James Phillips Introduction For those of you not famil

11Ideology, Violence, and Psychopathology: The Case of the “Unabomber”James PhillipsIntroductionFor those of you not familiar with the case, Theodore Kaczynski is an American citizenwho terrorized the country for 17 years by sending mail bombs in a personal campaign againstmodern technology. In his isolated cabin in the mountains of Montana Kaczynski had developedan extended critique of modern technology, and beginning in 1978 he began a career of violencetoward individuals whom he identified as representative of the technological society. Finally, in1995, after wounding and murdering several individuals with mail bombs, and establishing hisreputation as their perpetrator, referred to by the media as the “Unabomber,” he wrote a letter tothe New York Times and Washington Post, the two most prominent newspapers in the country,declaring that he would desist in his terrorist activities if they would agree to publish his text,“Industrial Society and its Future,” also known as the “Manifesto,” a 35,000 word critique ofmodern technology. The two newspapers agreed to the terms and published the document.On April 3, 1996 Kaczynski was arrested at his cabin near Lincoln, Montana. The FBIwere led to Kaczynski by his brother, David, who recognized his brother's authorship in theManifesto published in the two newspapers. David Kaczynski made the decision to turn in hisbrother in the recognition that Ted was probably responsible for several murders and that morewould probably follow if he remained free. The arrest brought an end to the 17-year career of thethen 55 year old Unabomber, which began with a first mail bomb in 1978 and culminated onJanuary 22, 1998 with a guilty plea to 13 federal bombing offenses resulting in the deaths ofthree men and serious injuries to several others.

2Theodore Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” offers a singularly vivid and provocative casestudy in the relationship between political extremism and psychopathology. Kaczynski issingular both in the grey area he occupies between ideology and psychopathology, on the onehand, and in the extraordinarily extensive documentation that is available through his ownwritings, 22,000 pages, and the record of the legal process that ended in his conviction, on theother.Critique of TechnologyIn this presentation I begin with a brief summary of Kaczynski’s ‘Manifesto’, and I dothat for a specific purpose - to establish from the outset Kaczynski’s credentials as an articulate,thoughtful critic of contemporary industrial society. In his critique he joins the company of otheranalysts of modern technology such as Jacques Ellul, whom Kaczynski has read andincorporated into his own document. I will not attempt to compare the quality of Kaczynski’swork with that of better known critics of technology. I only want establish that his critique iscarefully reasoned, stands on its own merits, and has proved prescient in many ways. The pointof presenting his work at the outset is that, were I to begin with his biography and save hiscritique for later, you would be inclined to dismiss it out of hand as the work of a derangedcrank.While I will focus in this summary on the ‘Manifesto’ of 2005, Kaczynski had long beeninterested in the critique of technology and had written a shorter, equally articulate essay in1971, well before he began his career of political terrorism. The 1971 document begins: “In thesepages it is argued that continued scientific and technical progress will inevitably result in theextinction of individual liberty. I use the word ‘inevitably’ in the following sense: One might -possibly - imagine certain conditions of society in which liberty could coexist with technology,

3but these conditions do not actually exist, and we know of no way to bring them about, so that, inpractice, scientific progress will result in the extinction of individual liberty. Toward the end ofthis essay we propose what appears to be the only thing that bears any resemblance to a practicalremedy for this situation.” Already in this early document we see that for Kaczynski the coreissue is the relationship of modern technology and personal freedom. In the sections dealing withpersonal history we will see how that theme plays out both in his personal life and in his courtprocess.In the 1995 Manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” Kaczynski argues that modernindustrial, technological civilization alienates us from the naturally evolved process of humanlabor and satisfaction that he calls "the power process." Most people need some degree ofautonomy in setting their own goals and achieving them through their own efforts, he argues,though the requirements of autonomy may be satisfied through participation in a small group thatcollaborates in attaining goals established by mutual consent. But if people work under rigidorders handed down from above or if the group that makes collective decisions is so large thatthe role of each individual is insignificant, that need for autonomy will not be satisfied.Kaczynski argues that people acquire self-confidence, self-esteem and a sense of power throughthis process of setting and attaining their own goals and when that process is aborted, theconsequences range from demoralization and loss of self-esteem to depression and anxiety and tochild abuse and eating and sleep disorders: in short, most of the ills that psychiatrists regularlytreat in our society.Such problems may also occur in simpler societies, but not on the massive scalecharacteristic of modern industrial society, which "requires people to live under conditionsradically different from those under which the human race evolved and to behave in ways

