PERSECUTION MANIA
In its more extreme forms persecution mania is a recognized form
of insanity. Some people imagine that others wish to kill them, or
imprison them, or to do them some other grave injury. Often the wish
to protect themselves against imaginary persecutors leads them into
acts of violence which make it necessary to restrain their liberty.
This, like many other forms of insanity, is only an exaggeration of a
tendency not at all uncommon among people who count as normal. I do
not propose to discuss the extreme forms, which are a matter for a
psychiatrist. It is the milder forms that I wish to consider, because
they are a very frequent cause of unhappiness, and because, not having
gone so far as to produce definite insanity, they are still capable of
being dealt with by the patient himself, provided he can be induced to
diagnose his trouble rightly and to see that its origin lies within
himself and not in the supposed hostility or unkindness of others.
We are all familiar with the type of person, man or woman, who,
according to his own account, is perpetually the victim of
ingratitude, unkindness, and treachery. People of this kind are often
extraordinarily plausible, and secure warm sympathy from those who have
not known them long. There is, as a rule, nothing inherently improbable
about each separate story that they relate. The kind of ill-treatment
of which they complain does undoubtedly sometimes occur. What in the
end rouses the hearer’s suspicions is the multiplicity of villains whom
it has been the sufferer’s ill-fortune to meet with. In accordance
with the doctrine of probability, different people living in a given
society are likely in the course of their lives to meet with about the
same amount of bad treatment. If one person in a given set receives,
according to his own account, universal ill-treatment, the likelihood
is that the cause lies in himself, and that he either imagines injuries
from which in fact he has not suffered, or unconsciously behaves
in such a way as to arouse uncontrollable irritation. Experienced
people therefore become suspicious of those who by their own account
are invariably ill-treated by the world; they tend, by their lack of
sympathy, to confirm these unfortunate people in the view that everyone
is against them. The trouble, in fact, is a difficult one to deal
with, since it is inflamed alike by sympathy and by lack of sympathy.
The person inclined to persecution mania, when he finds a hard-luck
story believed, will embellish it until he reaches the frontier of
credibility; when, on the other hand, he finds it disbelieved, he has
merely another example of the peculiar hard-heartedness of mankind
towards himself. The disease is one that can only be dealt with by
understanding, and this understanding must be conveyed to the patient
if it is to serve its purpose. My purpose in this chapter is to
suggest some general reflections by means of which each individual can
detect in himself the elements of persecution mania (from which almost
everybody suffers in a greater or less degree), and, having detected
them, can eliminate them. This is an important part of the conquest of
happiness, since it is quite impossible to be happy if we feel that
everybody ill-treats us.
One of the most universal forms of irrationality is the attitude taken
by practically everybody towards malicious gossip. Very few people can
resist saying malicious things about their acquaintances, and even
on occasion about their friends; yet when people hear that anything
has been said against themselves, they are filled with indignant
amazement. It has apparently never occurred to them that, just as they
gossip about everyone else, so everyone else gossips about them. This
is a mild form of the attitude which, when exaggerated, leads on to
persecution mania. We expect everybody else to feel towards us that
tender love and that profound respect which we feel towards ourselves.
It does not occur to us that we cannot expect others to think better of
us than we think of them, and the reason this does not occur to us is
that our own merits are great and obvious, whereas those of others, if
they exist at all, are only visible to a very charitable eye. When you
hear that so-and-so has said something horrid about you, you remember
the ninety-nine times when you have refrained from uttering the most
just and well-deserved criticism of him, and forget the hundredth time
when in an unguarded moment you have declared what you believe to be
the truth about him. Is this the reward, you feel, for all your long
forbearance? Yet from his point of view your conduct appears exactly
what his appears to you; he knows nothing of the times when you have
not spoken, he knows only of the hundredth time when you did speak. If
we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I
suppose the first effect would be that almost all friendships would
be dissolved; the second effect, however, might be excellent, for a
world without any friends would be felt to be intolerable, and we
should learn to like each other without needing a veil of illusion to
conceal from ourselves that we did not think each other absolutely
perfect. We know that our friends have their faults, and yet are on the
whole agreeable people whom we like. We find it, however, intolerable
that they should have the same attitude towards us. We expect them to
think that, unlike the rest of mankind, we have no faults. When we
are compelled to admit that we have faults, we take this obvious fact
far too seriously. Nobody should expect to be perfect, or be unduly
troubled by the fact that he is not.
