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"On
Killing II: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill"
The
Universal Human Phobia
Today
we know that, in most cases, fear of death or injury is
not generally sufficient to manifest itself in a powerful
post-traumatic response. Modern society pursues fear through
roller coasters, action and horror movies, rock climbing,
bungee jumping, and a hundred other legal and illegal means.
Fear itself is seldom a cause of trauma in everyday peacetime
existence, but facing close-range interpersonal aggression
is a traumatizing experience of an entirely different magnitude.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) of the American
Psychiatric Association affirms that PTSD “...may be especially
severe or longer lasting when the stressor is of human design
(e.g. torture, rape).” The DSM-III-R also notes that, “some
stressors frequently cause the disorder (e.g. torture),
and others produce it only occasionally (e.g. natural disasters
or car accidents).”
Thus,
400,000 Americans will die slow, hideous, horrible, preventable
deaths this year, due to cigarettes, but that does not generally
change their behavior. Yet the presence of just one serial
rapist or one serial killer in a city can change the behavior
of the entire city. Just the distant possibility of interpersonal
confrontation distresses us more and influences our behavior
more than the statistical certainty of a slow hideous death
from cancer.
When I speak to audiences I like to ask them, “What is the
difference between, (a) a tornado that tears your house
apart and puts you and your family in the hospital, and
(b) someone who comes into your house in the middle of the
night, ransacks your house and pistol whips you and your
family into the hospital?” And the answer from the audience
is always that the one is an “act of God,” and the other
is “personal.” And that is the point: it is personal. With
emphasis on the word “person” as in “human.”
When
snakes, heights, or darkness cause an intense fear reaction
in an individual, it is considered a phobia, a dysfunction,
an abnormality. But it is very natural and normal to respond
to an attacking, aggressive fellow human being with a phobic-scale
response. This may well be “the universal human phobia.”
More than anything else in life, it is the potential for
intentional, overt, human confrontation that has the greatest
ability to modify and influence the behavior of human beings.
What this means to us today is that much of the body of
psychology and psychiatry, and the body of history in this
field, all affirm that a soldier, police officer, or peacekeeper
on the street is infinitely more effective at influencing
behavior than any quantity of impersonal bombs in the air,
no matter how “smart” those bombs may be. Anything else
is simply wishful thinking. Psychologically, aerial and
artillery bombardments are effective, but only in the front
lines when they are combined with the threat of the physical
attack which usually follows such bombardments.
This is why there were mass psychiatric casualties following
World War I artillery bombardments, but World War II’s strategic
bombing of population centers were surprisingly counterproductive
in breaking the enemy's will. Such bombardments without
an accompanying close-range assault, or at least the threat
of such an assault, are ineffective and may even serve to
inoculate the enemy and to stiffen his will and resolve.
This
is also why inserting combat units behind the enemy is infinitely
more important and effective than even the most comprehensive
bombardments behind the lines or attrition along his front.
We saw this in the early years of the Korean War when the
rate of psychiatric casualties was almost seven times higher
than the average for World War II. Only after the war settled
down, lines stabilized, and the threat of having the enemy
in rear areas decreased, did the average rate go down to
that of World War II (Gabriel, 1986). Again, just the potential
for close-up, inescapable, interpersonal confrontation is
more effective and has greater impact on human behavior
than the actual presence of inescapable, impersonal death
and destruction.
(As an aside, I would like to note that this is why, as
I presented in a paper to the US Air Force, in Washington,
D.C., in July 1998, “...with very, very few exceptions,
distant punishment in the form of aerial bombing is: psychiatrically
unsound, psychologically impotent, strategically counterproductive,
morally bankrupt, and likely to soon be illegal.” I think
you can imagine that I was not a popular guest at that particular
party.)
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