Psychoanalytic Aspects On Perpetrators in Genocide: Experiences From Rwanda Tomas

(2006).
Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, 29(1):22-32

Psychoanalytic Aspects on Perpetrators in Genocide:
Experiences From Rwanda
Tomas Böhm, M.D.
During the genocide in Rwanda, about 800.000 - 1 million
people were killed during 100 days by at least 120,000
perpetrators. From a social psychological point of view, it
has been described how a process changes ordinary people
into those who start committing evil acts. There is a general
choice for all of us between concern and cruelty. But there
are also more-or-less hidden factors predisposing for one of
the choices. What makes us resistant and what turns us into
passive bystanders or perpetrators? Social psychologists
distinguish between constructive or blind patriots with
more-or-less autonomous selves. Our oscillations between
depressive and paranoid positions determine the
establishment of open and closed minds. After two visits to
Rwanda and via analysis of interviews with perpetrators, I
will present a model of understanding decisive factors in the
choice of becoming a perpetrator. In the model, uncontrolled
prejudices are perverted via a phenomenon, that I call
vertical relationships, into a closed system without tolerance
of differences, ambiguities and uncertainties.
In connection with two visits to Rwanda, I have become interested in
what made ordinary people participate actively in genocide. A number
of historical, political and not least social psychological factors
contributed in Rwanda in 1994 to a process that culminated in mass
killing and unbelievable cruelties. These experiences seem
unbelieveable and impossible to contain, but they are not
incomprehensible for analysis. James Waller (2002) has in his book
“Becoming evil - how ordinary people commit genocide and mass
killing” made a social psychological analysis of the process that
changes ordinary people who start committing destructive acts. He
also rejects the claim that it requires psychopathologically deviant
persons to commit these unimaginable crimes. On the contrary, the
perpetrator is characterized by what Hanna Arendt (1996) called the
banality of evil, or of his ordinariness.
Cruelty or Concern
Ludvig Igra (2001) has also underlined the ordinariness of evil. It's
all of us - not the pathological others, who have a choice between
concern and cruelty. It's as if cruelty and concern compete about the
same space in us, and certain factors make us choose one way or the
other. These factors are more-or-less hidden and predispose
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or work as counterweights against one choice or the other. The
individual psychological factor has a place here too. What makes us
resistant or cooperative? The social psychologist and genocide scholar
Ervin Staub (2000) also emphasizes how individuals are developed by
“learning by doing” to devalue others - or in contrast - to care about the
alien others, what he calls “inclusive care”. The individual's
relationship to his own group influences this too, whether you are a
“blind patriot” who follows one's group blindly whatever the issue is
about, or a “constructive patriot”, with a self-critical distance to one's
group. Staub speaks of “prosocial value orientation” that is connected to
being a “constructive patriot” who dares to take the step of helping
others with responsibility and empathy. The blind patriot on the other
hand has, according to Staub, an “embedded self”; he exists blindly in
the group's self, while the constructive patriot with a prosocial value
orientation has a more “connected” or “autonomous self” with an ability
to maintain a distance from his own group.
My assumption is that we oscillate on a daily basis several times
between a schizo-paranoid position directed by images of threat with
defenses against these - and a depressive position directed by curiousity
for the surrounding world. Therefore social and group psychological
factors will have a different effect depending on where and when they
affect us, and whether the cultural surrounding environment - and our
positions - have managed to establish an open, mentalizing (Fonagy et
al., 2002) atmosphere and mind or not. This constitutes an important
distinction, namely between an open, flexible pluralism with relational
connections versus a closed, unflexible monistic attitude blindly
identified with the group.
Leadership and Group Phenomena
Genocide is never evolving out of spontaneous acts from a group of
individuals or a mass of people. The individual or social psychological
factors are not enough. The impulse-driven group destruction is time
limited. The riot ends when the rage has cooled down. A genocide
requires leadership, ideology and organisation. People who participate
need time in order to change, to be trained in specialization and
mechanization, as well as in dilution of responsibilty. There is an
interplay between ideological organization and blindly-working group
phenomena. Often political power struggles are turned into ethnicity
struggles in order to win adherents. Vamik Volkan (2004) underlines
that large group regression can be manipulated by leaders either into a
better functioning large group or into even more regressive blind trust.
