Ted Kaczynski’s 1979 Autobiography

This is a long autobiography that I wrote in the early months of 1979. It is a first draft that was never revised; as a result it is rather disorganized and the language is often rough. It should be quite trustworthy, as I was completely honest in writing it, and, while errors of memory are always possible, I believe that any such errors are inconsequential.

–Truth Versus Lies by Ted Kaczynski (1999).

[A]t age 37 he was back home with his parents in Chicago. After nearly a decade living in his cabin in the woods and it’s almost uncomfortably intimate. It feels more intimate than Ted’s journals themselves. He describes a teenage sexual encounter with another boy, talks about girls he lusts after and professors he hates. His own lifelong feelings of social inadequacy are everywhere, and this document Ted says there’s a particular reason he’s writing it, he’s going to start killing people, and if he’s captured or killed by the police, he wants people to find the document. Read his life story as he sees it.

–Project Unabom by Eric Benson.

---

Autobiographical: Notes: Period Though Age 9

I was born on May 22, 1942, to working-class parents whose interests and attitudes resembled the interests and attitudes of liberal intellectuals more than those of ordinary working-class people. We lived in Chicago until I was 10 years old.

I am told that I had three bad experiences before I was old enough to remember. I pulled a pot of boiling water off the stove and was scalded very severely. I fell on my chin with my tongue between my teeth, so that my tongue was badly injured and needed a great deal of stitching-up. I had an undiagnosed allergy to eggs, which caused me to swell up enormously all over my body. I was hospitalized for, I think, a week, with the allergy.

Apparently I took the hospitalization very badly. I am told that my parents were not permitted to spend much time visiting me, that I was much tormented (inadvertently) by inquisitive doctors, and that I was made extremely frightened and miserable by all this. My parents say that by the time I came out of the hospital I had become completely inert and would neither smile, nor cry, nor respond to attention in any other way. I conjecture that this experience is responsible for my stubbornness and for my high resistance to physical and especially to psychological pain.

I have fragmantary memories reaching back to the time when I was 3 years old. For example, I remember my father carrying me in his arms in a sunlit livingroom in our first home on Marshfield Street. In the same house I remember finding in my toy box a paper stick from a sucker, which I stuck in my mouth pretending it was a cigarrete. After we moved to our second home on Marshfield, I remember playing outside with another little boy who bragged about being 4 years old, telling me that I was “only three”. I knew that I was not as old as 4, nor as young as 2, which logically forced me to [TEXT OBSCURED] the idea that I was “only three”, but under the circumstances I was not willing to admit to myself or anybody else that I was “only three”. Later I asked my mother about this and she explained ...

[Page 1 Ends]

... Adam and I were friends and became much attached to each other ...

... the attachment formed by the age of 3 was evidently deep ... The mention of Adam’s name, or the prospect of meeting him, used to give me a particular kind thrill, somewhat like the thrill connected with a woman to whom one is reacted sexually in a much more than physical way ...

... But I found that the sense of promise and the pleasurable excitement I had felt at the idea of associating with Adam was illusory; in actually playing with him there was no more reward than in playing with other kids ...

... No doubt some people will suspect a whiff of homosexuality in this attachment. Certainly there was no hint of physical sex in it. Whether there was any other kind of sex involved is a question that I will not try to answer, but I do believe that the relationship was perfectly normal ...

... in our second home on Marshfield I formed another attachment, not quite a strong as the one with Adam. This was with Barbara Podejma, the adopted daughter of the people who lived on the first floor of the house.

Barbara was pretty, beyond which But I have nothing particular to say on this subject. about this ...

... here’s something for the Freudian-type speculators to play with. When I was about 3 years old there was a period when I must have suffered from constipation because I was given enemas fairly often. At first I hated them, but after a bit I began to enjoy them. When my parents perceived this they stopped giving me enemas.

If I couldn’t be the leader, I would not, at any rate, be a follower. I was filled with contempt for these kids who would so slavishly follow a leader ...

... All through grammar school, by the way, I hated arithmetic. I found the principles easy to understand, but hated the effort required to avoid errors. At times I liked school, but, on the whole, I think I disliked it ...

... I got along pretty well with the other kids. But there were too many hours of boredom ...

... One curious incident occurred when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old; looking back on it now, I find it extremely funny. Johnny Krolak evidently had heard somewhere about “fucking,” but had only the haziest idea of what it was ...

... I walked home with Mary Kay. Just before we got home I screwed up my courage and said to her, “Would you like to fuck with me?” She said, “No, but ask Beverly. She likes you. She would do it ...

... When I was around 8 years old, I began being somewhat isolated socially from the bunch of kids that I knew around home ... (This did not happen at school; if anything I was a little [unreadable] socially to my school-fellows when I was 8 or 9.) ...

... Previously, I had always been dealt with as an equal by these kids; but now the majority of them seemed to regard me as Rone of the little kidsR, even though they were only a year or so older than me ...

... Their interests were changing, they were associating more with some rather bad boys whom I disliked, and some of them had been involved in some rather naughty escapades, such as trying to set fire to somebody’s garage. I was a very good boy and would have nothing to do with anything shady ...

