by Unknown
Like most factor analyses, this one has probably not identified all of the factors that would influence this situation, but this model is certainly vastly more effective than anything we have had before — since, to the best of my knowledge, none has ever existed before. Much work is needed to truly quantify these factors, but I would hypothesize that the threshold for a personal kill in wartime would be lower than that in peacetime. In a peacetime killing (murder) the threshold would probably be significandy higher, but the basic factors might still generally apply. Certainly this model would apply to gang killings and most random street violence, but the most common form of murder is that committed by acquaintances and family members upon one another, and I believe that the psychological mechanics of that kind of killing are quite different from what we are studying here.
Section V: Killing and Atrocities
1. The only other time I have heard this process spoken of was by one particularly astute and unusually introspective British wing commander from the Gulf War.
He noted that the RAF ground crews who supported his squadron felt like
"impostors" because they had lived in a hotel, did not personally approach the enemy, and had not yet endured any Iraqi Scud missile attacks. However, they were only a few hundred meters from the U.S. National Guard unit that was subsequently hit by a Scud attack at considerable loss of life. "I hope," he said,
"that you will not misunderstand if I tell you that my ground crews felt a little better about themselves when the Americans were hit." Again, instead of being diminished by friendly losses, they were strangely magnified and empowered by them.
2. This is the only place in this entire book where I have used a quote from fiction. I do so in this instance because Conrad's Kurtz is an unparalleled representation of a man who is entrapped in the power of atrocity. This was superbly embellished and built upon in Marlon Brando's portrayal of Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. In that movie Kurtz's representation of how he was ensnared by the power of the Vietcong's use of atrocity represents a singularly powerful insight into the dark attraction of atrocity.
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Section VI: The Killing Response Stages
1. The "obedience versus sympathy" and "cultural versus biological norm"
conflicts, which may be at the root of this killing trauma, have been explored by Eibl-Eibesfeldt. He delves deeply into this area and relates how soldiers in firing squads have been traditionally drugged with alcohol and issued the random blank bullet to permit some form of denial. Even so, they often later needed psychological counseling. Eibl-Eibesfeldt also tells of the atonement rituals traditionally used in primitive tribes after killing the enemy.
Eibl-Eibesfeldt does not, however, examine the need for, and quality of, ritual atonement methods for dealing with the trauma of a personal kill in modem warfare. These modern atonement processes, and how they failed in Vietnam, are an important part of what we must attempt to examine and understand. But first we must complete our dissection of the stages of a personal kill.
2. A fixation is sometimes defined as too much pain or pleasure associated with a specific stimuli. Classical examples of Freudian fixations include individuals who are fixated by the delight of nursing and the trauma of being weaned (oral fixation) or individuals who have become fixated by traumatic toilet training (anal fixation).
3. Many veterans cut themselves off entirely from their emotions at the time of killing. They tell me (sincerely, I believe) that they feel now and felt then absolutely nothing. This is discussed elsewhere, but it is very important at this point to distinguish between these individuals who have denied and repressed their emotions and those who can truly enjoy killing without any resultant remorse.
4. But all would defend his right to reflect openly on the war as he saw it, in a forum of his peers. It is very much to the credit of Soldier of Fortune, the magazine in which this article was published, that for twenty years this was essentially the only national forum in which Vietnam veterans could write such deeply emotional, open, and often unpopular reminiscences of their war. The editors added that "(?)" to the title of this article as their subtle means of distancing themselves from the author's statements, and let it go at that. The route of recovery from all combat trauma is through rationalization and acceptance, and this lifelong self-exploration process that I have termed "rationalization and acceptance" is exactly what occurs when veterans write, and read, these first-person narratives. I believe that writing and reading these narratives provide an extremely powerful form of therapy for these men. And 1 must deeply respect the courage and fortitude it took to both write and publish such accounts over the last twenty years.
Note that here the "thrill of the kill" is placed before the "terrible bitterness of losing a friend," the latter being a trauma that is intentionally downplayed in relationship to the pleasure that the writer found in combat. It must be 344
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emphasized that such a fixation does not make an individual a "bad" person.
On the contrary, it was men like this, with a thirst for adventure and addiction to excitement, who pioneered our nation, and it is men such as this whom our country depends upon as the backbone of our military force in time of war.
And, again, there are numerous sound studies that demonstrate that the returning veteran represents no greater threat to society than already existed in the society.
As always, the objective must be not to judge, but simply to understand.
Section VII: Killing in Vietnam
1. The 1978 President's Commission on Mental Health tells us that approximately 2.8 million Americans served in Southeast Asia. If we accept the Veterans Administration's conservative figures of 15 percent incidence of PTSD among Vietnam veterans, then more than 400,000 individuals in the United States suffer from PTSD. Independent estimates of the number of Vietnam veterans suffering from PTSD range from the Disabled American Veterans figure of 500,000 to Harris and Associates 1980 estimate of 1.5 million. These figures would mean that somewhere between 18 and 54 percent of the 2.8 million military personnel who served in Vietnam are suffering from PTSD.