Ervin Staub (2000) describes the complex social and psychological
forces that lay the background for a genocide. He mentions the
following:
devaluation - directed from above
destructive ideology - lack of complex shared truth unhealed
wounds - resulting in defensive superiority uncritical respect
for authorities - shared one-dimensional view of history
monolithic society
social injustice
superficial contact compared to deeper (neighbour) contact
with shared goals
passive bystanders - regarded as support by the perpetrators
Regarding the importance of passive bystanders, it has been pointed
out by Igra (2001) how the Bulgarian government stopped nearly all the
deportation of Jews during the Holocaust because the government
regarded the Jews as Bulgarians with equal rights. This hindered the
Germans who needed accomplices and passive bystanders. Kotek
(2004) discusses what it meant that the UN soldiers were ordered first to
become passive bystanders and then to move out of Rwanda in the
beginning of the genocide of 1994. Kotek wonders if their obedience to
orders can be seen as just as criminal as murderers who claim that they
only obeyed orders. Wasn't it the soldiers' moral responsibility to
protect civilians?
Writing about the causes of mass killing from a political scientist's
perspective, Valentino (2000) emphatisizes the crucial rǒle of
leadership. He is critical of the most widely accepted explanations, like
the structure of society, form of government or collective psychology in
the society. He means that these factors are important but that there needs
to be additional factors, because many undemocratic governments and
social crises are not associated with violence against civilians. He
underlines that the most important missing factors are the specific goals
and strategies of high political or military leadership. All that is
required of the great mass of citizens is their powerlessness or
indifference as passive bystanders. Valentino means that the individual
perpetrators themselves, the ordinary people, like in Rwanda, have the
most simplistic or vague sense of why they participate. He compares it
to the indoctrination of soldiers to sacrifice their lives for a cause they
do not understand. We should assume, like Igra (2001), that the capacity
for violence or indifference to it exists in us all. The important factor,
according to Valentino, is that powerful leaders can see mass killings as
the most practical strategic way to accomplish certain radical goals
(even if the leaders have their own affectual, irrational underpinnings
towards the other group, I would add).
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They don't even need broader elements from the society to participate. A
tiny, well armed minority can generate a great amount of damage to
innocent victims. In that way, as in Germany, what is needed is a
combination of a small number of true believers - a larger, but still
rather small group of more shallow believers willing to participate in
violence - and a large indifferent majority of passive bystanders.
Horizontal Relationships
To illustrate the characteristics of horizontal relationships, I want to
use examples from a very different area - the ordinary sporting audience.
To cheer for my own team might be constructive or playfully patriotic
(subjective national feelings), I like my own team best. A less playful
attitude, however, changes this to my own team IS the best, and I will
thus have transformed myself to blind patriotism (objectifying
nationalism) and a more closed mind.
Constructive patriotism is recognized from an individual viewpoint
as the depressive or integrative position. I am introducing the concept of
horizontal relationship to describe a relationship that regards the object
as another subject on an equal level as myself having the same human
value. Below is a summary of how this relationship is further defined:
Horizontal relationship of equality
tolerance for differences compared to other subject empathy
integration of good and bad
self-reflection with ability for self-criticism
difference between feelings/fantasy and action
tolerance of conflicts that are seen as legitimate and complex
In the horizontal relationship, there is a tolerance for differences,
ambiguities and uncertainty. The others also like their own team best.
Even if it's hard for me to understand others' affection for their team, I
can bear this uncertainty and imagine that they must have some reason of
their own. This also means an equal balance between self and object.
Prosocial orientation implies that the other party is just as valuable, a
view of the object as a whole single individual, that the conflict with the
object is legitimate and can be negotiated. One common example is the
marital quarrel where you either see the other party as someone stupid
towards whom you must be dominant - or as someone equal that you
need to negotiate with. Another example is the conflict between the ANC
and the Zulu N'kata Party in South Africa which did not end with
genocide when ANC won the battle, maybe because the parties saw each
other as equal parties without any dehumanization or stereotypization of
either side.
To tolerate uncertainty also means having an open and flexible
contact with one's own mental images. Thus, there is a mental,
subjectively experienced flexible space, an openness for flexible
pluralism. “I know what I believe, but I don't know how it really is” and
there is an ability to separate between feelings and acts. In
psychoanalysis, this is something that is reached at the end of treatment.
Psychoanalytic technique has a lot to do with timing, how to establish a
sufficiently open reflective space, once the closed mind opens up. This
also has to do with the structure of ideas or belief systems rather than
their contents.
About Prejudices
In my view, prejudices are the off-spring of the schizo-paranoid
position. They are unconscious, which means that we can be conscious
in general about having prejudices, but we are unconscious about our
own specific prejudices. In that way, they don't differ from other
unconscious beliefs, even if they are more rigid and more difficult to
reflect upon.