Persecution mania is always rooted in a too exaggerated conception of
our own merits. I am, we will say, a playwright; to every unbiased
person it must be obvious that I am the most brilliant playwright of
the age. Nevertheless, for some reason, my plays are seldom performed,
and when they are, they are not successful. What is the explanation of
this strange state of affairs? Obviously that managers, actors, and
critics have combined against me for one reason or another. The reason,
of course, is highly creditable to myself: I have refused to kow-tow
to the great ones of the theatrical world; I have not flattered the
critics; my plays contain home truths which are unbearable to those
whom they hit. And so my transcendent merit languishes unrecognized.
Then there is the inventor who has never been able to get anyone to
examine the merits of his invention; manufacturers are set in their
ways and will not consider any innovation, while the few who are
progressive keep inventors of their own, who succeed in warding off the
intrusions of unauthorized genius; the learned societies, strangely
enough, lose one’s manuscripts or return them unread; individuals to
whom one appeals are unaccountably unresponsive. How is such a state of
affairs to be explained? Obviously there is a close corporation of men
who wish to divide among themselves the plums to be obtained by means
of invention; the man who does not belong to this close corporation
will not be listened to.
Then there is the man who has a genuine grievance founded upon actual
fact, but who generalizes in the light of his experience and arrives at
the conclusion that his own misfortune affords the key to the universe;
he discovers, let us say, some scandal about the Secret Service which
it is to the interest of the Government to keep dark. He can obtain
hardly any publicity for his discovery, and the most apparently
high-minded men refuse to lift a finger to remedy the evil which fills
him with indignation. So far the facts are as he says they are. But
his rebuffs have made such an impression upon him that he believes all
powerful men to be occupied wholly and solely in covering up the crimes
to which they owe their power. Cases of this kind are particularly
obstinate, owing to the partial truth of their outlook; the thing that
has touched them personally has made, as is natural, more impression
upon them than the much larger number of matters of which they have
had no direct experience. This gives them a wrong sense of proportion,
and causes them to attach undue importance to facts which are perhaps
exceptional rather than typical.
Another not uncommon victim of persecution mania is a certain type of
philanthropist who is always doing good to people against their will,
and is amazed and horrified that they display no gratitude. Our motives
in doing good are seldom as pure as we imagine them to be. Love of
power is insidious; it has many disguises, and is often the source of
the pleasure we derive from doing what we believe to be good to other
people. Not infrequently, yet another element enters in. “Doing good”
to people generally consists in depriving them of some pleasure: drink,
or gambling, or idleness, or what not. In this case there is an element
which is typical of much social morality, namely envy of those who are
in a position to commit sins from which we have to abstain if we are to
retain the respect of our friends. Those who vote, let us say, for a
law against cigarette smoking (such laws exist, or existed, in several
American States) are obviously non-smokers to whom the pleasure which
others derive from tobacco is a source of pain. If they expect those
who were previously cigarette fiends to come in a deputation and thank
them for emancipation from this odious vice, it is possible that they
may be disappointed. They may then begin to reflect that they have
given their lives for the public good, and that those who have most
reason for thanking them for their beneficent activities appear to be
the least aware of any occasion for gratitude.
One used to find the same kind of attitude on the part of mistresses
towards domestic servants whose morals they safeguarded. But in these
days the servant problem has become so acute that this form of kindness
to maids has become less common.