4that conflict with the patterns of behavior that the human race developed while living underearlier conditions." The density of modern urban populations since the industrial revolutionand the rapidity of social change consequent upon the pace of technological innovation havecreated a world for which evolution did not prepare us: " For primitive societies, the naturalworld (which usually changes only slowly) provided a stable framework and a sense ofsecurity. In the modern world human society dominates nature rather than the other wayaround, and modern society changes rapidly due to technological change that there is nostable framework."Kaczynski contends that the tension between our natural capacities and needs and thismodern world are unavoidable features of this system:The system has to force people to behave in ways that are increasingly remote fromthe natural pattern of human behavior....[M]odern man is strapped down by a networkof rules and regulations, and his fate depends on the actions of persons remote fromhim whose decisions he cannot influence. This is not accidental or a result of thearbitrariness of arrogant bureaucrats. It is necessary and inevitable in anytechnologically advanced society. The system has to regulate human behavior closelyin order to function. At work, people have to do what they are told to do, otherwiseproduction would be thrown into chaos. Bureaucracies have to be run according torigid rules. To allow any substantial personal discretion to lower-level bureaucratswould disrupt the system and lead to charges of unfairness due to differences in theway individual bureaucrats exercised their discretion. Granted, some restrictions onour freedom could be eliminated, but generally speaking, the regulation of our lives by

5large organizations is necessary for the functioning of industrial-technological society.The result is a sense of powerlessness on the part of the average person.Kaczynski invokes contemporary medicine as an example of industrialized society:Progress in medical science depends on progress in chemistry, physics, biology,computer science and other fields. Advanced medical treatments require expensive,high-tech equipment that can be made available only by a technologically progressive,economically rich society. Clearly you can't have much progress in medicine withoutthe whole technological system and everything that goes with it.In short, the system has become autonomous, thereby eclipsing the autonomy ofindividuals. “The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, humanbehavior has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. Of course the system does satisfymany human needs, but it does this only to the extent that it is to the advantage of the system todo it. It is the needs of the system that are paramount, not those of the human being.”Like Marx, Kaczynski argues that the ills of contemporary society cannot be cured bymerely political reforms. "No social arrangements, whether laws, institutions, customs or ethicalcodes, can provide permanent protection against technology." It is just here that his socialdiagnosis leads to political extremism. For, he writes, "The system cannot be reformed in a sucha way as to reconcile freedom with technology. The only way out is to dispense with theindustrial-technological system altogether. This implies revolution, not necessarily an armeduprising, but certainly a radical and fundamental change in the nature of society." He concedes

6that the power of the system makes such a profound revolution unlikely But he thinks that"during the next several decades the industrial-technological system will be undergoing severestresses due to economic and environmental problems that may cause it to break down, “ orsufficiently weaken it so that a successful revolution can occur if thoughtful individuals can beconvinced that the future of modern industrial society will lead to ever deepening alienation andloss of individual autonomy as human beings are even more tightly integrated into an inhumanform of life .But "in order to gain enthusiastic support," an ideology must have a positive ideal as wellas a negative one; it must be for something as well as against something. The positive ideal thatKaczynski proposes is Nature. That is, wild nature; those aspects of the functioning of the Earthand its living things that are independent of human management and free of human interferenceand control. And with wild nature we include human nature, by which we mean those aspects ofthe functioning of the human individual that are not subject to regulation by organized society."