2. This improvement is so astounding that a few modern observers have publicly questioned Marshall's World War II findings. But to do that means that you have to go on and question his Korean War findings and his Vietnam findings (which have been independently verified by Scott). To do so also refutes the findings of every other author who has looked deeply into this matter, including Holmes, Dyer, Keegan, and Griffith. It is possible these modern writers are partially motivated by a difficulty in believing that they and "their" soldiers exist to do something that is so offensive and horrible that they must be conditioned to do it. See the earlier section "Killing and the Existence of Resistance" for a more detailed discussion of this topic.
3. There was too little close combat in the Gulf War to really make any conclusions of this sort.
4. Stouffer, in "The American Soldier: Combat and Its Aftermath" (in Studies in Social Psychology in World War II, vol. 2), says that "Personal readjustment problems of varying degrees of intensity are disclosed by the [World War II]
veterans in this study. But the typical veteran pictured in some quarters as a bitter, hardened individual does not emerge from this survey." Charles C.
Moskos Jr., in The American Enlisted Man, looked at the Vietnam veteran and found that, compared with when they entered the army, these men returned to civilian life more mature and better suited to contribute to society.
The situation, however, is not all that simple. Since Stouffer's and Moskos's studies, we have become aware of the impact of PTSD on Vietnam veterans.
It would appear there is no evidence to indicate that, when compared with a nonveteran of the same age, the average Vietnam vet has any greater potential for committing murder, assaults, or robbery. What the epidemic of PTSD
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among Vietnam vets has caused is a
significant increase in suicides, drug use, alcoholism, and divorce.
5. See Gabriel's No More Heroes for more information about these drugs and their physical and mental effects. Gabriel also spends a great deal of time assessing the potential impact of these drugs on killing and their potential effects on the trauma of killing. Those interested in a more detailed assessment of the impact of psychopharmacology in Vietnam should look at Military Psychiatry: A Comparative Perspective, which Gabriel edited and drew from extensively for No More Heroes.
6. No, the term is not necessarily an oxymoron.
7. Fry and Stockton (1982), Keane and Fairbank (1983), Strech (1985), Lifton (1974), Brown (1984), Egendorf, Kadushin, Laufer, Rothbart, and Sloan (1981), and Levetman (1978) are just a few of the psychiatrists, military psychologists, Veterans Administration mental-health professionals, and sociologists who have identified lack of social support after returning from combat as a critical factor in the development of PTSD.
8. Research is proceeding in this area, and we may someday be able to actually calibrate these numbers. In 1992, twelve cadets from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point spent their summer at the VA Medical Center in Boston. They were participating as part of their Individual Academic Development Program under my supervision, and their mission was to interview veterans about their combat experiences in order to begin to establish a database of information and interviews specifically about killing processes. The cadets involved then evalu-ated and assessed the data gathered in these summer interviews as a part of subsequent directed individual studies courses under my supervision.
This database continues to grow and will, hopefully, expand further based upon input from veterans as a result of this book. The long-term objective is to be able to begin a detailed analysis of the processes associated with killing, to include the degree of importance and influence represented by the various factors in the killing-enabling model; the validity of the killing response stages; and the interaction between combat trauma (specifically killing experiences) and social support and their relationship to the resulting magnitude of posttraumatic stress response. Individuals who are willing to provide data for this study are invited to write the author care of the publisher.
9. As mentioned before, Stouffer's and Moskos's studies indicate that returning veterans are generally better members of society. There is also no evidence to indicate that a Vietnam vet is more likely than a nonvet to commit crimes of violence. What the epidemic of PTSD among Vietnam vets has caused is a statistically significant increase in suicides, drug use, alcoholism, and divorce.
I should note that most Vietnam vets have done quite well for themselves.
There is, therefore, a backlash movement among some Vietnam veterans who are tired of the current label, who have had no difficulty themselves (perhaps due to repression and denial, or an unusually strong support structure upon 346
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return combined with their own personal psychic strength in the face of the stresses that they have endured), and these individuals sometimes have little patience for the veterans who are having problems.
In the face of this current conflict among veterans I would contribute the observation that the world is big enough, and people are complex enough, that probably both sides are correct.
Section VIII: Killing in America
1. There is some confusion about crime reporting in America, generally due to the fact that there are two crime reports produced each year by the U.S.
government. One report is compiled by the FBI based on all crimes reported by law-enforcement agencies across the nation. In recent years this report has reflected a steady decrease in overall crime and a steady increase in violent crime, as reflected in the graph on page 300.
In 1994 the FBI report reflected a 0.4 percent decrease in the per capita aggravated assault rate. This is the first decrease in this area in nearly a decade.