... as it would have been humiliating to continue seeking their company in such circumstances, I ceased to do so ...

My parents observed this, and they often expressed to me their concern that there might be something wrong with me because I was not social enough ...

... Though teeth were drilled without anesthetics in those days, I never cried or showed any sign of pain at the dentist’s_ My parents praised me for this stoicism

... Even at a very early age I seem to have had a capacity for independent thought, and a willingness to trust my own judgement before [unreadable] of others ...

[unreadable]

… When I was 5 years old I told a lie. For some reason my mother’s reprimand stung more than usual, and I promised my mother that I would never tell another lie. I kept the promise pretty well, too. I recall that when I was 10 years old I was proud to boast that I had nevertold a lie since I was 5 ...

... usually I was sufficiently well-behaved so that my mother not infrequently praised me for being a “good boy.” In fact, there was a period during which my special pride and joy was the fact that I was a “good boy. I preened myself on it ...

... One day, while thinking about morals, it occurred to me that there was no logical reason for being good, unless maybe personal advantage — but self-interest is not a moral motive and to be good solely for personal advantage is not a moral act. Thinking about this further, I came, in effect, to the realization that a value-judgement can never be deduced from facts. (This of course is well known to all modern logicians.) Of course, I was not able to clearly state or explain this principle at that age, but I had intuitively grasped the essence of it. I went and told my mother about my conclusion. She refused to accept it, and gave naïve answers that I saw through immediately. I argued with her only briefly, because I knew she had a fixed idea that would never change, and it was perfectly clear to me that I was right. I was between 6 and 8 years old at the time of this incident. It was already becoming evident to me that I could think more clearly than my parents or the adults I knew ...

... Nevertheless, I decided I would make the choice of being good — just for the sake of being good, as I put it to myself. However, I felt somewhat crestfallen about the fact that there was no logical justification for morality, and, after that, I usually did not feel any special pride about being a good boy ...

... I have always had a strong tendency to admit an unpleasant truth to myself, rather than trying to push it away with self-deception or rationalization..

... This requires an important qualification. Starting somewhere around the age of 7 to 9, I began to practice a kind of doublethink. For instance, I would tell myself that I would live forever, and that by means of superior intelligence I could do anything whatsoever, even contrary to the laws of nature. At the same time I clearly recognized the hard facts of the matter. Thus I could think on two levels ...

... whenever I wanted, I could please myself by switching to the doublethink level and tell myself that I was the most intelligent person in the world, and so forth. This technique may have helped me think more objectively on the realistic level, because after I had admitted an unpleasant conclusion I could always comfort myself by jumping to the doublethink level.

Eventually, my use of doublethink gradually declined, and by the time s 20 or so, I had ceased almost entirely to use doublethink ...

… by power and aggression. …

I have a feeling that I was attracted by these things rather more than the average boy of my age, but I have no objective confirmation of this, so I may be wrong. I do remember that I was more

inclined than other kids to favor strict enforcement of rules and strict punishment for infractions...

... I was made to feel that I was the :most i.m.portant member of our famil.y, in the sense that my parents’ main task in life was to bring me up properly. Thus, I tended to feel that I was a particularly important person and superior to most of the rest of the human race. Generally speaking, there was nothing arrogant or egotistical in this feeling, nor did I ever express any such feeling outside the immediate family. It just came to me as naturally as breathing to feel. that I was someone special ....

... My parents were far from authoritarian — they let me have my own way a good deal. Their punishments were mild, and when I showed real contrition for having been bad I think they usually did not punish me ...

... My brother David was born when I was 7\. this a pleasant event. I was interested in being allowed to hold it ...

I considered the baby and enjoyed

One night I had a bad dream: There had been a war and I saw 9W baby brother as starved to skin and bones. This filled ith pity and sadness. Next day (and at other times there after) I felt a sense of pity and love toward my brother, and a determination to protect him all. I coul.d in the event of a war or other catastrophe ...

... except for a period of strong resentment during my teens, I have generally fel.t a real affection for my brother. I think my parents were aware of the problem of “sibling rivalry” and made a conscious effort to avoid this problem when the new baby came ...

... Until I was, say, 5 or 6 years old, I think my father was warm and affectionate toward me ...

... However, as I grew older, my father began to refrain from physical expressions of affection toward me, and a certain element of coldness sometimes appeared in his behavior ...

One day, when I might have been about 6 years old, my mother, father, and I were all set to go out somewhere. I was in a joyful mood. I ran up to my father and announced that I wanted to kiss him. He said, ‘You’re like a little girl, always wanting to kiss.’ I immediately turned cold and drew back resentfully. My father immediately regretted what he had done and said, ‘Oh, that’s alright. You can kiss if you want to.’ But there was no warmth in his voice. Of course, I didn’t kiss him then. I recoiled and there was a period of a few years when I had a marked aversion to kissing. Perhaps this goes back to the reader should be careful not to get an exaggerated idea of the coldness that my father occasionally exhibited — generally speaking I felt I had a good relationship with my parents that didn’t show any serious deterioration until I was about 11 years old ...

