Evil Genes

by Barbara Oakley

  Lack of Object Constancy

  One common trait of borderlines is “lack of object constancy.” Object constancy is the ability we have to soothe ourselves by remembering the love that others have for us. This can be comforting even when the ones we love are far away or no longer living. Unlike most people, borderlines find it difficult to bring to mind the image of a loved one to soothe them when they feel upset or anxious. On an emotional level, if that person is not physically present, they simply don't exist.16

  Years after Kaihui's execution by the Nationalists for refusing to denounce her Communist husband, messages that she had secreted in the walls of her house came to light. Kaihui had become so dispirited at learning of Mao having taken another wife that she considered committing suicide. Yet, as her last note reveals, love for Mao still permeated her every breath: “For days I've been unable to sleep. I just can't sleep. I'm going mad. So many days now, he hasn't written. I'm waiting day after day. Tears…. He is very lucky, to have my love. I truly love him so very much! He can't have abandoned me. He must have his reasons not to write…. Father love is really a riddle. Does he not miss his children? I can't understand him…. No matter how hard I try, I just can't stop loving him. I just can't.”17 Mao, however, in his own relationship-challenged fashion, was thinking at least occasionally of Kaihui. Despite the fact that his third wife, He Zizhen, had just given birth to their first child, a daughter, Mao wrote a brief note to an old friend, attributing his flat spirits in part to missing his second wife and their little family. Mao asked his friend to find his younger brother in Shanghai to get Kaihui's mailing address so that Mao could write to her. But Kaihui never received a letter.

  Mao's new wife, Zizhen, was also to find his womanizing intolerable. She eventually went to Russia, ostensibly for medical treatment, and gave birth to a boy who died of pneumonia after only six months, causing her to sink into inconsolable depression. Despite her attempts to contact Mao, he did not reply. Nearly two years after they had parted, Zizhen learned by chance through a newspaper article that Mao had again remarried. Crushed by ill health and excruciating memories of the children she had been forced to abandon by Mao and the exigencies of war, Zizhen suffered a mental breakdown.

  Mao placed emphasis on improving the lot of women in Chinese society by setting aside electoral positions for them in government and promoting women's educational opportunities. But his lofty ideals vanished when his personal life was involved.

  Mao's attitudes toward his and Kaihui's son An-ying—his only mentally sound heir—revealed the depths of his continually troubled relationships. Mao's other known son to survive to adulthood apparently suffered from schizophrenia; both known surviving daughters had nervous breakdowns, with one continuing to drift in and out of insanity for years, while the other continued to be troubled by depression.18 Although a genetic cause for these problematic personalities seems likely, Mao's children suffered unquestionable exacerbating stress as a result of their father's prominence—and neglect. An-ying, Mao's oldest son, had lived with his brother as a street urchin following his mother's execution and then spent most of his adolescence in Stalin's Russia. In his early twenties, he was sent by Mao to China's rural provinces to be hardened by what he would witness. But An-ying, who shared the empathetic nature of his mother, Kaihui, was shocked rather than hardened by the public mass brutality. Not long after this, he was killed in North Korea, a casualty of war.

  Mao's dysfunctional relationships were worsened by the fact that he often chose deeply disturbed people with whom to interact. For example, Mao's last wife, Jiang Qing, to whom he was married for thirty-eight years, was even more troubled emotionally than Milosevic's wife, Mira. Jiang Qing's continual demands kept five or six people constantly scurrying in response to her whims. It was considered an honor to work for the chairman's wife, but the level of distress and anxiety among those who served her was high indeed. Jiang Qing's physician was accused of torturing the chairman's wife by pulling the window shades down too slowly when she ordered them drawn. As a consequence, she said, the sun had permanently damaged her eyes. Additionally, she accused her physician of deliberately giving her a chill by lowering the temperature below the eighty degrees upon which she insisted. When her physician showed her the thermometer reading precisely at eighty degrees, she accused him of inflicting mental anguish and had him declared a member of the antiparty group—which subjected him to a terrible ordeal.19