7In the 1971 essay, Kaczynski acknowledged that he was not suited to lead such arevolution himself. But he did take his own advice personally. He resigned from a tenure trackposition at Berkeley and moved to the wilds of Montana, where he built a simple cabin forhimself with no electricity or running water and lived as a hunter-gatherer, thereby recoveringhis own autonomy. But he did not finally abandon the rest of us to the system. His 1995manifesto was clearly intended to warn the world of the dehumanizing effects of present andfuture industrial society and to recruit support for revolutionary change that would mean junking"the whole stinking mess" and thereby salvaging human autonomy and dignity. In the course ofthat manifesto, he referred only once to the bombs he had sent that killed three people andwounded twenty-three. Like most contemporary terrorists, he justifies the campaign of bombs asa strategy for gaining media attention so as to get his message out:If we had never done anything violent and had submitted the present writings to apublisher, they probably would not have been accepted. If they had been accepted andpublished, they probably would not have attracted many readers. Even if thesewritings had had many readers, most of these readers would soon have forgotten whatthey had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which the mediaexpose them. In order to get our message before the public with some chance ofmaking a lasting impression, we've had to kill people.And it worked - in its way. The New York Times and the Washington Post both agreed topublish the entire 35,000 word manifesto without altering a word, which is more press than anyof us is ever likely to get. And most revolutions claim more victims along the way than the

8Unabomber's bombs. Unfortunately for Kaczynski, the public relations coup also proved hisundoing. His brother recognized the style and themes from the essay he had received in 1971and reluctantly went to the FBI and turned his brother in. Revolutionary action, as Kaczynskihimself had warned, often has unintended and unwanted consequences.Personal HistoryTheodore Kaczynski was born in 1942, the first of two children of working-class Polishimmigrants. He was brilliant and socially awkward as a child and skipped two grades by the endof high school. In later writings and conversations he reported that promotion from fifth toseventh grade was a major cause of his lack of development of social skills, a problem thatremained with him for the rest of his life. He reported further that in high school he was treatedpoorly by his fellow students and that by the end of high school he was “definitely regarded as afreak by a large segment of the student body.” He describes a number of incidents in his juniorhigh and high school years, including a discussion of making a small pipe bomb in chemistry,which gained him some notoriety. He described himself as having “frustrated resentmenttowards school parents, and the student body” which often was given outlet through “snottybehavior in the classroom which often took a sarcastic or crudely humorous turn.”He entered Harvard at 16 on a scholarship and spent his four years in college as anacademically successful and socially isolated student. In his autobiography he described fantasiesduring college of living a primitive life and becoming “an agitator, rousing mobs to frenzies ofrevolutionary violence.” He also reported that during high school and college he would becomevery angry and hateful toward others and would indulge in fantasies of revenge. He said that hewas too fearful of getting caught to think about acting out the revenge and for that reason tooklittle comfort in the fantasies.

9From Harvard, he went on to the University of Michigan, where he did well academically andearned his doctorate in mathematics at twenty five. These were five more years of socialisolation. In his recounting of the Michigan years he is more explicit about his psychologicaldifficulties. In the summer after his fourth year, he describes experiencing a period of severalweeks where he was sexually excited nearly all the time and was fantasizing himself as a womanand being unable to obtain any sexual relief. He decided to make an effort to have a sex changeoperation. When he returned to the University of Michigan he made an appointment to see apsychiatrist to be examined to determine whether to proceed with the operation. In the waitingroom, he changed his mind -- and only revealed some vague depression to the psychiatrist. Heconsidered this experience a turning point and described it in his autobiographical document asfollows: “As I walked away from the building afterwards, I felt disgusted about what myuncontrolled sexual cravings had almost led me to do and I felt humiliated, and I violently hatedthe psychiatrist. Just then there came a major turning point in my life. Like a Phoenix, I burstfrom the ashes of my despair to a glorious new hope. I thought I wanted to kill that psychiatristbecause the future looked utterly empty to me. I felt I wouldn't care if I died. And so I said tomyself why not really kill the psychiatrist and anyone else whom I hate. What is important is notthe words that ran through my mind but the way I felt about them. What was entirely new wasthe fact that I really felt I could kill someone. My very hopelessness had liberated me because Ino longer cared about death. I no longer cared about consequences and I said to myself that Ireally could break out of my rut in life and do things that were daring, irresponsible orcriminal....I will kill but I will make at least some effort to avoid detection so that I can killagain.” He decided that he would do what he always wanted to do, to go to Canada to take off in