... Ever since very early childhood I was attracted to the woods and to the idea of being physically independent of society. My father was fond of the woods and I have memories, going back very early, of pleasant excursions with him ...

... As far back as I can remember, my view of girls and women always included a substantial element of contempt ...

... it was a contempt for femininity as a general concept. represented weakness ...

... Having observed that women were more passive and physically weaker, my liking for power and aggression would naturally incline me toward contempt for the feminine ...

Femininity

... Now I will describe my childhood sex life. I have already mentioned that I like enemas ... and that I tried to seduce Mary Kay Foley ...

... Some time between the ages of 6 and 8 I began to occasionally fantasies of myself as a cripple ...

… For example I might lie on my bed keeping my legs perfectly relaxed and motionless, and pretend they were paralysed. This gave me a feeling of soft, feminine passivity in the lower part of my body ... When I discovered that I could get this sexual feeling more strongly by pretending I was a girl, I lost interest in the cripple-fantasies. Thereafter, from time to time, I would have fantasies of myself as a girl ...

I might have been about 8 when I had my first orgasm. I didn’t produce any semen, of course, but I experienced the rythmic muscular spasms that would have squirted out the semen if there had been any semen to squirt out. This happened when I was holding my dick between my legs, pretending to be a girl ...

... I experienced marked revulsion after orgasm. I had a sense of shame connected with these activities and fantasies, as is illustrated by the fact that, a few times, I had unpleasant dreams of being outdoors naked and running around trying unsuccessfully to get into the house ...

... in defence of my own feminine fantasies, I would point out that some psychologists maintain that all men have a feminine element ...

... Once my mother was reading a story to me in which stubbornness was presented as a fault. I objected, saying I approved of stubbornness ...

... The last fable was about a dog and a wolf ... Wolf says, “What is that mark on your neck?” Dog says, “Mark is from my collar. My master ties me with a leash.” Wolf leaves dog, saying, “That is too high a price for being well fed. Give me liberty or give me death.” I strongly approved of this fable, but my mother (the socialistic bitch) disagreed with my taste in this instance.

Period From Age 10 – Age 15

... As a kid I usually didn’t like play activities that were organized and supervised by adults, other than my parents ...

... My parents got very angry, and concluded that there must be something wrong with me — no doubt because I was not social enough. My father angrily declared that I would have to join the Boy Scouts, and stay in the Scouts until it was time for me to go to college. I was extremely reluctant to join the scouts and did so because I was flatly ordered to. My father took me to a couple of meetings stayed to watch. When he saw that I was unhappy there, he told me I would not have to go to any more meetings, so I didn’t ...

... It was during this year [5TH Grade, 1952] that I had the misfortune to fall into the clutches of a “guidance councellor.” It seems that, as a matter of routine, I was given certain tests, like reading — achievement tests and so forth. Because my scores were very high, I was given further tests, including a fairly elaborate IQ test. Apparently I did extremely well on this. Anyhow, this councellor — an old maid by the name of Vera Frye phoned my parents and told them I had the potential to be another Einstein and blah blah blah blah ...

... Little did she know that my mother was all too ready to receive such information with excessive enthusiasm, because it coincided with her fondest dreams ...

... She immediately called up some of our relatives to brag about the news which I thought was in very bad taste. Her excessive exhibitions of pleasure were almost childish ...

... She admonished me not to tell these things to anyone, because “Miss Frye said we’re not supposed to tell you — but we feel we can treat you as an adult.” That line, “we feel we can treat you as an adult,” is something I heard often from my parents in the following years ... f course, I was extremely pleased by all this, because it was enormously tifying to my pride, or vanity ...

... it was decided that, instead of going into 6^th grade the next year, I should be pushed up to 7^th grade. I was excited by this prospect.

Many years later, my mother told me that part of the reason for this decision was that Miss Frye claimed I had been drawing “pictures of killing” in my spare time in class. Apparently Miss Frye assumed that putting me in 7^th grade would cure me of hostile impulses. This assumption seems unbelievably naive. It may be that my mother’s account is distorted, as she is not noted for the accuracy of her stories ...

... If it is true that I drew such pictures more frequently than others, I can think of the following possible explanations: (a) I think I had a mild sadistic tendency going back to earliest childhood, {b) My hostility toward the dominant clique of boys may have been seeking an outlet, {c) Absence of a satisfactory goal in life may have tended to cause frustration. Other possible explanations could be conjectured; but it is difficult to see how any of the factors would be permanently affected by putting me in 7^th grade ...

Be that as it may, I did skip 6^th grade. It seems fairly obvious that it was this event which eventually led to my becoming practically a social cripple and deprived me of sex, love, and {perhaps) marriage ...

On the other hand, it is possible that the consequences of this event hened me. It is also possible that, if I had never skipped 6^th grade, l’d never have broken away from society and taken to the woods; in which case I think I would ultimately have felt my life to be empty and unsatisfactory, no matter how much love and marriage I might have.

But now we are slipping into the realm of conjecture. Who can tell what course my life would have taken? ...

... once I was in 7^th grade, I quickly slid to the bottom of the pecking-order ...

... jealousy was probably roused by the fact that I was supposed to be vastly smarter than them; and my shyness in a new situation may have been interpreted as coldness or a superior air ...

