Explaining Misanthropy, Misogyny

Some people, unfortunately, simply seem to dislike one another. Not as individuals, but as representatives of the human race. Some, through legitimate experience of having been victimized come to understand the frailties of human nature. Samuel Clemens wrote a number of books, the most celebrated of which were those dealing with children growing up in late 19th Century Mississippi. But he also wrote a book he titled 'The Misanthrope', well understanding the intelligent man's despair at human failings.

Then there are those who are or who have somehow become through a twist of fate, haters of others not because they are intelligent and have dissected and examined and weighed the complexities and mysteries of human nature and their emotions, and found them intellectually and spiritually wanting, but because they lack conscience and compassion as incomplete, unformed human souls. They are pathologically driven by hatred of others. And they tend to be those who seek to destroy others.

One such - of countless many - is the Austrian man who held his daughter captive for 24 years in an underground dungeon, and whom he forced as a sex slave to bear seven children. When his daughter was eventually rescued through a series of discoveries, from her underground prison, along with several of her children, the world looked on with horrified fascination at the grotesque and inexplicable behaviour of a man, a father, and a grandfather.

Condemnation was swift and predictable, and compassion for the wasted life of a young woman and the conditions in which she and her children were kept were universal. The simple fact is that the man was a living monster who preyed on his own in the most disgusting manner imaginable. Creating, from a skewed liaison with his own daughter, children whose genetic endowment has been compromised beyond understanding, whose mental and intellectual balance must be inescapably frail.

But psychiatrists, in their inevitable way, can find reasons for this kind of tortured psychopathy. Not his fault. The fault of his cold and abusive mother. How many of us have cold and abusive parents? Who experience unfortunate childhood events? We manage, somehow, to gather together our intellectual and emotional resources and overcome unfortunate beginnings, to become sane and capable human beings.

Psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner reports "His story describes an unpredictable family atmosphere with humiliating and unprovoked attacks from his mother", thus excusing this monster from the dreadful trials and circumstances he inflicted upon his entire family. "His childhood made him susceptible to an emotional handicap" causing him "to possess an entire human being" wrote Dr. Kastner. Please.

As for the 73-year-old Josef Fritzel, he admits to having an "evil streak", that he was "born to rape" and had restrained himself for just so long, then succumbed to his monstrous imaginings, turning them into reality. The man, forever mired in a childhood of resentment, as validated by expert medical witness; his need to humiliate, enslave, and victimize one of his own, excusable therefore.

One can only hope that he will be convicted of the charges of rape and sequestration, and for the additional manslaughter charge in the death of one of his children in infancy. Life in prison sounds like just desserts for the prison life he imposed on his daughter and their children.