Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream: A Forensic Psychiatrist Illuminates the Darker Side of Human Behavior (2 page)

The book’s purpose goes beyond that analysis. It is predicated on the notion that once we acknowledge that no great gulf exists between “good” and “bad” men, we can properly look inward instead of outward. The mass of humankind live unexamined lives of what Thoreau called “quiet desperation.” But men’s demons luxuriate in darkness. To illuminate them is a hard task. What makes us quintessentially human is the ability to turn our minds back upon ourselves, to shine a light on our demons, and thereby to harness them and put

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them to productive work. Evildoers cannot do so; they fail spectacularly at self-reflection and self-control. We who consider ourselves “good” people have choices. We can continue to curse the darkness or we can celebrate the human spirit by striving to engage our dark side in the pursuit of an enlightened destiny, not only for ourselves but also for all of humanity.

Robert I. Simon, M.D.

O
ne of the pleasures of writing a book is acknowledging those persons who assisted in its creation. Robert K. Ressler, a former FBI special agent and a foremost expert on serial killers provided critical insights for the chapters on workplace violence and serial killers. I value his contribution greatly. I also consulted Albert M. Druktennis, M.D., J.D., a forensic psychiatrist, on the essential subject of this book, humankind’s darker side. I found his penetrating illumination of this topic to be uniquely incisive and extraordinarily sensitive. Tom Shachtman was my editorial consultant. His encyclopedic knowledge and expertise as a writer were extremely helpful.

I am grateful to American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc., to Robert E. Hales, M.D., M.B.A., editor-in-chief, and John McDuffie, editorial director, for their foresight and willingness to break new ground in publishing and updating a book of the forensic genre for informed laypersons and mental health professionals. A special thanks goes to the publisher’s editor, whose painstaking review greatly improved the quality of this book. When I embarked on this project, the outcome was far from certain. I was permitted freedom to pursue and refine my topic.

Finally, I want to express my thanks to my former secretary, Ms. Susan Breglio, for her faithful and competent assistance. Ms. Breglio being one of the most wholesome persons I have ever met, her fascination with serial killers caught me briefly by surprise. For my wife, whose patience and support made this book as well as so many other things possible, words fail me in expressing my deepest gratitude and affection.

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1
Illuminating the Darker Side of Human Behavior

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.
—
Alexander Pope

H
umankind has a dark side, and its existence ought not to come as a surprise to those who think of themselves as good people. Most religions conceive of humankind as bad, unregenerate, and in dire need of redemption. The story of Adam and Eve depicts man’s fall from grace and descent into a desperate condition. From that day on, the history of the world has been filled with violence.

Today, newspapers, television stations, and the Internet hawk their inventory of human tragedies. Interpersonal violence is a staple of local television news—“Grisly Murder at 11.” In the past 30 years, tens of millions of people in the United States have been injured by criminals; every 22 seconds, someone is beaten, stabbed, shot, robbed, raped, or killed. In the era of random violence, nobody feels safe. Overseas, the horrible
ethnic cleansing
—genocide by another name—continues unabated. In Somalia, tens of thousands of people starved to death while feudal warlords fought among themselves, then turned their violence against the very people who came to save the Somalis from starvation. In Darfur, since 2003, many thousands have been raped, tortured, and starved to death, while the government and rebels fight each other.

Glimpses of the demons that peek out from the dark recesses of our minds come from some of the greatest writers, such as Goethe,
1

Dostoyevsky, Poe, Stevenson, and Shakespeare, who have written classic tales about humankind’s darker impulses. La Rochefoucauld observed that “We would often be ashamed of our best actions if the world knew the motives behind them.” Joseph Conrad wrote in
Heart of Darkness
that “A man’s most open actions have a secret side to them.” Examples abound in real life: for instance, a sadistic little boy might grow up to be a renowned surgeon. Such sadistic little boys are the subject of William Golding’s novel
Lord of the Flies
, which explores the
beast
within us: English boys marooned on a tropical island degenerate into vicious savages, illustrating the point that violence is often released in the absence of restraining, civilized structures. Sigmund Freud delved deeply into just this notion in many of his works:
Civilization and Its Discontents
viewed the human being as a creature driven by powerful instincts of aggression and primal passions that lead to rape, incest, and murder, imperfectly contained by social institutions and guilt.