... By the time I left high school, I was definitely regarded as a freak by a large segment of the student body. I was subject to very little physical abuse ...

... Soon after entering 7^th grade I became thoroughly cowed (as I said, I was at the bottom of the pecking-order), and I stayed that way all through high school. I was usually afraid to defend myself when insulted or abused, unless the offenders were (like me) in the lower part of the pecking-order ...

... instead of becoming aggressive, I simply ignored the insults as best I could ...... This was a purely social problem — it had nothing to do with anv lack of physical courage. It was some psychological anism connected with dominance — relationships ... I am rather lightly built ay, and being with kids first one year older and later 2 years older than me pm:: me at a great disadvantage in muscle ...

... After finishing 10^th grade, I was put into 12^th grade, thus finishing high school in 3 years ... I felt less hostility toward me among the 12^th-graders (but I still had plenty of opportunity to receive hostility from the 11^th-graders).

However, many of the 12^th graders were condescending toward me, and this was at least as bad as the hostility of my earlier classmates.

... Not daring to fight back, and not wishing to show weakness, my only choice in the face of hostility was to be cold and stoical ... The cold impression was often accentuated by shyness, and I suspect that :my apparent cold aloofness may have alienated some kids who :might otherwise have been friendly ...

... In 12^th grade, a 12^th-grader named Terry Lundgren

… made some social advances to me, and we soon struck up a friendship. He was the most congenial personality whom I met in high school. We had similar interests, and especially, we had the same kind of sense of humor (unrestrained and slightly sadistic).

I don’t like to be beaten at anything; but I still remember with pleasure an occasion when Terry Lundgren outsmarted me, because it was such a neat trick ...

... Terry had followed the same reasoning I did, but had carried it one step

:her. In a grumbling way, I complimented him on his erness ...

... In my early teens I conducted my search for

power by experimenting with home-made explosives surreptitiously, without my parents’ permission. couple of incidents in school.

— mostly

This resulted in a

... On one occasion in Chem.istry lab I finished my experiment early, and then set to thinking about explosives. On theoretical grounds, I thought a mixure of red phosphorus and potassium chlorate would be promising ...

... a fellow named Keith Hrieben ... became very excited and demanded to know what the stuff was that I had mixed up. So I told him — which turned out to be a big mistake. I didn’t know at the time that red phosphorous and potassiWll chlorate is an extrem.ely dangerous mixture, alJaost impossible to hand.le, because the slightest friction may set it off ...

... Hrieben was kicked out of Chemistry altogether. My lab partner and I were suspended from lab work for 2 weeks ... Of course, the news of this incident was all over the school within a very short time.

I suspect that I had quite a reputation in high school. In fact, there is reason to suspect that in some quarters of the student body, knowing me even conferred a kind of left-banded prestige — the kind of prestige that one might get from being personally acquainted with the Devil. with a mad genius, as I was supposed to be.) ...

The chief ‘guidance councelor’ in my high school was one Lois Skillen. She was not very old, but too homely to hope for marriage. She developed a maternal crush on me. By that I mean that she became emotionally involved with me as a substitute for the son of her own that she would have liked to have. I hated her ...

... I believe she was the one who put my parents onto the idea that I should go to Harvard, and I think she impressed them with the high standards I would have to live up to in order to go there. I would get all this crap from my parents, “Miss Skillen says this and that and the other.” ...

... Actually, I didn’t give a fuck about whether I got into Harvard. But I had to pretend to be interested in all that crap just so as not to shock my parents ...

... by the ti.me I reached my last year or so of high school, I had become resentful of the pressure put on me to get A’s. I took no pride in my grades and resented the school. So a couple of ti.es I did cheat on exams. I never felt ashamed of this. I would have cheated more if I had felt it safe ...

... My frustrated resentment toward school, parents, and student body often found an outlet through snotty behavior in the classroom, which often took a sarcastic or crudely humorous turn ... or instance, I once hanged a teacher in effigy by sticking up on a bulletin d a small rag doll with a noose around its neck and the teacher’s name attached. In another case ...When a large, heavy girl came to sit on the chair, I deftly pulled it out at just the right instant so that she fell plop on the floor ...

... The only form of athletics in which I was ever outstanding was wrestling. I was never on a team and never wrestled according to the official rules, but in rough-and-tumble wrestling I could beat al.Jaost anyone my own weight ...

... I attribute this ability to the following factors: moderately good 2vstrength/3vweight ratio; good endurance; flexible body enabling me to squirm out of holds; and, especially, deter.ination and ferocity ...

... In the Summer of 1955, just before I entered high school, my parents forced me to go to Summer camp for 2 weeks because they said it would be good for me. They felt I was not social enough ...

... I felt rather homesick at this place, but not excessively so. I got along alright. I made 2 friends there ...

... I showed promise on the trombone, [and] my father began taking me for lessons to a private teacher. This teacher was an old man named Jaroslav Cimera who had an excellent utation both as a teacher and as a trombone virtuoso. He had with Sousa’s Band and other famous bands in the days n brass-and-woodwind bands had been a big thing. He was somewhat of an anachronism in that he still concentrated on that old-fashioned type of music which few people listened to any more in the days when I knew him (the 1950’s). Still, I had a good deal of respect for him, because he was a really fine craftsman in the old-time sense. He took a liking to me, and I was one of his best pupils ...

