by Ian Brady
The visionary or dissident is more admirable than the conformist or social hypocrite. The same can be said of Stavrogin, regardless whether or not his actions are generally pronounced selfish, irrational, immoral or criminal. He at least holds the interest as being uncommon. The compliant have always been more stimulated by criminals than by saints, preferring the intoxication of wine to the bland sustenance of milk. Without temptation what value virtue?
Ye who suffer, suffer from yourself. No one else compels.
— Buddha
Stavrogin cannot tolerate ordinary existence. He turns life into a cartoon where anything is possible, experiencing only scorn for the followers he is turning into caricatures, revelling in the absurdity that they take his revolutionary games seriously, even to the extent of risking their lives.
Thirsting to believe in something, Stavrogin is incapable of believing in anything and finds life meaningless, in effect preferring to accept no hope to false hope; this colours his every action, yet paradoxically fails to deprive him of the ability to inspire hope in his followers. Negative dynamism creating positive effect.
The author Colin Wilson, in his brilliant but derivative literary critique The Outsider, misconceives important aspects of meaning and motivation in The Possessed. His interpretations seem more concerned with reflecting his personal, somewhat eccentric philosophical ideas which lack the eclectic elasticity of moral relativism. In addition, he has deficient grasp of the necessary multidimensional psychic factors of empirical thought required to conduct a comprehensive diagnostic into such matters.
Wilson’s obsession with writing about murder, outsiders and criminals is perhaps subconsciously explained by the fact that his own beliefs and opinions are surprisingly mundane and lacking in controversy, and he has never used his writings or influence to champion a social cause.
Making a lucrative living from criminals and their crimes should engender a guilt complex, yet he appears to possess no moral scruples about demeaning the victims of the crime by lovingly describing every horrific and intimate forensic detail of their final moments. Some authors invariably rationalise their prurient intrusion in the name of science and the furtherance of human illumination. I believe most serious students can discern when that line has been crossed and morbid sensationalism begins.
Having proclaimed himself a genius suggests psychotic overtones, and, perhaps because of this, Colin Wilson apparently fails to appreciate and extrapolate the importance of psychotic influence in The Possessed — the very title echoing it — and states that most great criminals and guerrillas turn out to be mindless Freudian neurotics. A rather disturbing hypothesis when one considers that the majority of present world leaders, particularly in the third world, were former ‘terrorists.’ Conversely, the political doctrines and actions of many of the more exalted world luminaries in the West are frequently, and often justifiably, termed ‘criminal’ by the politically/socially informed and eminent intellectuals.
From three decades of practical study, I have found that it is generally applicable, especially amongst the vast majority of lesser criminals who can be described as inadequate, that life imitates art. The film actors do not act like gangsters, the gangsters act like their film counterparts. By externalising dreams and modelling themselves upon celluloid images and stage projections, they effectively alter and lose touch with reality, increasing their chances of apprehension. Essentially such aspiring criminals fail to develop sufficiently the third eye and ear, consequently creating a personal microcosm with insufficient pragmatic defences.
Further, it is facile to use the word ‘Freudian neurotic’ in a blanket derogatory context. Neurosis is an innate survival mechanism. Only when developed to a morbid degree is it regarded as detrimental and the seed of psychosis. Psycho-neurosis also nurtures a predisposition to dissociative reaction, surrender to irresistible impulse, a state of temporary insanity. I am certain that even seasoned psychopathic and particularly psychotic serial killers can fall prey to dissociative reaction, faced with a victim so physically attractive or psychologically appealing that they literally cannot resist the impulse to attack.
Stavrogin’s erratic social behaviour, his impulsive physical attacks of varying categories on others, can certainly be classified as psychotic episodes. Wilson seems unable to appreciate, or make allowances for, altered states of affective mental aberration and invariably applies narrow philosophical or moral criteria, thus demonising rather than apprehending.
Outsider tendencies can be attributed to many fluctuating psychological imponderables devoid of philosophical rationale. Without wishing to pathologise, Stavrogin is more the victim of his impulses than Wilson will allow him to be. He examines Stavrogin from the outside rather than attempting to enter and look out from within. Stavrogin is an open book to those who have shared his psychic experiences.
Impulsiveness is not a conscious act, therefore Stavrogin’s spontaneous frolics into criminal mode are essentially reflexes lacking in thought, self-interest or strategic intent. More a satisfying of primal appetite. Stavrogin’s real crime is his inability to curb antisocial impulses.
Criminals can be as impulsively good or evil as the ‘normal’ person but are, for expedient social and political motives, always defined exclusively by their evil acts. The Byrons and Rimbauds escape criminal categorisation by merit of accepted artistic genius; politicians and amoral officialdom escape by merit of power. Most common criminals possess neither of these social absolvers, and the type of serial killer whose determined crimes lead to notoriety regard their acts as justifiable within the framework of their hidden agenda, and do not seek or require the absolution of others who live by a different credo.
