What is "sane"?
Ministerial Meandering
What is ‘sane’?
After last Saturday’s marathon concert that some of you attended, with a theme of some of the theology of Thomas Merton, I felt that I should refresh my acquaintance with him.
I picked up his book of vignettes called ‘Raids on the Unspeakable’, and chose just one at random. It was some thoughts he shared about the Nuremberg trial of Eichmann, the orchestrator of the ‘Final Solution’, which was to slaughter all the Jews of Europe in what became the Holocaust.
In his opening statement, Merton writes, ‘One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing.’
One would rather have found such a man to be a cackling, wild-eyed, raving lunatic - but instead those at his trial found him a calm, ‘well-balanced ‘, unperturbed official, conscientiously going about his desk work, his administrative job - which happened to be the supervision of mass murder.
It would be true to say that he was not at the sharp end, and when he did visit Auschwitz he was disturbed by what he saw but, (Merton suggests), ‘only in the way that a general manager of a big steel mill might be disturbed if an accident occurred when he happened to be visiting the plant.
But what happened at Auschwitz was no accident - just the routine unpleasantness of the daily task. Yes, one must suffer discomfort and even nausea from unpleasant sights and sounds. It all comes under the heading of duty, self-sacrifice, and obedience. Eichmann was devoted to duty, and proud of his job.’
Eichmann may not have been disturbed, but what I found difficult to accept was that he slept well, had a good appetite, and was not bothered by guilt.
Christopher Browning’s book, ‘Ordinary Men’, looked at the German policeman - ordinary men - who were turned into enthusiastic killers in Poland in the early 1940’s. These were men who had not been indoctrinated by anti-Semitic brainwashing, Nazification, or earlier brutalization; they were simply ordinary German police who had been drafted to do a job in southern Poland - eliminating Jews. Indeed, the squad was told by their commanding officer that if any found the work too distasteful, they might apply for transfer. Only one did.
Given that these police were not subjected to prior indoctrination, it still raises the question that Scott Peck poses in his book, ‘People of the Lie’. In this he suggests that evil people preserve an image of moral perfection by projecting their faults onto others rather than accepting guilt and changing. In such a way it could be argued that the elimination of the Jews would be their own fault for being of an inferior race and unfit to live.
Such people’s lives are organized around deception, both toward themselves and others. They maintain a façade of respectability, often appearing dutiful, law-abiding, and conventional - while covertly harming those around them and denying responsibility.
I wonder about the psychiatrist who examined Eichmann; in what way could even he be called ‘sane’?
Philip+