the punishment was too great; few indeed felt that they should not be punished at all. Even some innocent prisoners—innocent, that is, of the crime for which they are convicted—have a notion that they are paying off for something. But George’s feeling about the long imprisonment which followed his attack on the major was essentially what mine would be if, in crossing a field, my body broke through and fell into an immense labyrinthine cave. I don’t think I would feel I deserved it. I would want to find a way out, and if I could not, but met a man there who convinced me he knew the way, I would follow. And if I discovered, as we went along, that it would be not hours nor days, but weeks and even months before we emerged, I think I would feel about the whole thing as George was feeling now.
How could such a creature as George exist for any appreciable time in a modern society? How, if he has so little concept of law and of property, of reciprocity and consequence, could he stay out of trouble for even a day?
It becomes less of a mystery as one thinks it through. George had drifted to either of two environmental poles—the complete license of the outdoors, where laws are impartial and clearly understood, be they laws of gravity or the amount of whip yielded by a birch sapling; or the other pole, the world of the orphanage and the Army, where rigid legalisms guided one’s way to and fro with the fixity of a corral and chutes. A cow may travel parallel with the fence; she may not travel at right angles and into the fence. George had taken to heart the army adage, “Do what you’re told and never volunteer.” And the runways were painless to travel and impalpable to the obedient, who without question or conscious decision slept here, washed there, ate yonder, and waited.
The area which as yet completely baffles me is the sexual one. Al Williams referred to George’s sexual attitude as “wholesome”; I denied it and still can’t say why. Al said that because, as George so lucidly explains it in his extraordinary manuscript, George is without shame, false modesty, insecurity or hypocrisy. He has plodded along a path of unassailable logic and satisfied himself with certain truths that mankind, categorically, is unable to accept subjectively: that erection, orgasm and ejaculation are as possible to a rabbit as a man and in man, no more noble; that these phenomena need not be nurtured because they are (given a chance) automatic and unstoppable; and if it is senseless to nurture them, it is even more so to suppress them. This Al calls wholesome; well, to use George’s own simile, it is precisely as wholesome as a rabbit’s. The great complications of sex, which run in tides and stain man’s thoughts, speech and works, are incomprehensible to George and, until he turns to look, out of Al’s field of view.
The conclusion that the extraordinary bestiality of George’s Rorschach reactions is sexual in nature seems at first a foregone conclusion. Extraordinary is hardly the word for it; I have conducted over a thousand Rorschachs and have read everything I could find on the technique and interpretation of the device, and never have I heard of anything like George’s consistent, bloody, murderous pictorializations. Not in Rorschachs—but yes, yes indeed in deep psychoanalysis. But it is invariably found profoundly hidden, and emerges slowly and almost never directly, but symbolically.
According to George’s biography, Anna is the only woman he ever knew—and I believe it. What little he says about their relationship is unclear. She apparently was the instigator; George says more than once that he did what she wanted. He then makes obscure reference to his doing what he wanted; that she tried to stop him and then permitted it, feeling safe with him.
Safe with him!
What is safe with him? Who?
Me?
Well … we’ll have to work some more, learn some more. Fantasies of violence sometimes symbolize sex; sexual
How could such a creature as George exist for any appreciable time in a modern society? How, if he has so little concept of law and of property, of reciprocity and consequence, could he stay out of trouble for even a day?
It becomes less of a mystery as one thinks it through. George had drifted to either of two environmental poles—the complete license of the outdoors, where laws are impartial and clearly understood, be they laws of gravity or the amount of whip yielded by a birch sapling; or the other pole, the world of the orphanage and the Army, where rigid legalisms guided one’s way to and fro with the fixity of a corral and chutes. A cow may travel parallel with the fence; she may not travel at right angles and into the fence. George had taken to heart the army adage, “Do what you’re told and never volunteer.” And the runways were painless to travel and impalpable to the obedient, who without question or conscious decision slept here, washed there, ate yonder, and waited.
The area which as yet completely baffles me is the sexual one. Al Williams referred to George’s sexual attitude as “wholesome”; I denied it and still can’t say why. Al said that because, as George so lucidly explains it in his extraordinary manuscript, George is without shame, false modesty, insecurity or hypocrisy. He has plodded along a path of unassailable logic and satisfied himself with certain truths that mankind, categorically, is unable to accept subjectively: that erection, orgasm and ejaculation are as possible to a rabbit as a man and in man, no more noble; that these phenomena need not be nurtured because they are (given a chance) automatic and unstoppable; and if it is senseless to nurture them, it is even more so to suppress them. This Al calls wholesome; well, to use George’s own simile, it is precisely as wholesome as a rabbit’s. The great complications of sex, which run in tides and stain man’s thoughts, speech and works, are incomprehensible to George and, until he turns to look, out of Al’s field of view.
The conclusion that the extraordinary bestiality of George’s Rorschach reactions is sexual in nature seems at first a foregone conclusion. Extraordinary is hardly the word for it; I have conducted over a thousand Rorschachs and have read everything I could find on the technique and interpretation of the device, and never have I heard of anything like George’s consistent, bloody, murderous pictorializations. Not in Rorschachs—but yes, yes indeed in deep psychoanalysis. But it is invariably found profoundly hidden, and emerges slowly and almost never directly, but symbolically.
According to George’s biography, Anna is the only woman he ever knew—and I believe it. What little he says about their relationship is unclear. She apparently was the instigator; George says more than once that he did what she wanted. He then makes obscure reference to his doing what he wanted; that she tried to stop him and then permitted it, feeling safe with him.
Safe with him!
What is safe with him? Who?
Me?
Well … we’ll have to work some more, learn some more. Fantasies of violence sometimes symbolize sex; sexual
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