Whether their acts might be interpreted by an opposing culture as ‘insane’ or ‘depraved’ is, as already indicated, of no consequence to them. It is not that they lack a morality but that they believe in a strikingly different and individual form. Even amorality is a mode of morality. Wittgenstein’s struggle with language exemplifies its eternal paradox.
The word ‘psychopath’ is a case in point. Ask most people to define the word and the majority will — thanks to the mass media, pulp fiction and decades of film and other theatrical depictions — immediately opt for ‘killer.’ This is erroneous.
Further on I shall deal with the essential personality traits and characteristics of the criminal psychopath and psychotic, but I now take the opportunity to define briefly the identical psychopathic traits and characteristics shared by both the criminal psychopath and the socially acceptable psychopath.
It should be noted that this book deals with serial killers, therefore future use of the term ‘psychopath’ throughout I shall be referring exclusively to the psychopathic killer. If I were writing about habitual criminals other than killers, application of the term would be in the context of whatever type of habitual criminal behaviour was being dealt with. For the word ‘psychopath’ can be applicable to all forms of habitual criminal and antisocial behaviour.
As the term ‘psychopath’ defines an affective form of deep-seated personality disorder, its valid application is not confined solely to the so-called ‘criminal classes.’ There are many ways to commit all crimes, murder included, without the least danger of being caught or even having one’s actions branded ‘criminal.’
In the field of devious criminality the socially acceptable psychopath reigns supreme.
Such socially acceptable, highly successful psychopaths are in fact common in the upper echelons of every society, for it is that very state of mind that helps them to succeed in the first instance. It is the psychotic who is out of tune with reality, not the psychopath. It is the psychotic who is legally termed ‘insane,’ not the psychopath.
Each one of you, whether high or low, regularly rubs shoulders with socially acceptable clinical psychopaths every day without the least awareness, not only accepting them as ‘normal,’ but also as people to be admired and highly respected by virtue of their
success and positions of authority. But should you look beyond their prestigious trappings and study their personality traits and characteristics, you would find it quite easy to identify the socially acceptable psychopaths amongst you.
Beneath the exterior of self-serving charm and urbanity — which most psychopaths can usually switch on and off at will — the crocodile smile, which doesn’t quite vitalise the eyes, there exist only negative emotions, all of which are primarily concerned with personal ambition and the will to power.
The most salient traits and characteristics of the psychopath are coldness, calculation, manipulation, lack of sensitivity, natural deviousness, facile mendacity, amorality presented as moral flexibility, pathological anger and envy rationalised as altruism or logic, all-encompassing greed, assumption of personal superiority over all others, a dictatorial and bullying attitude relying on power and authority rather than intelligence, suspicion and lack of trust to a paranoid degree, inexorable ruthlessness, an egocentric conviction that they are always right, sexual promiscuousness, complete lack of remorse.
These traits and characteristics are most likely to surface unwittingly when the psychopath is contradicted, frustrated or blocked.
Does any combination of these salient features of the psychopathic personality remind you of someone in your household, a relative or friend, a person at your place of work, a politician, a bureaucrat, some minor official, a judge, a teacher, an author or journalist, a member of the armed forces or the police, some person with practically everything they could possibly need but who always wants more?
Or even yourself?
Research into psychopathology conducted by psychiatrists and psychologists is almost exclusively based on selected captives — imprisoned, failed psychopaths, who have not had the high measure of power, authority and privileged opportunity requisite to inflict upon society the same degree of widespread damage of which the socially acceptable psychopath is capable on a daily basis.
Naturally, the psychopathic elite are in an almost unassailable position to refute any charge or suggestion of mental abnormality. Even in the unlikely event of such powerful people agreeing to psychiatric examination, they would certainly ensure their eminent lawyers, and personal doctors would, by application of every threat in existence, silence and quash any adverse diagnoses.
As indicated, the whole of society, backed by the power of the mass media, is geared to concentrate public attention and hostility upon the captured, relatively small-time psychopaths, and particularly serial killers, using them as popular entertainments to distract public scrutiny from the infinitely more dangerous, socially acceptable psychopaths who hold high office throughout society.
Governments have always employed socially acceptable psychopaths to good effect, particularly in the special armed forces and intelligence services and, of course, expediently present the actions of such special servants as being ‘for the good of the country and the people.’
America, forever glorying in its international reputation as a democracy, employs the largest army of security/secret police in the Western hemisphere — the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, undercover civilian police, SWAT riot squads, Special Service units, the National Guard, state troopers, etc., etc.
To safeguard its international commercial empire the government frequently uses naked aggression, employing the CIA to ‘destabilise’ foreign countries not subservient to American foreign policy/influence, and replacing democratically elected governments with American-financed military dictatorships.
Axiomatically, a crucial sector of the American economy is based upon a thriving arms industry. When Henry Kissinger publicly announced, ‘It is not economically feasible for America to end the war in Vietnam at this present moment,’ there was no public outcry at the clear implication that, faced with the choice of scaling down the American arms industry, or continuing to allow thousands of its own and foreign nationals to be slaughtered weekly, the latter course was preferable. And when President Nixon was carpet-bombing Cambodia for many months while solemnly assuring the American people he was not, there was insufficient moral concern within the political establishment to demand impeachment.
