(Pre note: Given popular connotations of the term “necrophilia”, you might fear the following will be a venom-laden screed against the GOP. Not so - the goal is understanding, and it in fact ends with a hopeful view.)
Many of us on the political Left are reeling after the recent midterm elections - and are dismayed by the conflict and gridlock that it may portend for the next few years. The polarization seems greater than any time perhaps since the Civil War. Despite attempted bipartisanship and efforts to find common ground, it often seems as though we live on different planets.
In a psychic sense, the latter is somewhat accurate. Conservatives and Progressives perceive the world - and what it requires of us - in fundamentally different ways. Failure to account for that leads to puzzlement when values aren’t shared and that familiar “WHAT could they be thinking?!” reaction. The Progressive platform generally affirms life, peace, hope, compassion, opportunity, inclusiveness, health for people and planet, and other seemingly benign values. We are confused when others do not seem to share those but instead pursue policies that primarily reflect death, destruction, exploitation, exclusion, and neglect.
To this issue, I was re-reading several works by Mid-20th Century German psychoanalyst Eric Fromm when suddenly the proverbial “lights” went on. His book “Anatomy of Human Destructiveness” and shorter paper “War Within Man” each describe the psychiatric syndrome of necrophilia. While in popular culture this term simply refers to a bizarre sexual perversion, that aspect is merely an occasional side-note to a larger syndrome. Considering that, see for yourself the degree to which the following resonates with major current events.
Fromm’s description is so important and well-stated that at the risk of plagiarism I will quote at length from War Within Man (below the orange Rorschach blot):
Eric Fromm regarding human nature:
“...we do not have to be satisfied with general and abstract speculations about the inherent goodness versus evilness of man. Depth psychology has offered us ample clinical material and useful hypotheses which can help us to establish the following facts: there is a special type of personality, not rare, yet not the rule, which loves destruction and death. Men who belong to this type find their most intense satisfaction when they can kill or torture; all of their energies are directed to the aim of destruction - although they often do not permit themselves to be aware of the nature of this passion. This "necrophilous," death-loving orientation can be described and understood in its dynamics, its manifestations, and its genesis. Such inquiry leads us to see that destructiveness is neither the nature of man, nor is it contrary to his nature; that it is also not one pole of a Manichaean-Freudian dualism of good and evil. I shall try to show that the pleasure in destruction is a "Secondary potentiality," a perversion which occurs necessarily when the primary, life-favoring potentialities fail to develop. There are those in whom destructiveness has become the dominant passion---they are the true killers; there are the many in whom the passion for destruction remains secondary in strength to the life-furthering tendencies, yet is strong enough to be aroused by the killers under special circumstances. Finally there are those in whom the life-loving tendencies are so strong and dominant that no circumstances will make them join the killers.”
Fromm goes on to describe the necrophilous personality:
“He is one who is attracted to and fascinated by all that is dead; to corpses, to decay, to feces, to dirt. Necrophiles are the people who love to talk about sickness, about burials, about death. They come to life precisely when they can talk about death. A clear example of the pure necrophilous type was Hitler.”
Expanding on Fromm’s description, this love of dead things must extend also to non-living cultural institutions. Hence corporations, markets, industry, military, money and other capital are lauded - sometimes virtually worshiped - while actually living things are distained and discounted. Love business and money, hate people and nature.
Other necrophilic traits that may seem familiar (emphasis mine):
The necrophilous dwell in the past, never in the future. Their feelings are essentially sentimental, that is, they nurse the memory of feelings which they had yesterday - or believe that they had. They are cold, distant, devotees of "law and order," Their values are precisely the reverse of the values we connect with normal life: not life, but death excites and satisfies them.
Characteristic for the necrophile is his attitude toward force. Force is, to quote Simone Weil's definition, the capacity to transform a man into a corpse. Just as sexuality can create life, force can destroy it. All force is, in the last analysis, based on The power to kill. I may not kill a person but only deprive him of his freedom; I may only want to humiliate him, or take away his possessions but whatever I do behind all these actions stands my capacity to kill and my willingness to kill. The lover of death necessarily loves force. For him the greatest achievement of man is not to give life, but to destroy it ...
The return-to-the-past sentiment is apparent in efforts to roll back women’s rights, minority rights, voting rights, or regulation of any sort on the super-weathy. More interesting is the counterpositioning of sexuality and force. Although popular media nibbles at the edges of sexuality, still, minor public expressions of sexuality (Clinton’s trysts, Janet Jackson’s Superbowl “nipple” event) is cause for national shock and outcry, whereas no amount of violence and cruelty seems too problematic, even for primetime television.
Regarding the Conservative “problem” with Women:
“Just as for the lover of life the fundamental polarity in man is that between male and female, for the necrophile there exists another and very different polarity; that between those who have the power to kill and those who lack this power. For him there are only two "sexes:" the powerful ones, and the powerless ones; the killers and the killed. He is in love with the killers and hates those who are killed. Not rarely this "being in love with the killers" is to betaken literally; they are his objects of sexual attraction and phantasies ...”
