The subject of the current study deals with the type of personality that develops as a result of an education that aims at Killing Will.
This education, per definition, requires the individual to give up his Will — i.e., his ambitions, strivings and desires. Victor Frankl presents the individual’s Will as the moving power directing the personality, creating its aims and giving meaning to his life. In the section “The Existential Emptiness” Frankl posits that whoever finds himself in that unfortunate stance has no Will to show him what to do.[1] Put differently: has nothing to pull him forward or to point out the direction in life he wants to take. It is my thesis that for the individual Killing Will is the perfect formula for failure.
Still, the ideology that aims at Killing Will had its adherents and appeared to be attractive at one point in history. The ensuing syndrome is characteristic of many thousands of people the world over and is not limited to Jews. R.D. Laing might presently be quoted: “I can’t get it, because [italics in text] I want it.”[2] Even Charles, the Prince of Wales, seems to have more than a touch of the Dr. Fitterman Syndrome. How else can it be explained that after he met a girl (Camilla Parker) whom he liked at the Officers’ Club in London, he consented to be transferred on duty to a distant place outside London, to find her married when he finally returned. Still, in a way, it is a Jewish syndrome and a “moral” one at that.
The opening sentence of Haim Grade’s Zemach Atlas might help illuminate the point. “Zemach Atlas heard that in Novaredok [the Yeshivah of Novaredok] Will had already been slaughtered.”[3] Why does Will have to be slaughtered? What is so attractive about it?
It would be worthwhile to look into the socio-economic conditions of the Jews in Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, under the rule of the Russian Tsars, and later in the newly independent sovereign Poland. A number of Jews were well-off; there was a middle class stratum, but the great majority was poor. There were quite a number of people subsisting in a state of dire poverty. Several ways of coping with this insufferable condition may be discerned:
1. To emigrate to another country. This in fact was done by a number of people. There was a small stream of people who emigrated to America.
2. To join a party (or parties) with a radical ideology that promised a drastic change of conditions. The Communist ideology and party rested on those premises. Many good Jews were willing to suffer — in Poland the Communist Party was outlawed — in order to advance the aims of the Party. The Jewish Bund — a workers’ party — also drew many into its ranks.
3. Crime could have been another possibility. This alternative was not popular; there were no crimes of murder or robbery among the Jews. Theft, though, existed. Obviously, theft as a way of making a living was not encouraged by the leaders of the Jewish community. Actually, crime existed mainly as an option.
4. To accept the impossible socio-economic conditions and do nothing about them.
All the first three alternatives went against the religious code. Emigration implied the possible risk (which usually materialized) of Jews becoming non-religious in America. And anyway, emigrating was not simple. The fourth option — acceptance of existing conditions — may have appeared to be the best and the most feasible of the four.
5. It would seem that a fifth option was also available — making it in the world existing as it stood. But that was extremely difficult. We had best keep in mind that in Poland a Jew was never employed in a government or municipal office and not even in the capacity of a road sweeper.
In line with the saying “If you don’t have what you like — you like what you have,” it was thought in Yeshivah of Novaredok that the best choice of the four options was to kill Will, and thus obviate the difficulty. Sound logic it would seem. Killing Will must have appeared like uprooting the evil. The 13th-century Latin proverb Radix enim omnium malorum est cupiditas (the root of all evil is cupidity) comes to mind.[4] The figure of the Greek philosopher Diogenes might also contributing to shedding light on the ideological roots of the proposition. If you want nothing — you lack nothing. (According to tradition Diogenes was resting and sunning himself when approached by Alexander the Great. Alexander asked this visibly poor man what he could do for him. For an answer, Diogenes asked Alexander the Great to move out of the sun so as not to disturb him [Diogenes] through throwing a shadow.)