I think the reason the troJllbone was so important to me was that it gratified my need for some fora of ego-gratification that had to be earned through effort and self-discipline. (Schoolwork was too mechanical, offered little sense of achievement; it largely bored me.) Not until I was 13 did music begin to have any deep emotional significance for me …

When I was 8 or 9, I think the first traces appeared of a kind of demoralization that occurred in our household ...

... during my teens ...my parents were siaply irritable ...

... When I was in my teens, my parents allowed themselves to get considerably overweight. My mother’s behind became really enormous ...

My mother let herself go, not only physically, but psychologically. She lost her dignity ... hen I was small, family entertainments often involved my father playing the piano, games, and stuff like that. In my teens, we all just sat squalidly in front of the television set, shoveling junk food into our mouths ...

... When my brother was 4 years old and I was 12 (if I remember correctly), my father gave each of us a glass bottle with a squirting attachment so that we could “fight” by squirting each other. This was fine until my brother climbed up on a chair and then fell off with the bottle in his hand, cutting himself very badly ... I screamed and howled for my parents, who came running. They took my brother in the house, but quickly decided that he was bleeding so badly that they would have to rush him to the hospital ... What disgusted me was that, before they left, my mother delayed to dab some make-up on her face. My brother was possibly bleeding to death, and she had to stop to smear paint on her face. I made a contemptuous remark about this, but she just scolded back ...

... Because I had a strong affection for my brother, I was very upset about his injury ... there was no reason why I should be blamed for the incident. Nevertheless, the doctors told my parents that my brother kept mumbling ‘don’t blame Teddy! Don’t blame Teddy!’ ...

The reason is that he knew that whenever anything bad happened when he and I were together, I always got blamed, it was not the result of favoritism. on their part — actually, I was always the favorite son. It was the result of simple laziness. To listen to both sides of a dispute between me and my brother, and attempt to make a fair judgement, would have taken an effort ...

I resented this. But there was something else that I resented much more deeply. In the course of my teens, I came to hate my parents because of it. I still hate them for it ...

... when they became angry at me, they would shout and indulge in verbal abuse. What earned my extreme bitterness was the nature of the insults they would sometimes throw at me on these occasions. Here are some of the naiaes they called me: sick, emotionally disturbed, creep, another Walter Teszewski (Walter Teszewski was a man we knew who had ended up in an insane asylWll), two-year-old mentality, imaature, living in a psychological hole. I don’t remember just when it was that my parents first used expressions like this toward me; I suppose it might have been when I was around 12 years old ...

... I was still occasionally getting insults of this type from them when I was 21 years old. I hated both :my parents for this, but I hated :my father :more than :my mother, because :my mother would only use expressions of this type toward me in fits of irritation, whereas my father would sometimes say such things in cold blood. (For instance, once when I was about 15, I said something repelled my father. He answered coldly: “You know, Ted, you’re what they call a creep.”) ...

Also, when my mother was in a good mood, she was warm and affectionate, whereas my father tended to be cold. During my middle teens I felt there was an undercurrent of scorn in his attitude toward :me ...

I often ended up in my room with my face buried in my pillow, crying and dreaming futilely of revenge ...

... It’s true, though, that I was probably a very difficult teenager to live with. Maybe some of my hostility and frustration, due to my social situation at school, came out at home. Also, I suspect that I feel both pleasant and unpleasant emotions more strongly than the average person; that is, I have a passionate temperament. (When my brother was a baby, my mother remarked that he was a much more placid baby than I had been. She said I had been a comparatively squally, cantankerous infant. This difference between me and my brother has remained all our lives, and is quite marked.) ...

It is also true that my parents were in so:me respects generous and unselfish toward me. For example, my father drove me every week to my trombone lesson ...

By the time I was, say, 12 years old, my system of morality had evolved into an abstract, artificial construction that could not possibly be applied in practice. I never told anyone about this system, since I knew they would never take it seriously.

After I had skipped 6^th grade and began feeling a great deal of hostility toward many of my schoolmates, I developed a habit of trying to find ways of justifying my hatred in terms of my moral system.

By and by I got bored with this game. One day when I was 13 years old, I was walking down the street and saw a girl. Something about her appearance antagonized me, and, from habit, I began looking for a way to justify hating her, within my logical system. But then I stopped and said to myself, “This is getting ridiculous. I’ll just chuck all this silly morality business and hate anybody I please.” Since then I have never had any interest in or respect for morality, ethics, or anything of the sort.

However, it is important to understand that, while on the level of the intellect and the conscious will I had completely rejected all morality and all respect for authority, nevertheless on an instinctive animal level I was still the slave of my early conditioning, so that I was very much afraid to act contrary to the precepts of authority. For example, when I was, say 15, I was full of contempt for the school authorities and the rules they laid down; but it would have been unthinkable for me to play hooky, and to have failed a course would have been an unbearable shame. It was not that I believed that there was anything wrong with playing hooky; but (like Pavlov’s dog salivating at the sound of the bell) I ...