Again, this conflation of sex and force likely has much to do not only with the rape issue, but oddly perverse phenomena like the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. In his testimony regarding the latter for example, Donald Rumsfeld’s demeanor seemed to reflect bemusement more than shock.
The Appeal of Necrophilic Leaders:
“If one wants to understand the influence of a man like Hitler or Stalin, it lies precisely in their unlimited capacity and willingness to kill. For this they are loved by the necrophiles. Of the rest, many were afraid of them, and so preferred to admire, rather than to be aware of their fear; many others did not sense the necrophilous quality of these leaders and saw in them the builders, saviors, good fathers. If the necrophilous leaders had not pretended that they were builders and protectors, the number of people attracted to them would hardly have been sufficient to help them to seize power, and the number of those repelled by them would probably soon have led to their downfall.”
The Necrophilic Stance Toward the World (emphasis mine):
“The principle of life is characterized by growth in a structured, functional manner. The opposite of this principle of life is all that which does not grow, that which is mechanical. The necrophilous person is driven by the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic, to approach life mechanically, as if all living persons were things. (A woman, for the necrophilous person, is essentially a machine -- in dreams represented as an automobile; his approach to her is mechanical; he knows the right buttons to push, he enjoys his power to make her "race," and he remains the cold, watching observer.) All living processes, feelings and thoughts are transformed into things. Memory rather than experience, having rather than being, is what counts. The necrophilous person can relate to an object - a flower or a person - only if he possesses it; hence a threat to his possession is a threat to himself. If he loses possession he loses contact with the world. That is why we find the paradoxical reaction that he would rather lose life than possession, even though by losing life he who possesses has ceased to exist. He loves order and control, and in the act of making order he kills life. He is actually afraid of life, because it is disorderly and uncontrollable by its very nature.” ... “To the necrophilous person, justice means correct division, and they are willing to kill or die for the sake of what they call justice. "Law and order" for them are idols - everything that threatens law and order is felt as a satanic attack against their supreme values.”
[…]
The necrophilous person can often be recognized by his looks and his gestures. He is cold, his skin looks dead, and often he has an expression on his face as though he were smelling a bad odor. (This expression could be clearly seen in Hitler's face.) He is orderly, obsessive, punctual. This aspect of the necrophilous person has been demonstrated to the world in the figure of [Adolph] Eichmann. Eichmann was fascinated by order and death. His supreme values were obedience and the proper functioning of the organization. He transported Jews as he would have transported coal. That they were human beings was hardly within the field of his vision, hence even the problem of his having hated or not hated his victims is irrelevant. He was the perfect bureaucrat who had transformed all life into administration of things.
Today, this fascination destruction and non-living mechanical systems is likely reflected in efforts to drill, burn, bomb, frack, deforest, strip mine, clear-cut, moutaintop-remove, genetically modify, factory farm, and generally pave over the natural world. Why the persistent efforts to drill for oil in Alaska’s ANWR despite the minimal return? To the necrophile, it is “virgin” territory that has yet to be defiled by those who need to assert their power to do so. In an unfortunate twist on Descartes' dictum: "I destroy therefore I am."
Fromm’s conclusion is not very hopeful:
"Necrophilia constitutes a fundamental orientation; it is the one answer to life which is in complete opposition to life; it is the most morbid and the most dangerous among the orientations to life of which man is capable. It is the true perversion; while living, not life but death is loved; not growth, but destruction."
As a “fundamental orientation” derived from arrested psychic development, Fromm does not leave us with much hope for the redemption of such individuals - or more to the point, for the world which they increasingly seem to control.
However, in view of more recent developments in evolutionary psychology (sociobiology), perhaps even such a fundamental orientation is itself a product of still older history and experience. Most of history was lived under conditions of frequent scarcity and threat due to a variety of factors. In such times, a chronic stance of wariness/fearfulness, competition, and the drive to hoard and exclude was frequently an adaptive response that furthered one’s survival. Under such conditions, it would not be surprising to form a durable conditioned response of relief, even satisfaction, at the misfortunes or demise of others - who can then no longer pose a threat.
Yet, thanks to the advances of the modern world, conditions of life-threatening scarcity need no longer exist - anywhere for anyone (except that most of our institutions were designed under the old paradigm and now tend to perpetuate it).
Moreover, contemporary psychology is a bit less categorical about diagnoses - whether someone “is” or “is not” a certain type. The more contemporary view is that all tendencies exist in each of us, and at various times, in various circumstances, and to varying degrees may be brought out in anyone. Witness the popularity of television programs like “24” or the new “Gotham” which make extreme cruelty and torture seem almost “hip” or “cool”. Even the most enlightened of us at times feel competitive, and may take satisfaction at a win or another’s loss. Yet if such tendencies are malleable, the hope is that, through proper changes in circumstance and perspective, the “bad” tendencies may seem less necessary, and could be made less likely to manifest.
So, how to redeem (or at least manage) a necrophile? If the primary driver is fear - of scarcity, of loss, of weakness/ powerlessness/ insignificance - then compassionate efforts to assuage that fear may go some distance toward calming the worst aspects of the condition. And the world may yet be saved.
At the least, understanding is the first step.