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Liskov 1 Aaron Liskov Professor Eden Contemporary Civilization April 24, 2009 Two Theories of Murder: Freud, Nietzsche,

and Memory For gruesomely murdering 21 people, Robert Hansen was sentenced to 461 years of prison in 1983.1 He killed each victim in the same way. After soliciting a prostitute, Hansen would kidnap and rape the woman. Then he would fly her to his Alaska ranch and treat her as hunting game in the wilderness. Investigators into these crimes stressed two notable details about Hansens profile: a history of sexual rejection and the propensity to derive pleasure from killing. Indeed, Hansen had experienced social isolation in his upbringing and was reputed for his hunting skills. Comparing the significance of these two details raises a question about the psychology of crime. Did Hansen murder to avenge long-remembered emotional grievances or to satisfy an urge for cruel behavior? Underneath this question of motive is a larger debate about memory. Whether we give precedence to one or the other detail in Hansens biography depends on the influence we assign to memory in human behavior. The question of Hansens motive ultimately reduces to whether he acted out of extreme forgetfulness or remembering. To make this connection it will help to consider two theorists, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, both of whom gave pivotal, but diverging, roles to memory in human psychology. Nietzsche would find the gruesome details of Hansens murders especially compelling. Hansens methodical treatment of victims, the animal-like hunting scenario he designed to kill them, and the impersonal nature of his choice of victim all of these demonstrate the pleasure that Nietzsche believes humans naturally derive from inflicting pain. This assertion is central to
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The following account of Hansens case comes from http://serialkillercalendar.com/Robert_Hansen.HTML

Liskov 2 Nietzsches analysis in On The Genealogy of Morals of the relationship between creditors and defaulting debtors. Physical punishment, according to Nietzsche, emerged not as a means of deterrence or revenge, but as a way of offsetting debts in the creditor / debtor relationship. This function was possible to the extent that to make suffer was in the highest degree pleasurable (Nietzsche 65). It follows, in Nietzsches view, that cruelty is an innate pleasure for natural man. Hostility, cruelty, joy in persecuting, in attacking, in change, in destruction are the instincts of wild, free, prowling man (Nietzsche 85). Given the facts of the case and Nietzsches sense of the pleasure to be had in cruelty, it makes sense that Nietzsche would see in Hansen such a wild, free, prowling man. His view of the murders would stress the pleasure of cruelty as their basic cause. Freud, on the other hand, would focus on the erotic aspects of Hansens behavior. Here Hansens choice of prostitutes as victim, the rapes that preceded the murders, and his childhood of social isolation become more significant details. To be fair, specific details about Hansens case are not available to the extent that would permit a credible scientific diagnosis. However, the available facts can at least provide a caricature from which we can speculate about Freuds likely view of this kind of matter. The eroticism of Hansens crimes would interest Freud because Freud argues that sexual drives are the supreme determinants of mental events and, especially, the unhealthy events. In Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis, he associates sexual instincts with the repressed or pathogenic wishful impulses that induce symptomatic or unhealthy behavior (42). This association makes childhood experience especially relevant because it is the formative period for the sexual wishes that fire these pathogenic behaviors. Freud makes it plain enough: the imperishable, repressed wishful impulses of childhood have alone provided the power for the construction of symptoms (44). Freud would proceed from

Liskov 3 these tenets to explain Hansens behavior. Accordingly, details about Hansens social development and their connection to the sexuality of the crimes would take precedence over other factors in the explanation. Hansens murders provide a useful test case for distinguishing the psychological models of Freud and Nietzsche because each theorist would explain the murders differently. While Freud would see the crimes as attempts by Hansen to redress longstanding sexual grievances, Nietzsche would explain them as the natural and instinctive reveling of humans in cruel behavior. We might wonder, why one or the other? Is sexual fulfillment incompatible with cruelty? Might Hansen have been aiming to satisfy these two independent urges with the same ritual? To the contrary, this view cannot accommodate the premises of both psychological theories. An intractable tension emerges in the way Freud and Nietzsches explanations handle the role of memory in Hansens behavior. Furthermore, this divergent view of memory points to broader ethical disagreements between the two writers. Memory, for Nietzsche, inhibits the human instinct for cruelty. Nietzsche establishes this relationship in a number of ways. First, it can be inferred from his explanation for the origin of memory, where memory is intertwined with the reception of pain. Non-remembering man acquired memory by receiving pain. Mnemotechnics, Nietzsche writes, was the most fearful aspect of prehistoric man, since its premise was that if something is to stay in the memory it must be burned in: only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory, and, even further, that pain is the most powerful aid to mnemonics (61). From this link between memory and the reception of pain we can infer the inverse connection between a lack of memory and the infliction of pain. Indeed, this is precisely the character Nietzsche sees in forgetful and unhesitatingly violent blond beasts of prey (86). Second, Nietzsche elaborates this same