We are frightened and yet fascinated by the dark side. Millions of upright citizens are avid consumers of movies, television programs, videos, books, and articles that portray murder, rape, and other forms of violence. The Internet has become another medium through which stalkers, sexual exploiters, and other evildoers can pursue their victims. Interactive video games are a multimillion dollar industry. One particularly violent game,
Halo
, in its three editions has sold tens of millions of copies. Its credo is “Thou shalt kill,” and players must shoot it out with others to conquer space. Many video games are devoted to violent adventures that reward the player’s ability to kill and kill quickly. One of every eight Hollywood movies has a theme of rape. By the time the average American reaches the age of 18, he or she will have viewed 250,000 acts of violence, including 40,000 murders on television. Mystery writers can count on making a good living by exploring the theme that almost anyone can be driven to kill. The reach of these violent images has been greatly extended by the proliferation of electronic communications—the Internet, DVDs, even cell phones, to which the young seem addicted.

What about the good people among us? Most humans go about the daily business of life without robbing, raping, or committing murder. Yet, after 40 years of work as both a treating and a forensic psychiatrist, I am absolutely convinced that there is no great gulf between the mental life of the common criminal and that of the everyday, upright citizen. The dark side exists in all of us. There is no “we-they” dichotomy between the good citizens, the “we,” and the criminals, the “they.” Who among us has not had the wish or felt the urge to do something illicit? If we could press a button and eliminate our rivals or enemies with impunity, how many of us would resist? In fact, if this were possible, probably very few people would be left standing. One cannot listen for so many years as patients and criminal defendants reveal their inner lives without coming to the conclusion that bad men and women do what good men and women only dream about doing.

But good men and women are far from perfect in their behavior. We are neither all good nor all bad. To varying degrees, we are a combination of both. An unexpected situation may become the occasion for one side or the other to win out. Combat, for example, may incite the same person to acts of heroism or cowardice, depending on the circumstances. In peace time, a former sadistic concentration camp guard may slip into the role of the respected but feared cop on the beat.

The basic difference between what are socially considered to be bad or good people is not one of kind, but of degree, and of the ability of the bad to translate dark impulses into dark actions. Bad men such as serial sexual killers have intense, compulsive, elaborate sadistic fantasies that few good men have, but we all harbor some measure of that hostility, aggression, and sadism. Anyone can become violent, even murderous, under certain circumstances. Therapists who have undergone their own psychoanalysis or insight psychotherapy have a humanistic recognition of the universality of human intrapsychic experience. These therapists acknowledge in themselves many of the same psychological struggles they find in their patients and in others. It is hoped that therapists handle their personal problems better more of the time, but this is not necessarily so. Dr. Thomas G. Gutheil, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard and a famed forensic psychiatrist, candidly acknowledges what most therapists know about themselves: “There, but for the grace of better defenses, go I.”

This idea is very difficult for many people to accept. Perhaps our dark side comes from our evolutionary heritage, in which aggression ensured our survival. Maybe it is the result of faulty wiring in our brains. The depletion of certain brain neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, has been found to parallel aggressive behavior. Our brains are wired for aggression and can short-circuit into violence. All of us have aggressive impulses. His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, and the winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, spoke of the dark side of his dreams to an interviewer:

In my dreams, sometimes women approach me, and I immediately realize, “I’m
bhiksbu,
I’m monk”—so you see, this is sort of sexual.… Similarly, I have dreams where someone is beating me, and I want to respond. Then I immediately remember, “I am monk and I should not kill.”