As noted, though, for the individual Killing Will is the formula for failure, pro forma and per definition (whatever its sociological roots). The signal difference between accepting temporarily insufficient or unsatisfying conditions, whether material or mental, is essential. Accepting existing conditions implies a temporary acquiescing in what is available at present. In practice, this means that though at the time the personality simply has to use and adjust to what happens to be at hand – nothing bars it from working with the purpose of attaining its long-term goals. In other words, the desires of the individual have to hibernate. But when the figurative spring comes, the individual in the long run will make every effort to flourish. There is always the possibility of monitoring. Monitoring means achieving your goals – though not always through going the beaten way or exactly according to our erstwhile plans. The individual defines his or her goals and plans a method of attaining them. Once this method is defined, the individual monitors his or her progress and makes the necessary adjustment when the deviations from the plan occur. In a sense this implies that the individual makes the appropriate corrections to attack his/her long-term plans. Thus it can be seen that the strategy (long-term goals) remains relatively constant, but tactics within this strategy will vary according to conditions faced by the individual. Killing the desires, uprooting them, annihilating them completely, radically and for good, is a very different matter.
What happens to the individual when this uprooting is implemented? The personality structure, which is the outcome of this kind of education, the direction which its activities take, and the psychological mechanisms that the personality employs — these are the topic of the present study.
A number of remarks. As soon as the ideology of Killing Will (i.e., killing the desires of the personality) is initiated, it is not limited to people of low socio-economic conditions. Though the ideology spreads, it becomes successively weaker as the base-line socio-economic conditions become better. And anyway, when material conditions are excellent to start with, Killing Will is not allowed to interfere with a good career. The successful people always knew and always will know how to obviate it as far as they are concerned.
An operative definition of the ideology would run somewhat like this: “If you want to do it — and whatever the it — this is a sign that you should not do it.” A different formulation of the above credo: If you have a desire for a particular thing, this per se is an indication that it should not be put into effect. The people who are affected by this ideology are mostly gifted men and women — the others do not mind too much. Women are not exempt from the Dr. Fitterman Syndrome, though there is no chance of their ever having studied at the Novaredok Yeshivah. Getting the disease second-hand is almost as good as the first-hand or third-hand article.
Generally speaking, we can say that Killing Will did not take place. Will did not die. But Success became forbidden. The problem with the attempt at killing Will is that all that Will stands for — both good and evil — is now forbidden. Put differently, the psychological mechanism of generalization is at work — and all that the Personality may desire — without regard to its moral valence — is out of bounds. Anything that the personality may crave is forbidden, even though the specific aims were regarded as respectable, moral and worthwhile in the first place.
The man, Dr. Fitterman (or anybody else — man or woman) who, thanks to his intelligence, talents, abilities, the great amount of work that he invests as well as the intrinsic interest in his work, studies, or project that he displays, is prima facie most likely to succeed in several fields of endeavour. But the trouble is: he is affected by the Hidden Blueprint — that forbids Success.
As a matter of fact, he cannot understand, after investing so much, why success invariably does not follow. But for him success is out of bounds. Let us attempt to discern the main features of the Syndrome.
1. As a result of his education — he does not do what he wants to do.
2. Therefore, he does not do what others want him to do. Put differently, he does not fulfill the expectations of others.
The people whose expectations he does not fulfill are not marginal figures in his life. They are the professors at the University on whom his professional future as an M.D. depends. They are the people on whom his career depends. Furr and Funder concur when they put it on record: “personal negativity has a profoundly negative relation with the way these individuals are viewed by others.”[5]
3. He fails to reach his aims in life, though he works very hard to attain them.
[1] Victor Emil Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.
[2] R.D. Laing, Knots (New York: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 32.
[3] Haim Grade, Zemach Atlas (Hebrew), Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1968. [First published in Yiddish, 1967-1968, trans. A.Z. Shapir.]
[4] G. Chaucer, Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
[5] R. Michael Furr and David C. Funder, “A Multimodal Analysis of Personal Negativity,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 74, No. 6, p. 1586.