184
PARTISAN REVIEW
number. Because of the general public 's ignorance, and especially that
of the legal authorities, we were unable, after World War II, to investi–
gate the whole administrative machine that Eichmann used, from the
people who worked at the gas chambers up to the clerks in the govern–
ment . The loss of such investigative data points up the great need for
analyses of those cold-blooded or calculating murderers who are kept
in our prisons. It is not only their individual cases which are at stake; it
is the question of how fast our society may deteriorate because no one
knows the causes of or the real motivations behind this, let us say,
" disease.' ,
Whatever may be the nature of the motivations for ctuelty, one
thing is obvious : until now it has not been possible to develop an edu–
cational system that (a) would cause the disappearance of aggressive
responses by means of learning processes; or that (b) would put frus–
trations in a frame of reference where their traumatic effect is reduced,
which would in turn prevent inflamation of the wish to act out of
cruelty ; and finally , that (c) would encourage such a strengthening of
the ego capacities that the instinctual aggressive needs can be kept
down to a bearable minimum . It is irrelevant which motive is at any
given moment the overpowering one; the most "enlightened "
attempts to reduce the level of aggressivity are defeated again and
again by the strength of aggressive needs, whether the roots of aggres–
sion are instinctual or arise out of the experience of frustration .
It
is
from such facts that research on peace and conflict must start.
We should not , however , draw fatalistic conclusions culminating
in capitulation vis-a-vis aggressive outbreaks. Unquestionably, in
certain parts of our culture , sensitivity in regard to the misuse of power
and acts of torturous cruelty has increased considerably.
It
is only the
accident of simultaneous existence that binds us to many of our con–
temporaries. In reality, hundreds of years of critical thinking separate
us from many of them . It would therefore be false to speak of an
unchangeable aggressive behavior on the part of all people . It is
obvious that the development of critical doubt and rational-causal
thinking has had an inhibiting effect on hostile behavior in some parts
of the world.
At the same time , the persistency with which torture fantasies, at
one time unimaginably aberrant , have again become reality cannot be
understood in simple psychological terms. The theory of evolution
