| Doubling: The Faustian
Bargain |
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baptized” — that is, named or confirmed by
someone in authority — a particular self is likely to become more clear
and definite.22 Though never as stable as a
self in multiple personality, the Auschwitz self nonetheless underwent a
similar baptism when the Nazi doctor conducted his first selections.
A
recent writer has employed the metaphor of a tree to delineate the depth of
“splitting” in schizophrenia and multiple personality — a
metaphor that could be expanded to include doubling. In schizophrenia, the rent
in the self is “like the crumbling and breaking of a tree that has
deteriorated generally, at least in some important course of the trunk, down
toward or to the roots.” In multiple personality, that rent is specific
and limited, “as in an essentially sound tree that does not split very far
down.”23 Doubling takes place still
higher on a tree whose roots, trunk, and larger branches have previously
experienced no impairment; of the two branches artificially separated, one
grows fetid bark and leaves in a way that enables the other to maintain
ordinary growth, and the two intertwine sufficiently to merge again should
external conditions favor that merging.
Was the doubling of Nazi
doctors an antisocial “character disorder”? Not in the classical
sense, in that the process tended to be more a form of adaptation than a
lifelong pattern. But doubling can include elements considered characteristic
of “sociopathic” character impairment: these include a disorder of
feeling (swings between numbing and rage), pathological avoidance of a sense of
guilt, and resort to violence to overcome “masked depression”
(related to repressed guilt and numbing) and maintain a sense of vitality.24 Similarly, in both situations, destructive or
even murderous behavior may cover over feared disintegration of the self.
The disorder in the type of doubling I have described is more focused
and temporary and occurs as part of a larger institutional structure which
encourages or even demands it. In that sense, Nazi doctors’ behavior
resembles that of certain terrorists — and members of the Mafia, of
“death squads” organized by dictators, or even of delinquent gangs.
In all these situations, profound ideological, family, ethnic, and sometimes
age-specific ties help shape criminal behavior. Doubling may well be an
important psychological mechanism for individuals living within any criminal
subculture: the Mafia of “death squad” chief who coldly orders (or
himself carries out) the murder of a rival while remaining a loving husband,
father, and churchgoer. The doubling is adaptive to the extreme conditions
created by the subculture, but additional influences, some of which can begin
early in life, always contribute to the process.* That, too, was the case with
the Nazi doctors.
In sum, doubling is the psychological means by which
one invokes the evil potential of the self. That evil is neither inherent in
the self nor foreign to it. To live out the doubling and call forth the evil is
a moral |
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* Robert W. Rieber uses the
term “pseudopsychopathy” for what he describes as “selective
joint criminal behavior” within the kinds of subculture mentioned
here.25 |
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