There is always an attraction in the simplification of the
schizo-paranoid position. We don't have to suffer from uncertainty and
ambiguity. We can be certain about what is right and wrong. There is
hardly any need for a mental transitional area where uncertainties are
worked through. So, on the one hand, there is this attraction of
omnipotent simplification, on the other hand, the tolerance for uncertainty
and complexity of the depressive position. In this latter situation of
tolerance, we are not subjected to regressive pulls from our inner selves
or from large group regression around us. But when hatred from within -
created by frustration or from identification with hating care-givers or
from a surrounding group regression - takes over, the tolerance for
uncertainties diminishes and the open, mentalizing space becomes closed
and prejudices develop.
The attraction of simplification into black-white, right-wrong also
carries with it the need for purification (Volkan, 2004). Most extreme
political and religious ideologies and movements speak of this need. As
if there is an utopian conviction that if you make a complete projection
of all your bad parts and then eradicate them, you can reach some
kind of paradisic harmony. The Nazis projected everything bad on the
Jews and not even the prospect of losing the war would stop them from
trying to complete the projection and eradication. The Hutu fascists did
the same with the Tutsies, until the last day of their regime.
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Something happens to unconscious beliefs - also when one has
become aware of them consciously - when they are transformed by the
schizo-paranoid position into prejudices. Instead of being my beliefs,
they become something non-personal, projected on reality. Instead of
being flexible, they become rigid and less sensitive for influence and
dialogue. And instead of being beliefs or value judgements, they
become pseudo-objective facts about reality (Böhm, 1998).
All in all, I assume that prejudices are the foundation for the
development of perpetrators of violence. Normally all our prejudices
are kept under control in democratic countries by a surrounding culture
of reflection on complexities. But as soon as governments and officials
become less complex and leaders, as Volkan (2004) shows, start
promoting large group regression, our own prejudices show
immediately. Weintrobe (2005) underlines that prejudices are means in
a social power struggle to help one's narcissistic needs to maintain
superiority. She also notes that prejudices solve complex problems
about guilt, conflicts and moral issues.
Vertical Relationships
In vertical relationships, I see the positions as superior and inferior,
as regarded by one or both parties. This has bearing on the ideas about
people, values and authority. In the open, horizontally directed mind, we
are more interested in and curious about the unknown; in the closed,
vertically directed mind, we feel more threatened and focused on
defending ourselves. The closed mind as a concept was introduced
mainly by Rokeach (1960), but my use of it is more connected to
concepts like Winnicott's (1971) transitional area, Fonagy et al. (2002)
mentalization, Kaplan's (2006) space creating and Volkan's (2004) large
group regression. I will come back to this later. Varvin (2005) also
describes similar phenomena in his paper on humiliation and victim
identity in political conflicts, where he emphasizes the regressive
dynamics that can deadlock violent situations.
When we are mainly in the closed mind - the world of prejudices -
we are not interested in new ideas or new belief systems. Instead, we
can see the result of learning by doing destructive acts. Vertical
relationships can further be defined in this way:
Vertical relationships of unequality the superior dominant
position:
intolerance, experienced threat
revenge, projected fear, fixed rigid defences
direct transmission between feeling and act
acting out/dehumanization
authoritarian rule
we: the good versus they: the bad conflicts are seen as
illegitimate and are solved by dominance/submission
the inferior submissive postion:
humiliation, submission, powerlessness
low self-esteem, uncritical against authorities
latent needs for revenge
In the dominantly schizo-paranoid position in this closed mind, there
is no longer any tolerance of differences, ambiguities or uncertainties.
The other team is regarded as essentially different, one's own team IS
the best and has most value, maybe even human value. The
dehumanization of the others follows from the experience that they are
essentially different. Therefore they cannot be empathized with, changed
or converted to become one of us, but they have to be taken away,
ethnically be cleansed. In Rwanda, the tutsies were defined as
cockroaches which you had to eradicate radically. They looked like
humans but were ‘really’ subhumans. Since cockroaches are said to be
able to survive even an atomic bomb (Kubai 2005), you had to be
radical and kill them even if they were your friend, spouse or family.
This experience of having superior human value yourself seems above
all to be based on the difficulty in tolerating differences on a horizontal
basis of equality.
I was struck when, for some reason, I recently re-read Bion's (1967)
paper on the development of schizophrenic thinking. After first
emphasizing that personality and environment interact, he says that the
personality aspect is characterized by four main features: the strength of
destructive impulses that turn even love to sadism, the hatred against
reality, the ever-present fear of imminent annihilation and what Bion
calls the precocious object relations that also are thin and unshakable.