... by the time I was 14 or thereabouts, I was already beginning to take a dim view of “progress” and the future of society. I felt that we were heading toward what I called an “ant-hill” society in which there would be no more individual freedom ...

... As I got older, I came to realize that I wasn’t much interested in science, but at that time my parents (especially my mother) were so smugly confident I was going to be a scientist that I would have been afraid to tell them that I wasn’t really interested ...

... As far as I can remember, the only 2 school subjects that interested me at all were chemistry (and I was interested in chemistry only for its relevance to explosives) and mathematics from the level of trigonometry up ...

... But there was one science that really did interest me strongly, namely, human paeleontology. I found it fascinating to read about prehistoric men, their tools, and their way of life as it was conjectured to be by the anthropologists ...

... I suddenly realized that what I wanted was not just to read another book on cave men — I wanted to really live like a cave man. I wanted to live in a cave as a member of a small, isolated group, to run around in a wild landscape hunting Mammoths with a spear, and that sort of thing ...

... One summer when I was 15 or 16, in one of the prairies that still remained then, I threw a clod of earth at a bird. (The bird was bigger than a robin but smaller than a Franklin Grouse.) ... it “froze”, and I walked up to it and just picked it up. As soon as I had it in my hand it began struggling violently. I held it in my hand for some time, and I soon began to experience warm, affectionate, pitying feelings for it. When I first threw the mud at the bird, I had hoped to kill it as an act of hunting, in accord my fantasies of primitive life. But now I was turning soft.

I thought, “How can I ever hope to experience a cave-man style life if I am too soft-hearted to kill game? For that kind of life I will have to be hard.” So I forced myself to kill the bird by crushing it in my hand. I left the place feeling sick with pity for the unfortunate creature ...

... When I was 13 it was discovered that I had a congenital cyst in my upper jaw ... Before I went in to have the thing cut out, Dr. Wang stood for awhile chatting with my father. By and by he said to me, “Well, it’s time to go to work,” and laid his hand on my shoulder. When he did this he suddenly looked at me in surprize and said, “Are you scared?” I said “Yes ... Dr. Wang turned to my father and said, “To look at him, I would never have known he was scared. I didn’t know he was scared until I felt him shaking.” ...

... Throughout my earlier teens I boredom ... Conversation bored me quickly. longer, but not much ...

suffered increasingly from chronic

Parlor games kept me interested a little

... My parents often (correctly) accused me of being bored. I say accused, because they never said it in a sympathetic way; they said it in a tone of criticism ...

... My personal habits were always rather messy. While I had been well trained in respect for authority generally, neatness [unreadable] never received much emphasis in my training ...

My parents will probably try to deny much of what I have written about our home life. But my memory is quite clear ...

... When I was 10 years old, in 5^th grade, there was a girl in the class named Darlene Curley. She had long black hair, and was beautiful ...

... The little vixen was reaching a certain age where she was beginning to feel her power, and she was using it ...

... I was sternly determined not to be conquered like the others had been. I forced myself to hate her ...

... I used to have fantasies of beating her or torturing her — not that that was what I really wanted with her. What I really wanted was to love her, but I wouldn’t let myself do that. I couldn’t keep myself from thinking about her; to keep the tender thoughts out I had to think hateful things about her. Thus, the sadistic fantasies were a tool that I used to fight my love for her ...

... Thus I finished the year with a kind of victory ...

... I have at other times been infatuated with various females, but there are only 2 whose memory calls up a special echo for me – a kind of bittersweet ache over what I have missed. One of these girls is Arlene Curley, and the other is a certain Caol Wolman whom I knew when I was I was 16–18 ...

... in 7^th grade, I began to think about physical sex rather frequently. I used to have fantasies of having intercourse with the girls. Occasionally I would also have a fantasy of being a girl myself ...

... When we first moved to Evergreen Park, there was a boy ... who lived nearby. A couple of times this kid persuaded me to go out in the prairie and strip* with him ... in the end I did strip, and found it sexually exciting, as he did. Apparently this kind of stripping was a common practice among the boys around there ... There was a kid named Dale ... I suppose we were about 13 when this kid first persuaded me to strip with him. At first I wasn’t interested, but by and by I got excited and went along. This kind of thing was repeated several times. At that age I was already suffering from acute sexual starvation, and having been seduced into stripping by Dale, I decided I wanted to go further than he did. At first he didn’t want to go into cock sucking — he was just as lecherous as I was, but he was too chicken to try something so highly forbidden. However, I persuaded him. We also tried anal perversion, but didn’t have much success with it, because we found that an asshole is too small toreadily admit a penis. We tried cock sucking and other perversions several times between the ages of 13 and 16, but we only didthis kind of thing occasionally, not habitually.

This kid often seemed to have difficulty in getting an erection, even when he was very excited. He had a very weak, flabby, body, was very awkward. I dominated him physically (I don’t meansexually) whenever I pleased ...