In the higher walks of politics the same sort of thing occurs. The
statesman who has gradually concentrated all power within himself in
order that he may be able to carry out the high and noble aims which
have led him to eschew comfort and enter the arena of public life, is
amazed at the ingratitude of the people when they turn against him. It
never occurs to him that his work may have had anything but a public
motive, or that the pleasure of controlling affairs may have in any
degree inspired his activities. The phrases which are customary on the
platform and in the Party Press have gradually come to him to seem to
express truths, and he mistakes the rhetoric of partisanship for a
genuine analysis of motives. Disgusted and disillusioned, he retires
from the world after the world has retired from him, and regrets that
he ever attempted so thankless a task as the pursuit of the public
good.
These illustrations suggest four general maxims, which will prove an
adequate preventive of persecution mania if their truth is sufficiently
realized. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as
altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don’t over-estimate
your own merits. The third is: don’t expect others to take as much
interest in you as you do yourself. And the fourth is: don’t imagine
that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire
to persecute you. I shall say a few words about each of these maxims in
turn.
Suspicion of one’s own motives is especially necessary for the
philanthropist and the executive; such people have a vision of how
the world, or some part of it, should be, and they feel, sometimes
rightly, sometimes wrongly, that in realizing their vision they will
be conferring a boon upon mankind or some section of it. They do not,
however, adequately realize that the individuals affected by their
operations have each an equal right to his own view as to the sort of
world he wants. A man of the executive type is quite sure that his
vision is right, and that any contrary one is wrong. But his subjective
certainty affords no proof that he is objectively right. Moreover,
his belief is very often only a camouflage for the pleasure that he
derives from contemplating changes of which he is the cause. And in
addition to love of power there is another motive, namely vanity, which
operates strongly in such cases. The high-minded idealist who stands
for Parliament--on this matter I speak from experience--is astonished
by the cynicism of the electorate which assumes that he only desires
the glory of writing the letters “M.P.” after his name. When the
contest is over and he has time to think, it occurs to him that perhaps
after all the cynical electors were in the right. Idealism causes
simple motives to wear strange disguises, and therefore some dash of
realistic cynicism does not come amiss in our public men. Conventional
morality inculcates a degree of altruism of which human nature is
scarcely capable, and those who pride themselves upon their virtue
often imagine that they attain this unattainable ideal. The immense
majority of even the noblest persons’ actions have self-regarding
motives, nor is this to be regretted, since, if it were otherwise, the
human race could not survive. A man who spent his time seeing that
others were fed and forgot to feed himself would perish. He may, of
course, take nourishment solely in order to provide himself with the
necessary strength to plunge again into the battle against evil, but
it is doubtful whether food eaten with this motive could be adequately
digested, since the flow of saliva would be insufficiently stimulated.
It is better therefore that a man should eat because he enjoys his food
than that the time he spends at his meals should be solely inspired by
a desire for the public good.
And what applies to eating applies to everything else. Whatever is to
be done can only be done adequately by the help of a certain zest,
and zest is difficult without some self-regarding motive. I should
include among self-regarding motives, from this point of view, those
that concern persons biologically connected with oneself, such as the
impulse to the defence of wife and children against enemies. This
degree of altruism is part of normal human nature, but the degree
inculcated in conventional ethics is not, and is very rarely attained
genuinely. People who wish to have a high opinion of their own moral
excellence have therefore to persuade themselves that they have
achieved a degree of unselfishness that it is very unlikely that
they have achieved, and hence the endeavour after saintliness comes
to be connected with self-deception of a kind that easily leads on to
persecution mania.
The second of our four maxims, to the effect that it is unwise to
over-estimate your own merits, is covered, so far as morals are
concerned, by what we have already said. But merits other than moral
should equally not be over-estimated. The playwright whose plays never
succeed should consider calmly the hypothesis that they are bad plays;
he should not reject this out of hand as obviously untenable. If he
finds that it fits the facts, he should, as an inductive philosopher,
adopt it. It is true that there are in history cases of unrecognized
merit, but they are far less numerous than the cases of recognized
demerit. If a man is a genius whom the age will not recognize, he is
quite right to persist in his course in spite of lack of recognition.
