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annihilation . The destruction that they are so willing to practice
becomes merely a problem of a successful bureaucratic organization, of
which they can be proud .
" Conscience ," Freud said , " is , at its root, nothing more than
social fear. ' , When society offers the license to
0
btain satisfactions that
normally are unavailable , perhaps even unimaginable, many an indi–
vidual 's ego cannot resist the temptation to regress and , under cover of
the destructive fantasies of the
society ,
act out fantasies of the early
anal-sadistic libido organization .
It
is quite probable that, in the
process of realization, destructive pleasure, comparable to sadistic
pleasure, takes place . But this pleasure is the
pleasure of aggressive
cruelty ;
pleasure that goes hand in hand with the assertion of superior
power and with the experience of the " grandiose self ' (Heinz Kohut).
The 5.5 . man , who during the " cleaning out " of the Warsaw ghetto
grabs a baby by the feet and shatters him against a wall , does not
thereby enjoy a sexually pleasurable experience, but one of a primary
process , omnipotent type . He is like Shiva, a god of destruction .
There appears to be no small number of such infantile character
types who prefer this kind of gratification to sexual pleasure. And
therefore there is always the danger that, in a new encounter with a
charismatic leader, such people will once again be prepared for any
form of annihilation of their fellow men, provided the killing can be
combined with a bureaucratic goal, as when the killing itself becomes
such a goal.
Along with this we must also take into account the fact that the
drive toward destructive gratification in an unknown number of
people can be kept in check only by means of careful surveillance and
severe threat of punishment . For those people, life in any society is
exceedingly uncomfortable.
This faulty "socialization" implies a character formation easily
open to violence and cruelty, caused by damaging educational
methods, by the tradition of violence, by the inadequacies of the
counter-tradition of kindness . Without the threat of retaliation
according to the law of ..an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," such
individuals are always ready to rum someone weaker into a victim of
their destructive primary process fantasies and their compulsive srunts
ofviolence. Where this is linked with social approval, ideal images and
projection of aggression unto the victim, infantile omnipotence