Liskov 4 connection between memory and cruelty in his analysis of the creditor / debtor relationship. The debtor occupies the remembering side of this relationship. He begins the relationship with a promise, which only a memory can make credible. In this type of relationship, a memory had to be made for those who promised; it is here, one suspects, that we shall find a great deal of severity, cruelty, and pain (Nietzsche 64). This relationship, then, opposes memory to the infliction of pain because it reserves the right of cruelty for those who are not obligated to remember -- the creditors who punish debtors. To stress the opposition between memory and cruel behavior, Nietzsches explanation of punishment in the creditor / debtor relationship is decidedly present-oriented. Punishment, in its first stages, was not remembering or retributive, not a means of redress. This distinction is discernible from Nietzsches criticism of psychologists who equate penal justice with a revenge mindset. He associates such claims with his fundamentally negative concept of ressentiment, a mindset that favors reactive over proactive behavior. Hence Nietzsche gives harsh criticism to Eugen Duhring, who rooted justice in the reactive feelings (74). The distinction between punishment and reactive behavior that results from this application of ressentiment further opposes memory to the urge for cruelty. The strange logic strange, perhaps, because of its novelty - Nietzsche admits is that even while a punishment seems to respond to a past grievance, it succeeds because it satisfies a present urge to inflict pain (64). Another illustration of Nietzsches opposition between memory and cruel behavior is the relationship between individuals and their communities. For Nietzsche, this relationship is a special case of the creditor / debtor relationship. It is special because it is binding on all individuals, who necessarily become debtors as members of a community. They owe society for the advantages of a communality, such as peace and trustfulness and protections from

Liskov 5 certain injuries and hostile acts (Nietzsche 71). This debt is paid in the form of a pledge not to violate these advantages not to act cruelly or hostilely. Such an exchange is consistent with Nietzsches subsequent claim that the formation of society was the moment when man lost any external outlet for his cruel instincts (85). The significance of applying the creditor / debtor relationship to individuals in society is that it implicates memory as the weapon behind this most extensive proscription of cruelty in human history the birth of society. Indeed, Nietzsches characterization of societal punishments as reminders of the debt one assumes by living in society further establishes this restraining impact of memory (Nietzsche 71). Legal behavior abstention from cruelty at its core for Nietzsche expresses a memory of ones debt to society. In serial murders such as Hansens, Nietzsche would see forgetfulness of this debt, the triumph of present urges to inflict pain over any memory of prior obligations. Freud would reject this interpretation because of his alternative view of memory. Instead of Nietzsches belief that memory inhibits certain behaviors, memory for Freud is active in all behavior. He articulates this view in a number of ways. First, this view of memory is a premise for the general creed of psychoanalysis that all mental life is determined (Freud 40). The notion that all mental events trace to prior causes suggests the constant role of the past in present thinking, and such a presence is memory by definition. Second, Freuds analysis of hysteria suggests that memory unleashes diseased behaviors. He argues that abnormalities in hysterical behavior stem from the repressed memories of past emotional traumas. Accordingly, hysterical patients suffer from reminiscences; they cannot get free of the past. (Freud 12, 13). Third, even as memory contributes to diseased behavior, it is also the psychoanalysts mechanism for treating it it is only by uncovering these almost invariably forgotten memory-traces and by making them conscious that we acquire the power to get rid of the symptoms (Freud 44).