Bion describes the psychotic dimension of what we also might recognize
on another level as the prejudiced person's destructiveness, his hatred
against complex reality, his paranoid fears of the other's fantasized
aggression and the thin, unshakable superficiality of object relations!
From an equal horizontal relationship between self and object, there
has developed a more vertical relationship, where those who
experience themselves as being (defensively) superior are defining the
situation and the relationship in a closed way. The mental images have
become transformed to prejudices, that is, a fixed distanced image of
pseudo-objective facts, no longer experienced as one's own subjective
experience.
The transformation from the open mental mind to a mind dominated by
closed pseudo-objective facts corresponds with the transformation from
ideas to prejudices. The prejudice no longer demands any self-reflection
or
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self-criticism, since everything bad exists in the other person. As the boy
says with an upset voice when he has lost his ball: “Who took the ball?”
The blind patriot is tempted to accept simple, absolute truths that
avoid the complications of uncertainty and ambiguities, because he no
longer has enough self-reflection or tolerance for new belief systems or
ideas. Hyphens like being both Swedish, Jewish, Brazilian and
Immigrant cannot be accepted. Either or, black or white. The blind
patriot has established a closed mind.
The destructive ideology leads to simplified projections towards the
persecuted group and uses the closed mental mind's lack of self-
reflection and its tendency for revenge (Böhm & Kaplan, 2006). In
Rwanda, there had been at least four years of dehumanizing hate
propaganda on the radio and by leading politicians against the tutsies,
also built on earlier massacres against tutsies on several occasions since
the beginning of the 60s (Gourevitch, 1998).
The propaganda uses the schizo-paranoid position with images of
threats and arguments about security, that inevitably leads further to
essentialized and absolute definitions of religion, nationalism and
relationship between the sexes. Large-group regression was used and
manipulated by leaders, letting magical prejudices develop in the
service of dehumanization.
There is a kind of normal tendency of splitting as a potential among
all of us. In human development, we seem to start with splitting. This
potential always remains in us, as pockets of frustration and cruel
identification with aggressors (Igra, 2001; Fonagy et al., 2002), where
the ability for integration stands against the dissociative splitting.
But men have another special predisposing factor that Nancy
Chodorow (2003) has described as the double humiliation, a potential
to feel narcissistically hurt that releases a destructive and defensive
omnipotence.
A man is from the beginning identified with the mother as a woman
and then he has to reject her and change object of identification. In that
way, the male identity might be seen as defensively structured - as a non-
woman - and humiliating threats against the fragile maleness must be
defended against. The second humiliation works in the same direction, to
feel humiliated as a boy towards grown-up men, and therefore needing to
prove ones maleness against the threat of being revealed as too small.
We may notice again how the threat dominates over the curiousity and
might drive us defensively towards the closed position. Below, we will
see in interviews with perpetrators how different kinds of group
pressure were used in order not to feel humiliated as too small.
The classical group psychological experiments about attitudes like
those of Darley et al. (1973) about the Good Samarithan, about social
roles like Zimbardo's (1996) prison experiments and about obedience
and authority like Milgram's (1974) torture instructions, seem to point in
the same direction towards a closing of the self-reflective, autonomous,
subjective mental mind. It is notable, but not as well-known, that when a
more tolerant experimental leader was introduced in Milgram's
experiment, as a counter-weight, almost all of the experiment group
stopped the torture. But without this democratic possibility, the group
forces seem to throw us into the closed mind and we need to mobilize
counterweights to stand up against them and keep our reflective abilities.
These experiments also illustrate some of Staub's factors about authority,
passive bystanders, superficial contacts and social injustice.
Perpetrators in Rwanda and Political Leaders
The anthropologist Charles Mironko (2004) interviewed
perpetrators from the genocide in Rwanda in six different prisons.
Through his knowledge of the local language Kinyarwanda, he has
focussed on a social mechanism called Igitero which means ‘group
attack’. The concept is usually associated with animal hunting, a task that
the king originally had the superior leadership of. When the new
authorities used the same concept, the language itself was used to
dehumanize those who were being murdered, in order to confuse the
killing of people with hunting of animals. In other reports from Rwanda
(Berg, 2005), it is underlined how magic beliefs coloured the
dehumanization of the enemy. The soldiers of the Tutsi liberation army
had to prove they had no devil's feet by taking off their shoes. The
perpetrators therefore don't understand Mironko's questions about guilt
or mourning, but answer without affects. In different documentary films
from Rwanda, where prisoners are interviewed, there is a similar
pattern of flat affects. This might also be understood as primitive
defenses against guilt, but other factors seem to point to even deeper
changes of the personality. Usually their own responsibility is avoided
by projection on to the persecuted group. There is no empathy for the
object and the killing is seen as a mechanical duty. There might be a
certain restrained hostility against the other group that may be traced
from history back in time. But there is a remarkable minimization or
denial of one's own destructive acts as well as an idealization of one's
own group. The myth about ‘necessary revenge’ is a powerful prejudice.