If, on the other hand, he is an untalented person puffed up with
vanity, he will do well not to persist. There is no way of knowing to
which of these two categories one belongs if one is afflicted with the
impulse to produce unrecognized masterpieces. If you belong to the
one category, your persistence is heroic; if to the other, ludicrous.
When you have been dead a hundred years, it will be possible to guess
to which category you belonged. In the meantime, there is a test, not
perhaps infallible, but yet of considerable value, which you may apply
yourself if you suspect that you are a genius while your friends
suspect that you are not. The test is this: do you produce because you
feel an urgent compulsion to express certain ideas or feelings, or are
you actuated by the desire for applause? In the genuine artist the
desire for applause, while it usually exists strongly, is secondary,
in the sense that the artist wishes to produce a certain kind of work,
and hopes that that work may be applauded, but will not alter his
style even if no applause is forthcoming. The man, on the other hand,
to whom the desire for applause is the primary motive, has no force
within himself urging him to a particular kind of expression, and
could therefore just as well do work of some wholly different kind.
Such a man, if he fails to win applause by his art, had better give it
up. And, speaking more generally, whatever your line in life may be,
if you find that others do not rate your abilities as highly as you
do yourself, do not be too sure that it is they who are mistaken. If
you allow yourself to think this, you may easily fall into the belief
that there is a conspiracy to prevent the recognition of your merit,
and this belief is pretty sure to be the source of an unhappy life. To
recognize that your merit is not so great as you had hoped may be more
painful for a moment, but it is a pain which has an end, beyond which a
happy life again becomes possible.
Our third maxim was not to expect too much of others. It used to be
customary for invalid ladies to expect at least one of their daughters
to sacrifice themselves completely in performing the duties of a nurse,
even to the extent of forgoing marriage. This is to expect of another a
degree of altruism which is contrary to reason, since the loss to the
altruist is greater than the gain to the egoist. In all your dealings
with other people, especially with those who are nearest and dearest,
it is important and not always easy to remember that they see life
from their own angle and as it touches their own ego, not from your
angle and as it touches yours. No person should be expected to distort
the main lines of his life for the sake of another individual. On
occasion there may exist such a strong affection that even the greatest
sacrifices become natural, but if they are not natural they should
not be made, and no person should be held blameworthy for not making
them. Very often the conduct that people complain of in others is not
more than the healthy reaction of natural egoism against the grasping
rapacity of a person whose ego extends beyond its proper limits.
The fourth maxim that we mentioned consists of realizing that other
people spend less time in thinking about you than you do yourself.
The insane victim of persecution mania imagines that all sorts of
people, who, in fact, have their own avocations and interests, are
occupied morning, noon, and night in an endeavour to work a mischief
to the poor lunatic. In like manner, the comparatively sane victim of
persecution mania sees in all kinds of actions a reference to himself
which does not, in fact, exist. This idea, of course, is flattering
to his vanity. If he were a great enough man, it might be true. The
actions of the British Government for many years were mainly concerned
to thwart Napoleon. But when a person of no special importance
imagines that others are perpetually thinking about him, he is on the
road towards insanity. You make a speech, let us say, at some public
dinner. Photographs of some of the other speakers appear in the picture
papers, but there is no picture of you. How is this to be accounted
for? Obviously not because the other speakers were considered more
important; it must be because the editors of the papers had given
orders that you were to be ignored. And why should they have given such
orders? Obviously because they feared you on account of your great
importance. In this way the omission of your picture is transformed
from a slight into a subtle compliment. But self-deception of this
kind cannot lead to any solid happiness. In the back of your mind
you will know that the facts are otherwise, and in order to conceal
this from yourself as far as possible, you will have to invent more
and more fantastic hypotheses. The strain of trying to believe these
will, in the end, become very great. And since, moreover, they involve
the belief that you are the object of widespread hostility, they
will only safeguard your self-esteem by inflicting the very painful
feeling that you are at odds with the world. No satisfaction based upon
self-deception is solid, and, however unpleasant the truth may be, it
is better to face it once for all, to get used to it, and to proceed to
build your life in accordance with it.