  Mao's disturbed way of interacting with others revealed itself in other ways. He was deeply anti-intellectual and made a point of flaunting uncouth antics that drew attention to himself, such as “pulling his belt to hunt for lice in his groin as he talked, or pulling off his trousers in the middle of an interview as he lay to cool himself down.”20 Unsurprisingly, in the early days of the Chinese Communist Party, when many people had direct, relatively unfiltered knowledge of Mao and his activities, he was an unpopular leader. One official report noted that many felt very bitter toward Mao, seeing him as dictatorial, foul tempered, and abusive.21 As a consequence, he was ousted on six occasions in his first twelve years as a Communist. But he had powerful friends (especially the Russians), who found him useful; they, along with the plots Mao devised during his moody bouts of nerves at his home or in hospitals, pulled him back up no matter how often he was ousted.

  Fig. 9.2. Jiang Qing in 1954 with Mao. Jiang often tailored the baggy government-mandated clothing styles she wore to draw attention to her slim waist.

  In one of the first mutinies by Mao's men, a circular was sent out describing the men's erstwhile leader:

  He is extremely devious and sly, selfish, and full of megalomania. To his comrades, he orders them around, frightens them with charges of crimes, and victimizes them. He rarely holds discussions about Party matters…. Whenever he expresses a view, everyone must agree, otherwise he uses the Party organization to clamp down on you, or invents some trumped-up theories to make life absolutely dreadful for you…Mao always uses political accusations to strike at comrades. His customary method regarding cadres is to…use them as his personal tools.22

  The men's attempts to undercut Mao served them no good—ultimately, Mao had them tortured to death.

  Years later, after he'd become China's “Great Helmsman,” Mao's morning greeting to each member of his staff was always “Is there any news?” Li Zhisui, Mao's doctor, thought it was Mao's way of gathering information and keeping continual check on everyone of importance. “It was his way of controlling us, too,” Li wrote in his insightful memoirs. “He expected us to repeat all our conversations and activities and encouraged us to criticize each other. He liked to play one member of the staff off against another.”23 Mao also continually changed his circle of aides, attendants, and bodyguards, all of whom worshiped him, much as Dr. Li had at the beginning of his twenty-two years as his personal physician. Li felt the rare older members of Mao's original staff suffered a similar affliction: “The more one knew of Mao, the less he could be respected. By changing the inner circle and bringing in a fresh crop of worshippers, Mao assured himself continual adulation.”24 This state of affairs was especially sad for the many young women selected for Mao's companionship, who became unbearably arrogant.25

  The Confusing Façade—Sympathy with Little Empathy

  And yet, both despite and because of his disturbed relationships with others, Mao was frequently lonely. Once he gained ultimate power, he led an isolated life. He had no friends, spent little time with his wife, and even less time with his children. He made Dr. Li one of his chief conversation partners, calling him in to chat whenever insomnia struck—no matter how late or inconvenient the hour. But, Li notes, “So far as I could tell, despite his initial friendliness at first meetings, Mao was devoid of human feeling, incapable of love, friendship, or warmth.”26

  Li described the following incident: “Once, in Shanghai, I was sitting next to the Chairman during a performance when a young acrobat—a child—suddenly slipped and was seriously
injured. The crowd was aghast, transfixed by the tragedy, and the child's mother was inconsolable. But Mao continued talking and laughing without concern, as though nothing had happened. Nor, to my knowledge, did he ever inquire about the fate of the young performer.”27 Li relayed how

  In 1957, in a speech in Moscow, Mao said he was willing to lose 300 million people—half of China's population. Even if China lost half its population, Mao said, the country would suffer no great loss. We could produce more people.