10the woods with a rifle and try to live off the country. "If it doesn't work and if I can get back tocivilization before I starve then I will come back here and kill someone I hate." In his writings heemphasized what he knew was the fact that he now felt he had the courage to behave in thismanner.He also wrote in the autobiography of a series of recurrent dreams: “I occasionally beganhaving dreams of a type that I continued to have occasionally over a period of several years. Inthe dream I would feel either that organized society was hounding me with accusations in someway, or that organized society was trying in some way to capture my mind and tie me downpsychologically or both. In the most typical form some psychologist or psychologists (often inassociation with parents or other minions of the system) would either be trying to convince methat I was "sick" or would be trying to control my mind through psychological techniques. Iwould be on the dodge, trying to escape or avoid the psychologist either physically or in otherways. But I would grow angrier and finally I would break out in physical violence against thepsychologist and his allies. At the moment when I broke out into violence and killed thepsychologist or other such figure, I experienced a great feeling of relief and liberation.Unfortunately, however, the people I killed usually would spring back to life again very quickly.They just wouldn't stay dead. I would awake with a pleasurable sense of liberation at havingbroken into violence, but at the same time with some frustration at the fact that my victimswouldn't stay dead. However, in the course of some dreams, by making a strong effort of will inmy sleep, I was able to make my victims stay dead. I think that, as the years went by, thefrequency with which I was able to make my victims stay dead through exertion of willincreased."He spent the next two years as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Berkeley, then

11resigned, and for the next two years, he worked at a variety of short-term, labor jobs, often backin Illinois near his family. In 1971, at the age of 29, he bought some land near Lincoln, Montana,where he built a small, primitive cabin, without electricity or plumbing. There, he lived alonefor 25 years until his arrest in 1996. He was active in a number of ways. He read widely,focusing particularly on the literature, philosophical and otherwise, of modern technology.Already in 1971 he wrote an unpublished, 6,000 word critique of modern technology. He alsonotes that he has to discipline himself to avoid reading newspapers except occasionally becauseif “I read papers regularly I would build up too much tension and frustrated anger againstpoliticians, dictators, businessmen,scientists, communists, and others in the world who weredoing things that endangered me or changed the world in ways I resented.”

12Kaczynski wrote voluminous journals, filling 22,000 pages, including an autobiographyin 1979. Near the end of the autobiography Kaczynski describes as one of motives for writingthe autobiography that he intended to start killing people and that when caught, he wasconcerned people would perceive him to be a "sickie." His writings were an effort to prevent thefacts of his psychology from being misrepresented. He also describes some type of relief, sexualor otherwise, from the writing. He describes his sources of hatred as his perceived socialrejection and the “fact that organized society frustrates my very powerful urge for physicalfreedom and personal autonomy.” The autobiography focuses, in great detail, on passing or shortlived relationships or potential relationships with females. This is illustrated by his discussion ofhis relationship with a girl when he was 10, another when he was 16, still another at 17, awoman when he was in graduate school, and others when he was 32 and 36. He describes atlength his inability to figure out whether or not he is attractive to women and references apassing comment of a friend of his family's at the age of 15, that made him believe he was quiteattractive.In the journals he describes experiencing anger from other sources and then turning hishatred towards organized society. The writings detail both his thoughts and his criminalactivities from the early '70s until his arrest. He describes thoughts of harming people whom hefelt had humiliated him. One example was his plan to mutilate the face of a woman after he feltshe degraded him by her lack of interest in a continuing romantic relationship. He reactedagainst individuals in the area where he lived who angered by pouring sugar into the gas tanks ofcamping vans, stealing things, and stringing a wire across a road at the neck level ofmotorcyclists.His writings describe his thinking seriously about and planning to murder a scientist in

