Walter White, the central protagonist of the wildly popular TV series Breaking Bad has been described as a cross between “Mr. Chips and Scarface.” Walter is an aging, mild-mannered and dedicated high school chemistry teacher who is bowed and bent from the strain of chronic medical and financial problems. On the verse of collapsing inward, Walter finally breaks out with a fury, with a crooked twist. During the first season, his trajectory directs him towards wickedness that heretofore laid fallow. He transmogrifies from a family man with a suburban lifestyle to a veritable drug lord and murderer.
Employing his chemistry smarts, Walter partners up with a former student to cook and sell crystal meth, thus entering the deeply dangerous world of drug sales and distribution. Though somewhat hyperbolic in his dramatic transformation into an egregiously violent and impenitent drug kingpin of sorts, Walter’s journey and decent into malevolence nonetheless highlights a human potential that could become realized and summoned during times of desperation and despair. During such times, the darker and demonic side of our nature gears itself up.
Walter’s character transformation was exaggerated for dramatic purposes. Still, in my forensic evaluations, I have assessed individuals whose psychological functioning and personality seemed stunningly at odds and incongruous with their criminal behavior. Jonathan, for instance, is a 42-year-old man who has served 20 years in prison for murder he committed when he was 22 years old. His appellate attorney requested the evaluation, as he was now eligible for parole. The attorney asked me to examine Jonathan, to provide a diagnosis, and to opine on his personality and his risk for future violence.
Jonathan came from an extremely fractured family, with a physically assaultive father and an alcoholic mother. By his teen years, Jonathan was spending most of his time on the streets, and by the age of 17, he had become an active gang member. Over time, he was involved in selling and using drugs, as well as the culture of violence and gang rivalry that was endemic to the street life in his neighborhood. On a warm August night, Jonathan participated in the drive-by shooting and the murder of a rival gang member.
During the evaluation, Jonathan talked about the evolution of his identity as a gang member. During his early youth he admired, indeed idealized, the older gang members from the neighborhood. He hated being home, so he was always on the streets, listening and observing the young men who hung out, as they drank, smoked, played music and “partied” with the local girls. He was especially drawn to the camaraderie that came with gang membership. They got to know Jonathan, and he yearned to be one of them.
Jonathan began going on “drug runs” for the gang, delivering “product” to local users. As he aged and reached his later teenage years, he completed the rituals required for membership. Having tolerated, for instance, a beating by four members, he was accepted as a gang affiliate – “jumped in” in street parlance – and was officially an active gang member.
“I loved being with my crew.” Jonathan felt a loyalty and affection for its members. “I was part of an organization…we had each other’s backs.” Without question or reflection, he accepted the violent nature of the gang’s activities, including the hate of rival gang members, the competition for territory among gangs, and the willingness to commit violence, even murder for such trivia conduct like a rival gang member entering his gang’s designated turf.
In retrospect, Jonathan said, “It was like being brainwashed… I was looking for love…” As an adult, he is aware that the gang functioned like an auxiliary family for him, offering emotional succor and support that fulfilled a void in his emotional life, and shored up a fragile sense of himself. Looking back, he was surprised at his capacity for violence and “my stupidity.” He added, “I was just running around….I did not know what I was doing.” Never giving a though to the consequences of his behavior, he just behaved in concert with the expectations of the group.
Fictional Walter and real life Jonathan faced very different crossroads, but it’s their similarities that are most meaningful: both had a desperate need that demanded fulfillment. Jonathan, for instance, needed to belong somewhere, to truly feel he belonged. His seductive assimilation into gang culture, and his ready acceptance of violence as normative, is not a unique phenomenon.
Many of us are prone to the pull a darker, demonic side. It could happen at any stage of development, given the wrong confluency of factors. And then, a mindless adherence to the most truculent of group norms becomes acceptable. Those most vulnerable – the ones who feel socially invisible and left behind – are swayed and swept into the vortex by group pressure and
groupthink.
Economic and cultural disenfranchment exerts a damaging blow to one’s self-esteem, and breeds a deep resentment. Feeling less than a full participant and beneficiary in social and cultural life engenders a psychological despair that opens the door for political and social demagogues of all stripes to exploit.
A stark example of the power of demagoguery is Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. The nation, once the home of artists such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was stunned and humiliated by the loss of treasure and status by their defeat in The Great War. The Fuhrer promised the nation a rebirth, and a majority followed him down a path of moral and material decay.
Demagogues vow to restore a nation’s respect and pride by directing attention to outside groups as the source of its members’ wounds. For Hitler, it was the Jews. As the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre quipped, Hitler needed the Jews. If not the Jews, he would have needed another group to demonize.
Whether on an individual level or in the form of collective narcissism, a blindness to evil is frequently the price for self-restoration, for which fictional Walter and real life Jonathan are tragic exemplars.