  It was not until the Great Leap Forward, when millions of Chinese began dying during the famine, that I became fully aware of how much Mao resembled the ruthless emperors he so admired. Mao knew that people were dying by the millions. He did not care.28

  According to Li, this lack of empathy also extended to those in Mao's inner circle. If an aide was no longer useful, he was ruthlessly ejected, even if Mao had worked with him for years. At the same time, Mao was a consummate actor, pretending he was being forced into his actions. In this way, he retained loyalty even as he sent his aide on to hardship and suffering.29

  Yet Li does recount a few interesting counterexamples. When Mao's unfortunate third wife, He Zizhen, was in her fifties, Mao invited her to visit him.

  Her pallid face burst with delight as soon as she saw Mao. Mao rose immediately and walked toward her, taking her hands into his, and escorting her to a chair as He Zizhen's eyes filled with tears.

  He gave her a little hug and said with a smile, “Did you get my letter? Did you receive the money?” He was good to her, as gentle and kind as I had ever seen him….

  For a long time after she left, I remained with Mao as he sat silently, smoking cigarette after cigarette, overcome with what I took to be melancholy. I had never seen him in such a mood. I sensed in him a great sorrow over He Zizhen.

  Finally, he spoke. He was barely audible. “She is so old. And so sick.”

  He turned to me…“And what is her illness called after all?”

  “It is called schizophrenia.”…

  “Is it the same illness that Mao An-qing has?” [Mao's second son by Kaihui who survived to adulthood]

  I told him it was…c.30

  Schizophrenia and Schizotypal Personality Disorder

  It is interesting to note that Mao's younger surviving son, An-qing, seems to have been afflicted with schizophrenia. (Note that An-qing was Mao's son by his second wife, Kaihui—An-qing was not related to Mao's schizophrenic third wife, He Zizhen.) Schizophrenia is a strongly hereditary disease or linked set of diseases—relatives of those with schizophrenia have a much greater chance than usual of showing at least mild aspects of the disorder themselves. Schizophrenia is characterized by persistent defects in the perception or expression of reality. Those with untreated schizophrenia may show extremely disorganized thinking and can also experience delusions or auditory hallucinations.

  Schizotypal personality disorder is thought by many to be a mild form of schizophrenia. It has been linked with borderline personality disorder through the use of imaging techniques.31 Patients with coexisting borderline-schizotypal personality disorders have been found to have distinctive reductions in the size of the gray matter in their anterior and posterior cingulates—areas that relate to executive control as well as to mood regulation.

  After becoming the leader of China, Mao did perform small kindnesses to a few of those who had known him many years before. He arranged for help for an old classmate who fell into financial straits. Two of Mao's old teachers had written, both in dire need of money. Mao suggested a small subsidy in local party funds for them, as well as for the starving seventy-year-old widow of his revered classical literature teacher, Yuan the Big Beard. He also wrote letters for people he had known, liked, and trusted, “who asked him to spare them the rigors of laboring in the countryside on the Great Leap projects.”32 One such person he excused was the nanny who had looked after his three sons with Kaihui back in the 1930s. The memories of Kaihui appeared to haunt Mao. Although he could have easily rescued her from execution and thus saved their sons from de facto orphanhood, Mao had made no effort to do so. Learning of her death, however, Mao seems to have reacted in genuine grief, writing: “‘The death of Kaihui cannot be redeemed by a hundred deaths of mine!’ He spoke of her often, especially in his old age, as the love of his life. After he became China's leader, Mao's letters show that he was sending two payments a year to Kaihui's family, each one at least ten times more than a well-off peasant's annual income at that time.”33

  The psychiatrist's words echo: “The borderline is capable of great sympathy and comforting but often may lack true empathy, the ability to put himself in the other person's shoes, in appreciating how others are impacted by his behavior. Additionally, when they are hurt, their rage at those who have hurt them may be intense and cruel and devoid of concern or understanding for the other party.”34