131971. During the later 1970s, he began experimenting with constructing explosive devices thatcould succeed in killing individuals. His first act of terrorism was in 1978. When he felt it wasnot safe to deposit the bombs in person, he began mailing them. In his writings he commented ontheir success or failure and often expressed disappointment that the bombs were not more lethal.Despite his avowal that he would stop sending mail bombs if his manifesto were published, hewas clearly still at work on new products at the time of his arrest.It is of interest that beginning in the spring of 1988 Kaczynski made several contacts with mentalhealth systems around the issue of establishing relationships with women. He writes that in 1988he was suffering from insomnia and had a renewed interest in getting advice and moral supportto establish a relationship with a woman. He describes picking a psychologist’s name out of thephone book and writing her a letter about his interest. He indicates that his decision to seek thistype of counseling resulted after having a dream about a young woman. Upon awakening he hadtheidea that perhaps at age 45 it was not too late for him to establish a relationship, and atthat point he thought of leaving his isolated life in Montana and finding a job and a female forhimself. He saw the therapist once and had a positive experience but did not return because hecouldn’t afford it. Subsequent to that session, he wrote to the Mental Health Center in Helena,requesting that he be assigned a therapist or counselor with whom he could correspond by mail.Mr. Kaczynski indicates that this could not be worked out and he remained depressed for thenext several months. Although the depression lightened eventually, it remained there to somedegree until 1994. In 1991 he saw a local general practitioner for symptoms of insomnia. Hereceived a prescription but did not follow up with that doctor. He subsequently wrote to theMental Health Center in Great Falls, Montana asking for recommendations of psychiatrists, but

14he did not follow through with this. Around the same time, in 1991, he made an appointmentwith another female physician in Missoula, Montana, seeking evaluation and treatment forsymptoms of palpitations and stress. He saw her twice and reported to her on his blood pressureover the next several years. He developed the belief that there was the potential of an ongoingrelationship with her, and in that context he made the decision to acquire a more conventionalcareer. He decided to attend school at the undergraduate level to obtain a degree in journalism.He corresponded with the University of Montana and subsequently was required to take theGraduate Record Exam. Even after he determined that there was not a possibility of an actualrelationship with the physician, he took the exam anyway and reportedly scored quite well. Henever matriculated to the University. While this was going on he wrote a letter to a localcommunity mental health center in 1993 concerning his problem of insomnia and asking forlocation of a suitable psychiatrist that he could see on a reduced fee basis. There was no followthrough with an appointment.Court ProcessShortly after his arrest, Kaczynski was transferred from the county jail in Montana to afacility in Sacramento, where a team of federal defenders was assigned to his case. From thebeginning, Kaczynski and his defenders were on a collision course. It was clear to the defenseteam that an insanity defense was not a serious possibility and that the only realistic goal wouldbe to avoid the death penalty through the use of psychiatric impairment as a mitigating factor inthe sentencing phase of the legal process. Their strategy, however, was to introduce the insanitydefense in the initial, guilt/innocence phase of the trial in the hope of familiarizing the jury withKaczynski’s mental illness for the sentencing phase. Kaczynski's intent, on the other hand, was

15at all costs to avoid being labeled mentally ill. To him this would represent both a violation ofhis personal freedom and an implicit attack on the integrity of his intellectual critique of moderntechnology. Although he initially objected to any use of a mental health defense, he reluctantlyagreed in the autumn of 1997 to some psychiatric and psychological evaluations by defenseexperts in the belief that the evaluations would show him not to be mentally ill and that at theleast they would remain confidential. When the two defense psychiatrists and two defensepsychologists who evaluated him informed him of their finding of paranoid schizophrenia, herefused to talk further with any of them. He also refused interviews with the two prosecutionpsychiatrists, apparently in the mistaken belief that they also would find him schizophrenic.(Ironically, although these two experts did not have the opportunity to interview Kaczynski, theyboth stated afterward that, based on the materials they were able to evaluate, they did not find abasis for the schizophrenia diagnosis.) Then, when information from the defense experts wasmade available to prosecution in a hearing in November, 1997, Kaczynski became agitated in thecourtroom and informed the judge that he wanted his attorneys not to be allowed to use a mentalhealth defense. Letters to the judge followed, in which he stated that his attorneys had betrayedhim in leading him to believe that he would not be portrayed as mentally ill without his consent.When the mental health defense was formally withdrawn, Kaczynski accused the attorneys ofintending to present evidence of mental illness through the use of lay witnesses in the initialguilt/innocence phase of the trial. In January 1998 he asked to be allowed to discharge hisattorneys and represent himself at the trial. At about the same time he attempted suicide bytrying to asphyxiate himself with his underwear. In response to this gesture, and overKaczynski's objections, the judge responded by ordering a competency evaluation to helpdetermine whether he was competent to stand trial and to defend himself. The evaluation was