It is difficult to underestimate most people’s allegiance to the belief that good men and bad men are fundamentally different or that bad men are “crazy.” Even as you read this book, you may say to yourself, “Not me. I would never do such things.” You may never have considered the acts committed by the persons depicted in these pages, or, if you did consider any of them, you quickly rejected the notion as “sick.” Yet psychiatrists know that if people are removed from their normal world, without their usual external controls and surroundings, they may take liberties that previously they could only have imagined. For example, after a major disaster, there is always looting. Many looters are people who never before considered robbery. Usually, there are so many looters that the authorities must institute martial law to regain control of the situation. Members of a crowd act in ways that they would not consider as individuals. Being part of a crowd does not eliminate an individual’s thinking or control as much as it can nullify the person’s conscience. Who can forget the televised scenes of looting following the Katrina disaster?

People’s antisocial impulses are opportunistic. After major disasters in the United States, fake and inflated damage claims cost the insurance industry tens of billions of dollars. Similarly, thousands upon thousands of ordinary folk regularly cheat on their income taxes or fail to file altogether. Polygraph operators who conduct preemployment examinations of
normal
persons for industry soon discover that an incredible number of illegal acts, sexual deviations, addictions, and all manner of unimaginable, bizarre activities are admitted to by the examinees. During fraternity initiations or in the hazing of cadets at military academies, extremes of behavior occur. Atrocious acts are routinely reported—some that even result in deaths. These tortures are not acts perpetrated by devilish people but by our privileged, “normal” young men and women—those we consider to be our hope for the future.

I mention these seeming contradictions because I believe that you, the reader, can derive the most benefit from this book if you do not fall prey to the good man–bad man illusion—the belief that good men and women do not have a sinister dark side. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is likely that among the deviant behaviors portrayed within these covers, you will grudgingly recognize aspects of your own human condition. For some, that realization may be personally threatening—it may even make them want to put the book down and go no further with it. I hope that will not happen to you. I hope that the knowledge gathered in this book will cause you to change, to be more accepting of your humanity and that of other people. But if, after reading this book, you still believe that good men and bad men are worlds, maybe even universes apart, will you also continue to curse the darkness and thereby deny your own humanity? Or will you simply lose an opportunity to gain insight into recognizing, harnessing, and productively channeling the dark side we all share? This book presents an opportunity. If I can help you realize that this opportunity must be seized rather than denied, then I will have succeeded in an important task, and it is hoped I will have enriched your life.

Two Perspectives

In a courtroom, I am invariably asked about my
bona fides
—why I am qualified to give an opinion—and I want to answer the same question here by suggesting that as a forensic psychiatrist and as a treating psychiatrist, I am able to bring two different perspectives to the subject of humanity’s darker side. In my forensic practice, I have often been asked to evaluate men charged with exhibitionism. Most exhibitionists are generally passive men who feel inadequate about themselves, particularly in the way they relate to women. They are outwardly anything but macho, “Rambo” types, though they may still be dangerous and may ultimately progress to more aggressive sexual behaviors. What the exhibitionist attempts to accomplish when he exposes himself to a woman is basically to demonstrate that he is not inadequate. The shock he hopes for in the woman’s surprised or stunned expression is aimed at reversing his own fears and inadequacies. By exposing himself, the exhibitionist attains a fantasized dominant position that reduces his anxiety.

In my consulting practice, I see a steady stream of male patients who are struggling with the same underlying problem as the exhibitionists—feelings of inadequacy—but who manifest these feelings in symptoms of impotence, or premature or retarded ejaculation. The exhibitionist has lived out his fantasies, whereas the patient has grappled with similar demons and has instead developed dysfunctional sexual symptoms and inhibitions. The “good” man has come for treatment, whereas the “bad” man has psychologically assaulted and traumatized women. Why the exhibitionist acts out his problem while the patient only develops symptoms is a clinical and theoretical conundrum that psychiatrists have long pondered. It is a question to which there is no easy answer, only a case-by-case analysis.