  Impulsivity

  Thus far, we've discussed Mao's early antisocial tendencies, as well as his markedly disturbed relationships. But there are other traits that are common to both borderline and antisocial personality disorders—most notably, impulsivity. Although Mao's “top-down” control over his emotions was intact, he clearly used his natural impulsivity and mood swings to great effect. “Getting upset is one of my weapons,” he once confided to Dr. Li.35 As Andrew Nathan writes in the foreword to Li's memoirs:

  The real Mao could hardly have been more different from the benevolent sage-king portrayed in the authorized memoirs and poster portraits that circulate in China today. To be sure, on first meeting he could be charming, sympathetic, and casual, setting his visitor at ease to talk freely. But he drew on psychological reserves of anger and contempt to control his followers, manipulating his moods with frightening effect. Relying on the Confucian unwillingness of those around him to confront their superior, he humiliated subordinates and rivals. He undertook self-criticism only to goad others to flatter him, surrounding himself with a culture of abasement…. He understood human suffering chiefly as a way to control people.36

  Poorly Regulated Emotions

  A key trait of borderline personality disorder is poor emotional regulation—this characteristic was noted at virtually every stage of Mao's life. As a young man, for example, Mao was often deeply troubled, racked by bouts of self-questioning and depression; his obstinate and argumentative personality made him a cross to bear for everyone. While attending the teachers’ college in his early twenties:

  One moment he was complaining: “Throughout my life, I have never had good teachers or friends.” Next minute he wrote intimately to [his close friend] Xiao Yu: “Many heavy thoughts…multiply and weigh down on me…. Will you allow me to release them by talking to you?” His obstinacy was legendary, even towards those he liked and respected, such as Yuan the Big Beard [his professor of Chinese language and literature], with whom he had a furious row over the title-sheet for an essay which he refused to change. After another dispute, this time with the principal, it took the combined intervention of Yuan, Yang Changji, and several other professors to prevent him being expelled.37

  Mao would record in his journal his attempts to correct his course: “In the past, I had some mistaken ideas. Now I…[have] grown up a bit…. Today I make a new start.”38 But six months later, he would again be “starting afresh.” He was by turns unhappy, frustrated, enthusiastic, and bitter.

  Borderline expert Leland Heller writes:

  Mood swings are a fundamental symptom of borderline. The moods can shift inappropriately from hour to hour, even minute to minute, without apparent justification…. A borderline can experience distinct periods of happiness, rage, boredom, mistrust, sadness or joy without anything new happening in the environment. These feelings are often very intense. Some borderlines suffer more mood swings in an average day than most people do in a month‥

  Imagine trying to walk down the street blindfolded, never knowing if your next step was one step up, two steps up, one step down, two steps down, or level.
It's the unpredictability that makes the situation dangerous. A borderline's emotions are as difficult to overcome as this example of the shifting sidewalk….

  Borderlines feel only inconsistency—moods that constantly shift.39

  These mood swings (“affective instability”) have been found to be related to borderline symptoms of identity disturbance, chronic emptiness or boredom, inappropriate anger, and the defenses of splitting and projection.40

  How much of Mao's perceptions were colored by these personality traits? Mao noted:

  I say: the concept is reality, the finite is the infinite, the temporal is the intemporal, imagination is thought, I am the universe, life is death, death is life, the present is the past and the future, the past and the future are the present, the small is the great, the yin is the yang, the high is the low, the impure is the pure, the thick is the thin, the substance is the words, that which is one, that which is changing is eternal.

  I am the most exalted person, and also the most unworthy person.41

  The embedded opposites of yin and yang form an ancient part of China's philosophical underpinnings, but Mao's personalization sneaks perilously close to identity diffusion.d.42 “Normally, we experience ourselves consistently through time in different settings and with different people,” writes borderline specialist Robert J. Waldinger. “This continuity of self is not experienced by the person with BPD. Instead, borderline patients are filled with contradictory images of themselves that they cannot integrate.”43