... I found this kid repulsive, because he developed a marked tendency to gloat over slimy, repulsive things — I don’t mean primarily sexual things. Of course, another reason I was repelled by him was the fact that I had a marked sense of shame over our sexual activities, and his association with those activities made him unpleasant to me. I don’t think Dale was homosexual (by choice) any more than I was — like me, he would rather have had a girl if he could have gotten one ...

... Besides the activities with Dale, I rather frequently practiced my own private perversions, including transvestism, inserting various objects in my anus, and sucking my own penis (which was not easy to do, but I had a remarkably flexible body in those days) ... Simple masturbation I practiced almost every day ...

..After I entered high school that Fall (I was still 13), a school dance was announced, and I decided it would be desirable to take a girl to it. My knowledge of dancing was uncertain, to say the least, but I thought I would chance it anyway. (Of course, I had no interest in dancing — I only wanted an excuse to be with a girl.) So I phoned a fairly good-looking girl who was in my class. The nature of her answer made it sufficiently clear to me that I was not the sort of a fellow with whom any self-respecting girl would want to be seen ...

... Later in that same year, there was a conversation between a boy and a girl in my class ... The girl said “I’m going to such and such a place with Ted.” The boy looked at her incredulously and said, “You’re going with HIM?” (pointing at me). The girl laughed loudly. “No, not with HIM! I mean with Ted So-and-So.” It was a big joke ...

... By this time it was clear to me that my classmates regarded me as some kind of a freak. I never again attempted to make advances to any girl while I was in high school, even though I constantly lusted after the girls…

... By the time I was 15 or 16, even though I was strongly excited by girls, most of my sexual fantasies were about sexual perversions of one kind or another, or involved imagining myself as a girl.

... From earliest childhood I think, and certainly very strongly during my teens, I was inclined toward power, pride, and ego things generally … I was an outcast, a Weirdo —

I knew that few or none of those girls would ever take me seriously, even for a moment ...

Still, what excited me sexually was girls. Males never excited me sexually. (If I had a fantasy of (for example) sucking a cock, almost the only thing that appeared in my mind was the cock itself — the rest of the boy practically nonexistent in my fantasy. Nor was I excited by the sight of other boys’ penises ...

I never got any real satisfaction out of my sexual activities — lust drove me to go further and further into perversion in an attempt to get pleasure, but the pleasure I got was far too small to make up for the feeling of frustration and dissatisfaction. And then after orgasm there was only disgust. It was not until many years later, when I had a few (all too few, alas!) experiences with kissing girls, that I learned that sex can be a pleasant and worth-while experience ...

... So much for sex. Just a couple of other points to be made before I finish with this period of my life.

Some people claim that there is a basic club-forming instinct in males that they call “male-bonding”. I seem to have experienced something like this with my father in childhood, and some such thing may have been involved in my infant attachment to Adam Krokos, but, other than that, I cannot ever remember having experienced anything like male-bonding ...

... within my memory, I have never experienced a feeling of hero-worship toward anyone. In fact, I have always been strongly repelled by the idea of anyone being superior to me ...

It is my opinion that, ever since as far back as I can remember, ego has been a more dominant factor in my personality than in the personality of the average person ...

(By ego, I mean the part of the personality that is concerned with such things as will, purpose, decision, work, pride, power, etc.) ...

... This would account for the fact that I have never experienced hero-worship; and for the fact that I haven’t experienced male-bonding, since I have always been repelled by the idea of submerging my own ego in the group ego. Again, it is ego that gave me a marked reluctance to feel affection for girls ...

... sex has been the one force powerful enough to overcome my ego ...

... My strong resentment of being dominated naturally made my position at the bottom of the pecking-order in school especially difficult to bear. Many of the other boys low in the pecking-order seemed willing to adjust, and didn’t find their subservient position hard to bear, so far as I could see ...

... I’ve said I can’t stand being in a position of subordination, and the reader may wonder how this squares with the fact that, as a child, I was always very obedient to the authorities ...

... When I followed the orders of a teacher in school, as a child, I felt I was not submitting to the teacher personally — I was submitting to the system, of which the teacher was only an agent ...

Of course, I later came to hate the system itself, but, even today, I do not it at all difficult to take orders from the boss when I am working on a job,

p vided the orders are given courteously and are within the boss’s legitimate authority ...

... My memories of the period from 10–15 are clearer than my earlier childhood memories, and I am much more confident of the accuracy of my account of this period ...

... But there’s one more thing that I forgot to discuss. I came out of high school with my social self-confidence pretty thoroughly crushed — permanently, it would seem. I felt that in the eyes of the world I was some kind of a “sickie”.

But I never lost my hard inner core of self-esteem. I refused to be defeated. Instead of accepting the contemptible image of myself that the human race seemed to be trying to on me, I put myself at war with the human race.

I ... at I was better than all of thea ... left high-school with extremely low social self-esteem, but with very high self-esteem in other respects — I was fully confident of my brains, talents ... to make it short, I was very confident of my ability to deal with things as opposed to people. The only thing I lacked confidence in was my ability to be accepted by people ...