Shareholders, executives, technicians and labourers in the arms industry exemplify the zoological fact that any form of mass destruction is perfectly acceptable to respectable people so long as they earn a good, ‘honest’ living by it. Not ‘guns or butter,’ but guns for butter.
Any government which, at any given time in office, necessitates law enforcement agencies to protect it from the majority of the people, is not a government for and by the people. Any law enforcement agency which protects a government, at any given time in office, against the majority of the people, cannot be for the people.
Study your leaders more, your prisoners less. Be more concerned about the beliefs of the Inquisitor rather than those of the heretic. The barbarity and power of the state thrives upon lack of public understanding and organised repudiation.
CHAPTER FOUR
God so commanded, and left that command Sole daughter of his voice; the rest we live Law to ourselves, our reason is our law.
— Paradise Lost, Milton
Who can deny having experienced moments when, had you owned the power, you would have gladly destroyed the world and every living creature on it in your anger and despondency, like a thwarted, disgruntled child?
In retrospect, when the blood has cooled or circumstances brightened, you may self-flatteringly asseverate, ‘Oh, but I didn’t really mean it.’ Nonsense! Had the world-extinguishing button been under your thumb at that particular moment of inspired rage or evil brilliance, you would have pushed it with grateful exhilaration, even joy. The Götterdämmerung syndrome.
I offer this to illustrate further that there is no great gap between the law-abiding and the criminal. It is man’s expedient or delusional nature to parade lack of omnipotent power as evidence of innate virtue, well knowing the latter formed no motivational part of his thoughts or emotions at the moment of resentful revenge.
Given the right conditions and circumstances, particularly when frustrated and depressed, do we not all harbour the homicidal, megalomaniacal urges of Nero hidden deep within?
‘If the mob had one throat, I’d cut it!’
Or the ferocious inclinations of the Marquis de Sade:
‘How many times have I longed to be able to assail the sun, snatch it out of the universe, make a general darkness, or use that star to burn the world. Oh, that would be a crime!’
Such extreme examples of criminal candour scorn the parameters of stereotypical bromides and threadbare truisms with which theologians, moralists and sanctimonious tyrants seek to exculpate or cloud material motives.
One should try to be honest with oneself almost as a daily devotion.
Forget the moral pedants. Many shrivelled academics attempt to measure the human psyche with crude calibrators, much like those television grotesques with swingometers you see on election night.
If history teaches anything, it is: In every war or ideological conflict both sides genuinely believe themselves to be right. They deny purely selfish stimulus, paying lip service to lofty moral concepts, but unwittingly reveal, by their actions, the true and universally empirical belief that the end does justify the means, that might is right, that the victor does dictate morality and legality; that often two wrongs do make a right and two rights a wrong. And, of course, that the spoils always go to the victor. Equivocations to the contrary are patently cosmetic, and falsely egalitarian.
Bored by the futility and inertia of prolonged, reasoned argument, and having unsuccessfully explored and deployed every devious and deceitful stratagem to defeat the enemy, your eminent ‘statesmen’ invariably regard war as the natural extension of diplomacy. They seek vain consolation in cathartic extravaganzas of bloodletting, whose sole moral exoneration lies in the superior brutality of martial victory. This reveals them to be cyclically vulnerable to the same primal instincts as ser
ial killers. But murdering on a so much grander scale, of course, and being honoured for it to boot.
If I were wont to play Pontius Pilate, and asked you to choose between Richard Nixon and Charles Manson, who best would deserve crucifixion?
In the context of nuclear global conflict, where both sides know neither side can win, mankind self-evidently owes his continuing survival not to virtue but to evil: the balance of terror.
Can there be any objective doubt, in those of you wisely conversant with the wiles and ways of human nature and man’s infinite capacity to rationalise every atrocity there is, that the main psychological reason why most people do not pray to the Prince of Darkness, had they robust spirit to do so, is that it would be tantamount to worshipping themselves, thus confirming a nature they would piously deny?
Is not evil man’s true element of delight, the dominating psyche he naturally luxuriates in and is drawn inexorably to embrace? A source of spontaneous vitality and verve, evil banishes the mundane barriers of ‘normal’ existence, galvanising the senses and lending a fresh vibrancy to the world. It is a facet of character man thoroughly enjoys in the darkness of mind and bed most of his life. Intoxication without artificial stimulants.
Man secretly thrills to, or derives profound psychic comfort from, the satisfaction of successfully convincing others he possesses little or no evil in his intrinsic character, but is expert in detecting and condemning it in almost everyone else. So cohesively corrupt is this moral schizophrenia that even his indignant, sporadic criticism of evil is momentarily experienced as genuine; aesthetically rooted as it is in the smug satisfaction of having caught out someone less adept in duplicity and hypocrisy than himself.