It is as if the lost deceased, or one's self-esteem or honour demands
revenge to get restoration.
Times of insecurity bring forward new leaders with
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paranoid messages. These messages are simplified versions that are
supposed to give an illusion of safety. ‘We are subjected to a hostile
environment. We need to defend ourselves.’ Igra (2001) shows how the
paranoid retoric is fed by national myths that distort history. Small truths
about the enemy become demagogically enlarged. When the enemy
claims to be innocent, it increases mistrust, since the paranoid system is
especially suspicious of a friendly surface. The innocence of neighbours
and workmates from the other group becomes a sign of their real
animosity.
In order to handle the anxiety from one's conscience, the cruelties
must be enacted in a manic excitement - often enhanced by alcohol - that
denies earlier cherished values. And when the excitement has vanished
afterwards, the real guilt feelings must be kept as persecutory guilt that
has to be rejected. Maybe that is what we notice in Mironko's
interviews.
One group cannot imagine that the suffering of the other group is just
as difficult as one's own. Therefore one's own horror has to be conveyed
to the others. In the persecutory guilt that follows, it's as if the victims
have been resurrected in the inner life of the perpetrator and persecute
him revengefully. The perpetrator sees the victims of his cruelty as the
origin of his own inner discomfort, not his own acts of violence.
Therefore, the persecutory guilt escalates to increased violence, since it
doesn't lead to remorse, empathy and reconciliation. The perpetrator
hates the one he torments, because he feels that the victim torments him!
Igra, again, emphasizes that the escalating revenge brings an illusion that
one's own suffering and losses can be resurrected if the enemy is made to
suffer.
Paranoid leaders like Milosevic, Stalin, Hitler and the Hutu fascists
of Rwanda, had the ability to make people follow them in infantile
fantasies of triumph. However, the perpetrators never reach peace in this
way. The pure, ethnically cleansed, utopian, classless society is never
attained. And therefore the perpetrator has to hate his victims even more
and see his cruelty as legitimate.
Volkan (2004) emphasizes the importance of the large group identity.
“Our relationship with our large-group identity, in ordinary times, is like
breathing … we are unaware of it unless someone reminds us of the fact
that we need air to survive.” When large groups regress, often
manipulated by political leaders, this large-group identity will appear in
the forefront and might be felt even as more real than the individual
identity. The individual's basic trust will become perverted into the
group's blind trust. Volkan also discusses how Freud's (1921) classical
description of mass psychology really might have a lot of relevance to
large group regression rather than to normal groups.
The Identity of the Perpetrator
Jean Hatzfeld (2005), an experienced international reporter and
author, interviewed and followed a group of prisoners in Rwanda and
wrote a fascinating book about it. These Hutu boys had been ordinary
farmers' sons, a gang of friends who knew each other from childhood.
They had also cooperated with a few somewhat older men from the same
neighbourhood. Under Hatzfeld's admirable guidance we are shown how
these rather normal boys are transformed into killing monsters as a
consequence of large-group regression manipulated by the fascist
regime, or as a consequence of the social and psychological forces
described by Staub earlier in this paper. I will comment on this
transformation shortly as it progresses.
Preparation
The tradition of fear and hatred was conveyed from far back.
“I was raised in the fear that the Tutsi kings and their commanders
might return.” “And there was a difference between one's own
experience and what was taught!” “I was born surrounded by
Tutsies… still, I did grow up listening to history lessons and radio
programs that were always talking about major problems between
Hutus and Tutsies - though I lived among Tutsies who posed no
problems”.
There is an unmistakable envy towards the Tutsies as a group.
“A Hutu could certainly choose a Tutsi friend, hang out and drink
with him, but he could never trust him….he had to be a natural target
of suspicion”.
This paranoia was nurtured by generations.
“They would murmur that a Hutu with a Tutsi wife, was trying to
show off.” “A Hutu child feels a natural jealousy of a Tutsi child, sees
him as a show-off”.
Here is an illustration of the temptation of Utopia.
“Because of the beautiful words of complete success. They win you
over”.
“Not only did the temptation consist of getting rid of all fear, but
the looting of the property of the killed people stimulated this
prospect”.