16carried out by government psychiatrist, Dr. Sally Johnson, who examined the available recordsand interviewed Kaczynski for about 22 hours in January 1998. (Much of the material in thispresentation concerning Kaczynski’s personal history comes from her published report.) Herdiagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia and paranoid personality disorder, with avoidant andantisocial features. Nevertheless, she found that he was competent to stand trial. AlthoughKaczynski now had the constitutional right to represent himself, Judge Burrell refused to allowhim to do so and ruled that Kaczynski would have to live with the defense team and the prospectof having the mental health testimony paraded before the public. Kaczynski responded to thejudge's decision rather quickly by accepting a plea agreement that ended the case - no deathpenalty but life imprisonment without parole. Kaczynski has said that he would have preferredthe death sentence to life imprisonment, but that would have involved taking his case to trial andhaving his mental health status subjected to public scrutiny.PsychopathologyBefore engaging the issue of psychopathology and political extremism in the case of TedKaczynski, let me first review the question of psychiatric diagnosis. In attempting a psychiatricevaluation of Ted Kaczynski we draw on a number of sources. We have the 22,000 pages ofjournals written during his 25 years in the Montana cabin that trace his progression over timefrom the loner child to the isolated adult of the cabin. We have the court materials, and we havelimited interview material following the court process. The interviews are of particular interest,since at this point the legal issues were (mostly) settled, and Kaczynski was relaxed in a waythat could not have been possible in the pre-sentence setting.The four defense experts and the competency evaluator all felt that the combination ofKaczynski’s writings and their direct interviews warranted a diagnosis of paranoid

17schizophrenia. Dr. Johnson, the competency evaluator, concurred with the schizophreniadiagnosis and concluded that Kaczynski suffered from two delusions, one of being controlled bymodern technology, the other of having been so psychologically abused by his parents that it haddestroyed the possibility of having normal relationships with women. The two prosecutionexperts, who did not have the opportunity to evaluate Kaczynski directly and based theirconclusions on his writings, did not find evidence of delusional thinking and did not support theschizophrenic diagnosis. They favored a diagnosis of schizoid or schizotypal personalitydisorder. All the evaluators agreed about the other diagnosis: that of a paranoid personalitydisorder with antisocial and avoidant features.Let us begin with the schizophrenia diagnosis, introduced by the defense experts and thecompetency evaluator, and disputed by the prosecution experts. Given the strength andcoherence of Kaczynski’s analysis of technology, Dr Johnson’s finding that Kaczynski sufferedfrom a delusion of being controlled by modern technology seems particularly silly - andcertainly suggests that Kaczynski has a more sophisticated understanding of technology than hisevaluator. In the interviews Kaczynski doesn’t come through like the paranoid schizophrenicdepicted by the defense psychiatrists. One interviewer describes him as “for the most part,affable, polite and sincere. It would almost be easy to forget that he mailed or delivered at least16 package bombs and then logged the results with the glee of a little boy tearing the wings off afly.” For his part Kaczynski remains determined in this interview to assert his sanity. “I’mconfident that I’m sane, personally,” he tells the interviewer, “I don’t get delusions and so on andso forth...I mean, I had very serious problems with social adjustment in adolescence, and a lot ofpeople would call this a sickness. But it would have to be distinguished between an organicillness, like schizophrenia or something like that.”

