes the inflammability of
aggression . Frustration not only releases genetically transmitted be–
havior patterns which serve for fight or flight, it also stimulates fan–
tasies on the level of primary processes.
It
is improbable in a highly administrated world- a world that is
increasingly governed and manipulated by anonymous computers and
less and less apparently by human beings-that unlawful behavior
should not have changed. It is unlikely that the character of felonious
acts has not responded in the last half century to certain frustrations
which developed in the wake of a spreading technology and technocra–
cy. A new style of life has come about , characterized by increasing
bureaucratic constraints and increasing dependence on anonymous
authority . The individual's response on the level of inner reality has
been a chronic kind of depersonalization , alienation , and an estrange-