But the same report also reflected a 2.2 percent increase in the per capita murder rate, and criminologists offer little hope for a long-term decrease in violent crime. "We haven't even begun to see the problem with teenagers that we will see in the next ten years," says Dr. Jack Levin, sociology and criminology professor at Northeastern University in Boston. "There will be a 23 percent increase in the teenage population over the next generation, and as a result, we're going to see the murder rate rise precipitously."
The other annual crime report is based on a national survey of crime victims and reports its findings according to the number of crimes per household. In recent yean this report has also reflected a steady increase in violent crime. The results of this survey have been questioned by some experts, and it may be that this report is underreporting crime as the nature and number of American
"households" increase due to the breakdown of the nuclear family. The data in this report also have potential for error (probably in the direction of underreporting), since they are based on a subjective assessment on the part of the increasingly jaded population being surveyed. Nevertheless, in 1994 this survey reflected a 5.6 percent increase in violent crime.
The fact that the crime victim survey reflected a significant increase in violent crime in the same year that the FBI reported a small decrease supports a school of thought which holds that the FBI report has also been increasingly underreporting crime. This theory holds that law-enforcement agencies will become more and more swamped as the incidence of violent crime increases.
As a result of this, both an exhausted police force and a jaded population (which is also increasingly fearful of criminal retribution) will raise the threshold of what is reported. There is evidence to indicate that in many high-crime areas attacks and assaults that would have received immediate attention thirty years N O T E S 347
ago (for example, drive-by shootings in which no one is hit and beatings in which no one is killed) are routinely ignored today.
As the inner cities continue to sink into lawlessness and anarchy it may well be that an increasing proportion of violent crimes will continue to go unreported and unnoticed. As a result of this, both crime reports will increasingly fail to reflect the full magnitude of the problem of violent crime in America.
2. Another common red herring in this area involves the increasing "deadliness"
of modern small arms. This is simply a myth.
For example, the high-velocity, small-caliber (5.56 mm/.223 caliber) ammunition used in most assault rifles today (e.g., the M16, AR-15, Mini-14, etc.) was designed to wound rather than kill. The theory is that wounding an enemy soldier is better than killing him because a wounded soldier eliminates three people: the wounded man and two others to evacuate him. These weapons do inflict great (wounding) trauma, but they are illegal for hunting deer in most states due to their ineffectiveness at quickly and effectively killing game.
Similarly, since World War II the weapon that we associated with criminals was generally a .45 automatic, which was also the current military side arm. In recent years the criminal weapon of choice has reflected the military's transition to the 9 mm pistol, which has a smaller, faster round, which many experts argue is considerably less effective at killing.
What these new smaller ammunitions (5.56 mm for rifle and 9 mm for pistol) do make possible is greater magazine capacity, and this has increased the effectiveness of weapons in one way, while decreasing it in another way.
The point is that there has not been any significant increase in the effectiveness of the weapons available today. The shotgun is still the single most effective weapon for killing someone at close range, and it has been available and basically unchanged for more than one hundred yean. Medical technology, computer technology, and entertainment technology have all advanced at quantum rates, but the technology of close-range killing has been essentially unchanged throughout the last century.
3. But the situation is more complex. Correlation does not prove causation.
To prove that TV causes violence you must conduct a
controlled, double-blind experiment in which, if you are successful, you will cause people to commit murder. Clearly to perform such an experiment with human beings is unethical and largely impossible. This same situation is the foundation for the tobacco industry's continued argument that no one has ever "proven" that cigarettes
"cause" cancer.
There comes a point when, in spite of this type of reasoning, we must accept that cigarettes do cause cancer. Similarly, there comes a point at which we must accept the verdict of 217 correlation studies.
Bibliography
Selected Books
Appel, J. W., and G. W. Beebe. Aug. 18, 1946. Preventive psychiatry: an epidemiological approach. Journal of the American Medical Association 131, 1469-75.
Ardant du Picq, C. 1946. Battle studies. Harrisburg, Pa.: Telegraph Press.
Aurelius, M. 1964. Meditations. Trans. M. Staniforth. New York: Viking Penguin Books. (Original work completed 180.)
Bartlett, F. C. 1937. Psychology and the soldier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Berkun, M. 1958. Inferred correlation between combat performance and some field laboratory stresses. Research Memo (Fighter II). Arlington, Va.: Human Resources Research Office.
Bettleheim, B. 1960. The informed heart. New York.
Blackburn, A. B., W. E. O'Connell, and B. W. Richman. 1984. Post-traumatic stress disorder, the Vietnam veteran, and Adlerian natural high therapy.
Individual Psychology: Journal of Adlerian Theory, Research & Practice 40 (3), 317-32.
Bolte, C. G. 1945. The new veteran. New York: Reynal and Hitchcock.
Borowski, T. 1962. This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen. New York, Viking/Penguin.
