Hatred Willard Gaylin (classic novels TXT) 📖

Schreber, after feeling maligned and persecuted, went on to the next step. He transformed his persecutory delusions into delusions of grandeur. The humiliating attempt to convert him into a woman, to emasculate him, was only an intermediary step to his becoming the redeemer of the human race. Rather than a humiliation, Schreber concluded that it was a sign that he had been chosen to be God’s companion. He was no longer “the play-thing of the devils” but an instrument of God’s will. “He believed,” Freud stated, “that he had a mission to redeem the world and to restore it to its lost state of bliss. This, however, he could only bring about if he were first transformed from a man into a woman.” The physician then in charge of his case, a Dr. Weber, stated:

It is not to be supposed that he wishes to be transformed into a woman; it is rather a question of a “must” based upon the order of things, which there is no possibility of his evading, much as he would personally prefer to remain in his own honorable and masculine station in life. But neither he nor the rest of mankind can win back their immortality except by his being transformed into a woman . . . by means of divine miracles. He himself . . . is the only object upon which divine miracles are worked, and he is thus the most remarkable man who has ever lived upon earth.

Thus, that which started as a humiliation—his homosexual impulses—became a source of glory, a device to permit him to serve as the redeemer of the human race. The psychotic can, thus, be seen as confirming the rule that even the most outlandish and bizarre of symptoms must be understood as an example of misguided repair. He can live with his delusion better than he can with the constant torment that results from overwhelming anxiety from unrecognized sources.

In the earlier days of his illness, Schreber was “tortured to such a degree that he longed for death. He made repeated attempts at drowning himself in his bath, and asked to be given the ‘cyanide of potassium that was intended for him.’ ” But as Weber noted, the “ingenious delusional structure” saved him from “insanity.” By that he meant that the full-blown delusional system that ended in the redeemer fantasies freed Schreber and permitted him to return to “normalcy”:

The fact was that, on the one hand, he had developed an ingenious delusional structure . . . on the other hand, his personality had been reconstructed and now showed itself, except for a few isolated disturbances, capable of meeting the demands of everyday life.

Dr. Schreber shows no signs of confusion or of psychical inhibition, nor is his intelligence noticeably impaired. His mind is collected, his memory is excellent, he has at his disposal a very considerable store of knowledge. And he is able to reproduce it in a connected train of thought. He takes an interest in following events in the world of politics, of science, and of art. . . . In spite of all this, however, the patient is full of ideas of pathological origin, which have formed themselves into a complete system, now more or less fixed and inaccessible to correction.41

During his second admission to a mental hospital, Schreber petitioned the courts to regain his liberty. “Such, indeed, were his acumen and the cogency of his logic that finally, and in spite of his being an acknowledged paranoiac, his efforts were crowned with success. In July 1902 Dr. Schreber’s civil rights were restored.”42 Schreber, like Nash, continued his life outside an institution, clinging to his delusional system, and as far as the record shows, representing a threat to no one.

In the United States, bombers of innocent people are few in number and have tended to be psychotic. The most famous case in recent years was the previously mentioned Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

Kaczynski’s career as a bomber dated back to May 25, 1978, when he was known as the Junkyard Bomber because of the crudeness of his weapons. In a portent of what was to follow, the first bomb—while addressed to an academic scientist, a professor of engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute—was actually placed in the parking lot of the University of Chicago School of Engineering. A pattern of targeting research scientists was to emerge. This cycle of bombings ended in 1987 but was renewed with new intensity and more sophisticated bombs in a cycle that began on June 18, 1993.

Kaczynski that day mailed two such parcels in what had become his signature trademark, a wooden box enclosed in a mailing envelope. One was addressed to University of California geneticist Charles Epstein. It exploded with such force that shrapnel was driven into Epstein’s body and face, breaking an arm and obliterating three of his fingers. The second bomb was delivered to David Gelernter, a professor of computer sciences at Yale University. Gelernter barely survived and was severely crippled, losing most of his right hand.

Gelernter’s brother was also a geneticist, which may be one reason David Gelernter was targeted. Certainly the focus for Luddite hysteria these days tends to be on genetics, partly because genetic research invokes the wrath associated with the issue of abortion, partly because molecular genetics operates at a level not easily understood by the layman, but mostly because genetics seems closest to the kind of “tampering” with nature that has traditionally (think of Dr. Frankenstein) frightened many with the fear of someone’s “playing God.”

What eventually emerged, when Kaczynski was finally apprehended through the courageous intervention of his brother, was the picture of a classic withdrawn and delusional schizophrenic living a hermit’s life. In his delusional system, he perceived modern science as a force for evil, which justified his assault on its agents. The fact that he was schizophrenic meant that his assaults were disorganized,