18If we conclude that Kaczynski is not schizophrenic, where are we? He does betray, in hisactions, his writings, and his interviews, qualities of those “serious problems” he alludes to in theinterview cited above, and it is of interest to highlight them. Probably most striking in theinterviews is his utter lack of remorse for his actions. He doesn’t even allow the question toarise. This man, who can be so reflective on the subject of technology in modern life, seemsquite incapable of the most basic reflection on the rightness or wrongness of murdering innocentpeople in the service of disseminating his message. Or to put this in other terms, he shows nointerest or capacity for wondering whether murdering individuals in the service of a social causeis at the least a questionable project.We can put this lack of remorse along side his attitude toward his brother, whose act ofturning him in Kaczynski views purely and simply as the spiteful, jealous act of a youngerbrother who was the less favored by their parents and couldn’t resist the opportunity to one-uphis superior, older brother. As before, Kaczynski doesn’t even allow the possibility that hisbrother may have been acting for other motives, such as trying to prevent further murders.Then, there are character traits like hatred, envy and revenge. These feelings pervade theinterviews as well as much of the writings. Let me cite once again the statement in hisautobiography following a failed visit to a psychiatrist while in graduate school. Kaczynskiwrites: “Like a Phoenix, I burst from the ashes of my despair to a glorious new hope. I thought Iwanted to kill that psychiatrist because the future looked utterly empty to me. I felt I wouldn'tcare if I died. And so I said to myself why not really kill the psychiatrist and anyone else whom Ihate. What is important is not the words that ran through my mind but the way I felt about them.What was entirely new was the fact that I really felt I could kill someone. My very hopelessnesshad liberated me because I no longer cared about death. I no longer cared about consequences

19and I said to myself that I really could break out of my rut in life and do things that were daring,irresponsible or criminal....I will kill but I will make at least some effort to avoid detection sothat I can kill again.” In the following years he would make increasingly cold-bloodedreflections regarding his efforts to kill and his exacting of revenge. The rationalizationsinvolving technology came only in the later years.So how do we add this up? On the one hand, the man who could write reasonable, coherent, and,for many, convincing tracts on the destructive effects of modern technology; on the other hand,the asocial, antisocial, maladjusted, grandiose, paranoid man consumed with rage and envy whocould ruthlessly murder innocent people in the service of his cause. What could be moreemblematic of this man’s perverted grandiosity that his message to the New York Times andWashington Post that he would stop his killing spree if they would agree to publish his“manifesto.”

20From a psychiatric perspective, after we have left behind the arena of major psychoticdisorders, we move into the more murky territory of character pathology. Indeed, all of theevaluators, staying within the bounds of DSM-IV, included a diagnosis of paranoid personalitydisorder with antisocial features. They are certainly on the right trail, but if we don’t feelconfined by the nosologic strictures of DSM-IV, we may readily shift to the character pathologydescribed as malignant narcissism. Otto Kernberg first coined this term and has offered the mostextensive descriptions of individuals with this personality style - or disorder- individuals who, inKernberg’s words, suffer from “...ego-syntonic grandiosity combined with cruelty or sadism andsevere paranoid personality traits...” (Kernberg 1984, 276). These individuals exhibit acombination of deep envy and hatred of others, combined with secret grandiosity that is at oddswith other feelings of inferiority, and finally a ruthless disregard for the rights of others togetherwith an incapacity for empathy.Such, psychiatrically speaking, is Ted Kaczynski. This leaves us with two questions:first, how do we put together the two Ted Kaczynskis, the prescient evaluator of moderntechnology and the malignant narcissist, and second, what does his case tell us about the largertheme of political extremism and psychopathology.DiscussionRegarding the first question, that of the two Kaczynskis, let us first recognize theambiguous moral valence of character pathology. This kind of psychiatric disturbance offerssome mitigation of a person’s bad behavior, but not much. But while character pathology doesn’tlet an individual off the moral hook, neither does it negate the validity of his accomplishments.Creative artists come to mind here. We long for our great artists to be nice people, but often theydon’t oblige us. Picasso wasn’t a very nice guy. But the work stands apart from the character that