But there was also agricultural rivalry since
“… the plots of land were not large enough for two ethnic groups”.
This rivalry was repeated again and again by the radio and at public
meetings. The platforms of all the Hutu political parties had been
proposing Tutsi killings since 1992.
“They were read over the radio and aloud at meetings and warmly
applauded”.
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Group-identity
“We liked being in our gang. We all agreed about the new activities
…”
The comradeship lays the ground. The group identity gradually
becomes more important than the individual identity. They were not
actively anti-Tutsi either as individuals. But solidarity took over.
“I think someone who was forced to kill wanted his neighbours to
have to kill, too, so they would all be considered the same…”
And even after killing was over, in prison, they remain the same.
“… friendship is as strong as before the killings … whatever we
have to do, we do it as comrades, in every situation”.
Killing
On the one hand there is some persecutory guilt.
“The eyes of the killed, for the killer, are his calamity if he looks
into them. They are the blame of the person he kills”.
But on the other hand he is killing an ‘animal’.
“I had never tried it on a warm-blooded animal … killing with a
gun is a game compared to a machete, it's not so close up”.
The Tutsi was dehumanized.
“We no longer saw a human being when we turned up a Tutsi in the
swamps…the hunt was savage…savagery took over the mind”.
The learning was done by practice and repetition.
“In any case, the manner came with imitation. Doing it over and
over: repetition smoothed out clumsiness … that is true for any kind of
handiwork. If you had already slaughtered chickens … and especially
goats - (you) had an advantage, understandably”.
The vertical relationship became a necessity.
“The marshes left no room for exceptions. To forget doubt, we had
meanness and ruthlessness in killing, and a job to do and do well,
that's all”. “When you receive firm orders, promises of long-term
benefits, and you feel backed up by colleagues, the wickedness of
killing until your arm falls off is all one to you”.
Fear of humiliation
There is often a fear of humiliation in men by other men. The group
dynamics in the killings included this too.
“The jeering of colleagues is awful to overcome if it gets around
your neighbourhood. It is just the same in school … but more serious
in the marshes. This taunting is a poison in life”.
This might be a difficult phenomenon to grasp, that killing another
human being is a solution of possible humiliation, but maybe it's possible
to understand the perverted logic of it, considering all the other absurd
circumstances. It is the extreme of the psychodynamics of a macho
culture.
The belief in a just world
The social psychologists (Lerner, 1980) use the concept of a belief
in a just world to describe an authoritarian view of the world, where
everything happens because it has a just reason and thus shouldn't be
questioned. In this kind of thinking, we assume that victims deserve their
suffering because of their acts or character. Maybe this has to do with
our need to believe that we will not be innocent victims ourselves by
coincidence. An example of this is an opinion about poor people that
they ‘only have themselves to blame’, or that there is a ‘higher justice’
separating the poor from the rich. “… we thought deep down they were
fated to die, here and now, all together. We thought that since this job
was meeting no opposition, it was because it really had to be done”.
Dilution of responsibility and dissociation
The killer seems to have his special kind of split or dissociation
which allows him to feel less responsible for his acts.
“… it is as if I had let another individual take on my own living
appearance, and the habits of my heart, without a single pang in my
soul … Therefore I alone do not recognize myself in that man”.
“Killing is very discouraging if you yourself must decide to do it,
even to an animal. But if you must obey the order of the auhtorities, if
you have been properly prepared … if you see that killing will be total
and without disastrous consequences for yourself, you feel soothed
and reassured”.
Education and supposed maturity didn't seem to matter under the
circumstances.
“A priest, the burgomaster, a doctor - they all killed with their own
hands … these well-educated people were calm …”
The conscience, decision and responsibility is left to someone else.
“When you have been prepared the right way by the radio and the
official advice, you obey more easily …”
And as in Germany with killers in death camps, the killers in Rwanda
seem to have had the capacity to make a split between ‘work’ and home.
“(My husband) left the blades outside. He no longer showed the
slightest temper anymore in the house, he spoke of the Good Lord …”
Perverting human relations
Since the Tutsies were regarded as dangerous cockroaches
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or animals who could pretend to be like humans, they had to be
eradicated everywhere.
“We were forbidden to choose among men and women, babies and
oldsters - everyone had to be slaughtered in the end … Anyone who
lowers his machete because of somebody he knows, is spoiling the
willingness of his colleagues”.
It was especially important to kill people you knew to show that you
understood the radical cause (Kubai, 2005).
The process of becoming a psychopath
The process of becoming a killer corresponds to what Waller (2002)
describes. The act of killing itself changed the persons involved without
them noticing it themselves. They thought they were the same afterwards,
though they probably had changed radically.
