Introduction
"What with international and civil wars, the increasing use of torture, rising violence in the cities and the threat of nuclear war, no explanation is needed for the lively current theoretical interest in the problem of human violence and aggression. In fact, if there is a question it is why it took such a long time for aggression to be recognized as a major psychological problem."
The words are those of Erich Fromm, one of the most prominent psychoanalysts of our time and a worthy successor to Freud himself, writing in The New York Times Magazine for February 27, 1972. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Fromm studied sociology and psychology at the Universities of Heidelberg, Frankfurt and Munich and received his Ph.D. from Heidelberg in 1922. He is now a United States citizen and has devoted himself to consultant psychology and theoretical investigation. Of his many books, The Art of Loving is probably his most famous. In it, he considered the entire general subject of love and came to the conclusion that although the "principle underlying capitalistic society and the principle of love are incompatible... Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." Thomas Harvey Gill has said that Fromm "has brilliantly performed a difficult and important task. For to translate psychiatric concepts into language intelligible to a lay audience while preserving scientific integrity is a job whose difficulty becomes apparent only to those who attempt it. Dr. Fromm has done this admirably."
If anyone can be said to be an expert on love, then, Erich Fromm is that man. But is aggression merely the opposite of love? This is what Fromm is discussing in the article we have quoted, using as his take-off point the writings of Konrad Lorenz, the eminent student of animal behavior. He goes on: "Freud alone, in the early nineteen-twenties, became so impressed with the crucial tole of human aggression (perhaps as a consequence of the first World War)
that he undertook a radical revision of his whole theory. He substituted for the polarity of the two governing passions-sexuality and self-preservation-a new polarity: the life instinct (eros, including sexuality) and the death instinct, the drive for destruction of oneself or of others. The change failed to impress the public, and instead, Freud's increasing popularity was largely based on his theory of sex; in the period of conspicuous consumption, sexual consumption, too, became respectable."
After considerable discussion of what aggression is and what source it springs from, Fromm separates the most aggression-prone personality types found in our society into three distinct classifications. The sadistic he says, is represented by Heinrich Himmler, the necrophiliac by Adolf Hitler himself, and the chronically bored by the followers of Charles Manson. "Perhaps," he goes on "the most important source of aggression and destructiveness today is to be found in the 'bored' character. Boredom, in this sense, is not due to external circumstances such as the absence of any stimulation, as in the experiments in sensory deprivation or in an isolation cell in prison. It is a subjective factor within the person, the inability to respond to things and people around him with real interest.
"In most respects, the bored character resembles those in chronic, neurotic depressed states. There is a lack of appetite for life, a lack of any deep interest in anything or anybody, a feeling of powerlessness and resignation; personal relations-including erotic and sexual ones-are thin and flat, and there is little joy or contentment. Yet, in contrast to the depressed, chronically bored persons do not tend to torture themselves by feelings of guilt or sin, they are not centered around their own unhappiness and suffering, and their facial expressions are very different from those of depressed persons. They have little incentive to do anything, to plan, and at most can experience thrill but no joy."
The reader will do well to keep these words in mind when he meets David Farlane, one of the chief characters in A Beauty for Brutes, the novel by Frank Leonard that follows. You will meet him just as Samantha Carr, the book's young heroine, meets him, in what should be the pleasantest of surroundings and circumstances. He will not seem, at first, to exhibit any feelings of "powerlessness and resignation." In fact, he definitely appears to exert a strong power over young Samantha. However, as we got to know him better, we see how well he fits into the character-type classification Dr. Fromm has been discussing.
Again, Farlane appears to be a more active type than a chronically bored individual would be in real life, but we must point out that his personality has been drawn from real-life case histories. Also, on close analysis, it will be seen that he initiates many activities, but that once these activities have begun he can sit on the sideline and observe them without further effort.
As to what these activities are... that is the material of Mr. Leonard's novel. It is a powerful work, both highly entertaining and deeply serious. Frank Leonard makes no attempt to point a moral, but the story can be taken as a clear warning: Watch out for the David Far-lanes of the world. They can be dangerous.
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