Liskov 6 Through the distinction between conscious and unconscious memory, Freud reconciles this seemingly paradoxical contribution of memory to both mental disease and health. It remains that memory is crucial to the psychoanalysts explanation of behavior, whether healthy or unhealthy. To apply this view of memory to behavior such as Hansens, it is worth adding that particularly important memories for psychoanalysts are sexually themed. Pathogenic behavior invariably goes back to childhood wishful impulses, which may without exception be described as sexual (Freud 44). Consequently, Freud would most likely trace Hansens rapes and murders to the unmet needs of his childhood. Where Nietzsche would see forgetfulness, Freud would explain Hansens murders as the radical effect of memories. In light of this opposition, the two details investigators used to explain Hansens murders, his love of killing and his sexual frustration, do not seem compatible. Freud and Nietzsches different views of memory are more apparent from the analogies they use to describe forgetting. They agree that an active form of forgetting, a struggle against remembering, exists alongside the passive sense of forgetting as an inability to remember. Freuds active word for forgetting is repression, where the pain of a moment leads to its removal from consciousness to the unconscious. His analogy is the ejection of a riotous audience member from a lecture hall, who continues to be a disturbance with his clamor for reentry (23-24). Nietzsche echoes this active idea of forgetting. In fact, he sounds like a prototype for Freud when he describes forgetting as the positive faculty of repression (58). Yet Nietzsches view of forgetting is more terminal than Freuds repression. His metaphor for forgetting is the digestive process. In this light, forgetting is a complete elimination of certain moments from the mind, as irreversible as the departure of waste from the body; one without the strength to forget is a dyspeptic (Nietzsche 58). To apply Freuds analogy, Nietzsche would kill the riotous spectator

Liskov 7 instead of ejecting him. The critical difference is that, for Freud, memories persist after one attempts to forget them while, for Nietzsche, forgetting can make memories truly disappear. Indeed, this distinction over the persistence of memory is consistent with the way each relates memory to behavior. If, as Freud suggests, memory is to determine all behavior, it must survive the merely cosmetic act of repression. Yet if memory opposes cruel behavior, as Nietzsche would have it, forgetting must at some point exterminate memory. These contrasting ideas of forgetting help reveal Freud and Nietzsches ethical differences as they apply to the Hansen murders. Nietzsche describes forgetfulness in terms of strength. It is a force, a form of robust health, a preserver of psychic order, and necessary for happiness (58). Its ability to completely terminate memories further associates forgetting with strong character. By contrast, Freuds idea of repression smacks of weakness. Most importantly, it fails. It does not eliminate frustrated wishes, but merely displaces them. (Freud 22). Whereas the outcome of Nietzsches forgetting is psychic order, the result of Freuds repression is very often hysteria, neuroses, and regression. Applied to ethics, this distinction between strength and weakness in each writers view of forgetting determines whether they celebrate or pity Hansens murders. If Nietzsche would explain Hansens actions as the triumph of presentminded urges for cruelty, then he would accordingly see in Hansen a healthy psyche, one strong enough to trade burdensome debts to society for the satisfaction of instincts. The strength of the murders might connect them to those warrior-like acts that Nietzsche traces to the historical root of the word good (30). Alternatively, if Freud would explain Hansens actions as the effect of memories repressed from childhood, then he would likely approach Hansen as a trauma victim, one whose conscious mind gave way to the limits of forgetfulness. Far from healthy, the murders would seem pathological. The Freudian analysis, therefore, finds something undesirable about

Liskov 8 Hansens behavior and his character. Nietzsche and Freuds dispute over memory points to an even deeper conflict between them over civilization. While Nietzsche and Freud agree that civilization imposes overly rigid chains on the animal instincts of man, their responses to this problem are different. The differences are clear from this hypothetical conflict over the Hansen case. Nietzsche takes these instincts as an impetus for a wholesale critique of civilization. This rejection takes the form of a blond beast, active, aggressive, arrogant, guided by infallible drives, and unfettered by such constraining thoughts as memories, guilt, or evil (Nietzsche 75, 85, 86). Hansen, for Nietzsche, is an ideal. Alternatively, Freuds response to the problem of instincts aims to protect society. The goal of a Freudian diagnosis of Hansen would be to rescue society from his crimes, rather than applaud them to promote further devastation. By providing a controlled outlet for instincts that can nullify their harm to society, psychoanalysis strikes a bargain between Hansen and civilization. But Nietzsche would likely protest psychoanalyzing Hansen for reasons that reveal how this conflict over civilization turns once again on the issue of memory. The idea of someone obsessed with memories medicating Hansen, whose forgetfulness permitted such awesome cruelties, would appear to Nietzsche a revolting contradiction. The sick man for him is not Hansen, but the analyst. We might see Nietzsche as an analyst of psychoanalysts. Freuds method for defending society from pathological acts rests on the claim that memory can positively impact human behavior. As Nietzsche does not accept this view of memory, he does not sign Freuds compact between instincts and civilization.

Works Cited

Liskov 9 Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Walter Kaufmann et al. New York: Random House, 1967. Freud, Sigmund. Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Trans. James Strachey. New York: W.W Norton & Co, 1990.

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