“We put on our field clothes …we made bets on our victims, spoke
mockingly of cut girls, squabbled foolishly over looted grain …. We
traded stories about desperate Tutsi tricks, we made fun of every
“Mercy!” cried by someone who'd been hunted down …”
Are killers traumatized by killing?
Hatzfeld (2005) has the impression that these killers never allow
themselves to be overwhelmed by anything. The killers worry more
about their own fates and essentially feel no compassion for anyone but
themselves. They seem detached and egocentric.
“I think my sleep will recover a normal restfulness when I regain
my liberty and the life I used to have.”
Some bad memories come up though, but only because they were
especially awkward even for the perverted life of the killer.
“The memory of the Tutsies smoked alive, that one will never leave
me …. I believe it is because of the smell of the burns - … it is
unnatural for men to kill men with fire”.
The killers typically talk about the need for forgiveness. Their
meaning of forgiveness seems very shallow. On the other hand,
forgiveness is a subject that the survivors hardly ever mention. They
speak about justice instead.
Prejudices and Orthodoxy
I hope I have shown how the perpetrator develops via preparation,
group identity, dilution of responsibility in the act he commits and
thereby perverting his views on human relations. This brings me back
into an associative connection from closed prejudices to orthodoxy and
fundamentalism in our own part of the world without genocide.
Prejudices, if not controlled, might lead to violence. Another
consequence of the closed mind is orthodoxy. There are obvious and
dangerous parallels between the blind orthodoxy developed among the
Rwandian perpetrators and more benign orthodox mechanisms closer to
us. Some years ago, I interviewed three orthodox religious persons for a
book published in Sweden, called: “To be right” (Böhm, 1998). I was
struck that these three, a Muslim, a Jew and a Christian seemed to have
more in common with each other than with their own respective belief
groups. The Christian man expressed this explicitly. The orthodox way
of thinking, that is, the thought structure with absolute truths seemed to
unite them. They seemed to feel a certain contempt against the luke-warm
relativism of their own non-orthodox belief groups. Moreover, from the
other direction, I noticed a certain admiration from the more liberal
religious people towards the more orthodox groups. It's as if the
schizo-paranoid position conveys a certain attraction through its
simplicity: “I would like to dare to take that kind of firm position!”,
someone said. I think this exists also in other areas, like, for example,
our own psychoanalytic territory, where many people who experience
great uncertainty admire and envy the radical certainty of more orthodox
groups.
The closed mind uses more primitive defenses as a protection against
the threat of the unknown. That is why it is as difficult to influence the
radical orthodox position as someone with prejudices. Primitive
defenses like denial and projection have the precise goal not to be
permeable to uncertainty. More advanced defenses, like reaction
formation and repression have a permeability for the uncertainty of the
depressive position and thereby also preserve a curiosity for the
unknown. The primitive defenses also reject self-reflection; they do not
tolerate one's own shame or guilt. On the other hand, the advanced
defenses leave room for a mental space and tolerance for self-reflection,
even when uncomfortable feelings are included.
Forces that Close the Reflecting Space
The orthodox way of thinking brings us back to the forces that close
the mind and diminish the opportunity to act with a connected self and a
prosocial orientation. All these forces works against one's own self-
reflection in different ways.
In my view Winnicott's (1971) description of the transitional area
deals with symbolization of the relationship between mother and infant
that later develops into reflection and culture. The concept of
mentalization by Fonagy et al. (2002) describes a necessary mental
space with the capacity for thinking and reflection, also
- 29 -
born out of attachment. Kaplan's (2006) concept space creating defines
a mental space with different degrees of linking to a symbolized
relationship and to concrete spaces and objects with a survival function.
Thus, there is a need for a mental space with connections to all these
concepts for our mental survival, reflective capacity and psychic
development. The forces that try to hinder this development will not only
lead to mental closing but also to a schizo-paranoid vertical relationship
into better and worse, high and low. In that way, they will work in the
direction towards destructive acts, which, by the way, was already
shown in the classical social psychological experiments like those of
Lewin et al. (1939) from the 30s with different kinds of leadership. I
imagine that the social and group psychological forces influence the
individual's ability to keep mentalization open or closed. The more
powerful these forces are, the larger the counter-weights which are
demanded by the individual.
As a major illustration of this interaction, we might examine non-
worked through humiliation or loss, so-called unhealed wounds
(Staub, 2000), where the mental space is not available for empathy with
the object. Instead, conditions for revengeful acts are created, that are
acted out instead of the working-through healing that was never done.