21produced it. Indeed, from a psychological perspective, the work may even serve the venalinterests of the artist, but still it is not diminished by that connection.What then makes Kaczynski different from the creative artist? Let us first grant thesubstance of his critique of technology, and judge it on its own merits. Let us also grant his oddpersonal heroism in being willing to accept a death sentence rather than allow his personalautonomy and self-respect to be compromised by a label of mental illness. All that granted, wemust still address his perverted turn to murdering innocent individuals in the service of drawingattention to his cause. We must question whether at this point the personal, psychological issuesdescribed above make their appearance, and whether the ‘cause’ is now serving as a cover forthe expression of personal hatred, envy, paranoia, and his own brand of malignant grandiosity.This is not the personal pettiness of a creative artist but the significant pathology of a disturbedindividual.One way to bring together the two sides of Ted Kaczynski, Kaczynski the articulate criticof technology and Kaczynski the disturbed individual, is around the theme of personal freedom.This theme dominates both his intellectual critique and his personal life. The central argument ofhis critique of technology, from the essay of 1971 to the Manifesto of 1995, is that thedominance of technology in contemporary industrial society severely compromises individualfreedom. The argument for taking extreme measures to counter this effect of technology is thatsuch measures are necessary to protect human freedom. All that on the one hand. On thepersonal side, Kaczynski seems obsessed with the fact that individuals are impinging on hispersonal freedom. Slights of any kind - women who reject him, the psychiatrist who doesn’tguess at his struggles over his sexuality, individuals who make too much noise near his cabin inMontana - all are apparently interpreted as infringements on his freedom and deserving of

22extreme retaliation. And as was noted above, he was appropriately aggrieved that the judgedeprived him of the personal autonomy to represent himself, even after he had been found by thegovernment psychiatrist to be competent. In this situation his worst nightmare had come true -the machinery of government depriving him of what, legally, should have been his legal right todefend himself.In this discussion of how the theme of personal freedom is interwoven in the personaland ideological life of Kaczynski, we should note that it is quite commonplace in any kind ofintellectual, artistic, or political enterprise that the creative individual will engage the largeractivity to work through personal issues. Indeed, we expect that; it is what provides much of theenergy for the larger project. Freud termed this process sublimation, and his word has becomepart of public language.In trying to understand Kaczynski’s attitude toward freedom, what is striking is the wayin which he has turned everything on its head. This is not sublimation as we ordinarilyunderstand it. For Freud it represented the effort to contain primitive impulse by channeling itinto creative, intellectual activity. For Kaczynski, however, the primitive impulse to hate and killis not converted into creative activity - as it might well have been if he had been satisfied withpublishing his critique of modern technology. Rather, the critique takes on another role. Ratherthan functioning merely as a sublimation of the primitive drive, it becomes the rationale foracting out the drive.We can move the discussion onto a philosophical plain and find the same upending ofexpected relationships. The philosopher who most strongly argued for personal autonomy wasKant. But for Kant such autonomy was associated with our ability to act as moral agents, both inthe sense of determining on our own our moral obligations and in the sense of being able to

23follow them. As we know, for Kant such moral autonomy was associated with recognizing thedemands of the categorical imperative, which, in one of its formulations, involves treating ourfellow humans as a “kingdom of ends.” As in the case of sublimation, Kaczynski has turned theKantian principle on its head. On the personal level autonomy now means, I am free to kill; andon a political level it means, other individuals can be sacrificed, treated as means, in the serviceof the cause of disseminating the critique of technology. With regard to the personal level, wewould do well to move our discussion from Kant to Dostoyevsky and The Brothers Karamazov;and with regard to the political level, what is ironic about Kaczynski is the emptiness of hisgestures. His grandiose threat to the Times and the Post won him an immediate but notpermanent readership, and his assertion of autonomy in the courtroom did not win him praisefor his bravery. In the end, his efforts to keep his mental health status out of the court hearingsdid not prevent the public from labeling him a dangerous crackpot, and his reputation asdangerous crackpot cost him the serious reading his document deserves.I need, finally, to say a few words about the relevance of the Kaczynski case for thelarger issue of political extremism and psychopathology. In his willingness to violate the Kantianprinciple and treat fellow human beings as dispensable sacrifices for the grand cause or idea,Kaczynski has much company in the modern era. In this he takes his place as a bit-player in thatdrama of modern times whose leading characters are Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot,and others. Deeply asocial as he was, Kaczynski could never lead a revolution, and thus could doonly limited damage. But he stands as a case study of the way in which personalpsychopathology can pervert legitimate ideas into extreme, deadly consequences. Moreimportantly, he is a model for what we might call institutional psychopathology - thepsychopathology of group-approved extremist gestures like suicide bombing, the

24psychopathology of extremist movements that become institutionalized as governments, as withthe Khmer Rouge, and the psychopathology of legitimate governments that descend into barbaricbehavior, as in the torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.