The unhealed trauma also lays the ground for dissociation, a factor that
contributes to a destructive acting potential, since the destructive part is
split off instead of being integrated into the whole personality.
In interviews with violent men who have abused their wives, I have
found several unhealed childhood traumas that do not seem to be
mentally represented or affectively experienced in the present, but
instead are expressed as destructive, split-off potentials for revenge
(Böhm, 2004). The Hutus in Rwanda who lived for long times under the
regime of Tutsies may also have had such unhealed wounds that
moreover became intensified by the lengthy hateful propaganda against
the Tutsies.
It does not appear to be the low self-esteem that releases the
aggression, but the remaining defensive omnipotence, or defensive
superiority feelings (Staub, 2000), defending against humiliation that
may start the action-directed revenge - all the way from children's
playgrounds to national tyranny. The perpetrators show a typical pseudo-
superior self-esteem that releases a narcissistic rage when someone
challenges it!
The Germans seemed to have had this pseudo-superior group self-
image built on the experienced wound after the Treaty of Versailles and
the depression of the 30s. In Rwanda, we can imagine something similar
with the Hutus living for quite some time under the leadership of
Belgians and Tutsies, and where the colonial power - the Belgians -
maintained a vertical distribution of power.
The Hutus might even have identified with what they experienced as
their aggressors, the Tutsies, in order to turn the ends.
The experienced threat against the pseudo superior self-esteem and
against one's own group identity often remains potentially present and is
felt unhealed.
Counterweights
In Rwanda, it was especially hard with counterweights. All of the
political opposition were executed during the first 48 hours. Moderate
Hutus were also executed, at least 50,000 during the genocide. Those
who did not participate in the murders were threatened to be murdered
themselves. To keep one's thinking space couldn't have been easy,
especially in a hierarchically structured society, built on authoritarian
obedience and orthodox Christian religiosity. There was little room left
to be a constructive patriot with a prosocial value orientation and an
ability for distance to one's own group. One may not even, according to
the interviews with prisoners, have seen oneself as a thinking individual
with a right to question the leading authorities. Such kind of autonomous
thinking doesn't seem to be connected to an identity as an intellectual or
to someone who sees his own thinking as something central. On the
contrary, according to the interviews with the prisoners, the passive
response from the surrounding world, including the UN, was perceived
as a confirmation of the morality in killing Tutsies.
There are people who have inner mental counter-weights, without
regarding themselves as thinkers. Hutus, who saved Tutsie families,
risking their own lives, expressed themselves in the same way that
saviours have done all over the world in similar situations, that they just
couldn't do anything else. In the literature, saviours are often described
as having a so-called pantopic identity. They are always able to
empathize with the other group, because they originate, in their own
families, from different nationalities, minorities and cultural groups. In
the literature London, 1970), they are often described as marginal in
their own society. In Germany, they often had a different religious
background, or were new in their local society or had one parent born
abroad. They were often also brought up with strong moral and human
values, contributing to their feeling to be responsible for helping others
from suffering. Some of them also had great confidence in their own
ability and were prepared to take risks, sometimes in an adventurous
way like Raoul Wallenberg in Hungary.
- 30 -
Concluding Remarks
The destructive act - once it is started after years of mental
preparation - leads in its continued process to further change of the
personality, until we reach the functioning of the closed mind. After one
murder, the next one is less difficult. We can see this in the interviews
with the Rwandan killers, how seemingly ordinary people are changed
by committing destructive persecutory? acts. The large group
regression from years of dictorship was manipulated by leaders into
even more regressive blind trust. The guilt felt for committed atrocities
is at the most of a persecutory kind.
The attraction of simplification and the need for purification was
powerful. And as seen in the interviews, there was a utopian conviction
of a complete projective eradication of all bad parts, such as envy,
rivalry, myths, traditional hatred and inferiority feelings. I see the
process of verticalization of relationships as central in the interaction
between a regressed society and the individual. The regressed society
uses a destructive ideology, the individual answers with splitting and
dissociation to all kinds of imagined/feared or experienced
humiliations. The projective processes contribute in creating prejudices
that develop into different orthodox ways of thinking.
I have tried to discuss how the individual perspective interacts with
the social and group psychological forces in perpetrators of genocide.
We need to understand more about how a closed mind is constructed
with its defenses against both images of threat and mental space - and
how to influence it in creating an open mind with a feeling of “inclusive
care” for the stranger.
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Article Citation [Who Cited This?]
Böhm, T. (2006). Psychoanalytic Aspects on Perpetrators in Genocide.
Scand. Psychoanal. Rev., 29(1):22-32
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