Period From Age 16 – Age 20

[Page 60 Begins]

At age 16, in Fall of 1958, I went to Harvard. I had had no particular enthusiasm for going there, but once I got there it was a tremendous thing for me. I got something that I had been needing all along without knowing it, namely, hard work regaining self-discipline and strenuous exercise of my abilities. I threw myself into this with great enthusiasm. Not that it was fun, you thrived on it. I spent most of my time studying, and almost no time on recreation. I forced myself to keep studying long after I should have gone to sleep. I considered myself negligent if I went to bed before 2 A.M., and I often stayed up until 3. I would get by for a month on 6 hours of sleep a night, then overcome by sleepiness, I would flop down and sleep for maybe, 10 solid hours.

I felt homesick for my first 2 weeks at Harvard. After that I never felt homesick at all.

Feeling the strength of my own will, I became enthusiastic about will power. Besides the required physical training sessions, I began doing push-ups and other exercises on my own.

Unlike my high school math courses, the calculus courses I took at Harvard paid a good deal of attention to the fine points of the logic underlying calculus. I learned a good deal about class thinking in general from these courses, and I became enthusiastic about careful, analytical thinking.

In high school, getting an A in a course didn’t mean much to me – it was just a matter of grinding out all the busy-work.

At Harvard, I really had to exert myself to get an A, and that grade gave me areal sense of achievement. There was an atmosphere of excellence at Harvard. Of course, I had no respect for the courses in Bullshit subjects (Humanities and Social Sciences), because so many of the statements made in these courses were false, unproveable, or simply meaningless ...

[Page 60 Ends]

... In my bullshit courses I worked conscienciously but without enthusiasm, and in these courses I got grades from C to B-. In my Math, Physics, and German courses,

I had very good teachers (for me), and in all these courses I got A’s ... good, solid A’s ... don’t know why I had difficulty getting A’s in anthropology —

I always liked the subject and worked at it with reasonable diligence (though of course I put my Math first) ...

... (Alas, I’ll have to give less detail, or I’ll never finish!)

..Over the summer I read carefully ... and entered my senior year with good enthusiasm. I took ... Math 250, group theory, under John G. Thompson, one of the great mathematicians of our time, who had just finished proving that every finite group of odd order is solvable. I was very determined to do well in Math 250, because that was the kind of mathematics that most interested me. I put out my best effort ... Nevertheless, though I felt I was working at my best level until near the end of the course when I gave up on it, I was able to do no better than a B. And I did not feel that I had attained a full grasp of the material.

... it was a frustrating experience for me —

I recall that I smashed an alarm clock by throwing it across the room, swearing at the same time to forsake pure mathematicsjan become an applied mathematician.

m:t room, of course, not the classroom.

…early in my first year as a graduate student ... I began to be aware of the fortunate truth that the number of pure mathematicians is far in excess of the r of new, interesting, worthwhile problems, so that all but a minute fraction

The pure mathematics research that is published today is devoted to ridiculous problems that are of interest to anybody but a tiny group of specialists.

... When I first got to Harvard I felt obliged to make friends.

This seemed desirable so as to avoid the unpleasant situation I was in at high school. If I was too solitary I feared people would conclude that there was something wrong with me. Also, even though I had rejected the values of society, I was not so emancipated as to prevent me from feeling (against my will) some sense of shame at being what was commonly regarded as “sick”.

I will interject here something that I should have discussed earlier. In going to college I had no definite object. I went because my parents expected it and I didn’t know what else to do. I dreamed of finding an uninhibited island, or living as a savage in some

[s/o] wilderness, or sailing the ocean in a small boat. But I hadn’t the least idea of how to get what I wanted ...

... Mymost persistent fantasy was to live, at least temporarily, a savage life completely independent of organized society ...

Getting back to the question of friends at Harvard — I did not like most of the people whose rooms were near mine in the dormitory (I had no room-mate, I’m glad to say) ...

I tried to be friendly with the fellowsinmy dormitory as a matter of duty, no_t because I liked them. But I soon began to realize that at least of them regarded me as some kind of a wierdo. The reason for this t completely clear to me — in fact I have never been able to fully understand just what the externally-visible traits of mine are that have always caused me to be marked out as different ...

... I always wore the same pair of pants, except that when I washed them each week I temporarily switched to another pair. I had a very bad case of acne. When I came back to my room after dinner, while preparing to start studying, I would swear and cuss and grumble to myself about how much work I had to do and how little time I had to do it. A couple of times I overheard the guys in the next room making fun of these peculiarities.

They were not hostile toward me, but they were certainly not interested in being friends with me ...

... Myparents about this time wrote to me that someone had anonymously sent them a brochure describing the psychiatric counseling services available at Harvard ....

... I have not carefully examined all the people in my memory to decide which of them is the most contemptible, but, offhand, I would say that the individual who stands out in my mind as the most despicable person I have ever met — not excluding bums who have stopped me on the street to ask me for a dime — is John Finley, Master of Eliot House ...

... He made himself into a caricature of the Harvard type and based his self-image on that. He was an actor playing a role, and taking himself in as much as he took in anybody else. I do not offhand recall ever having encountered a more slavish conformist ...

... Finley’s attitude toward me was always offensively condescending. To picture it, imagine a rich old lady circling around a toad, peering at it through her lorgnette, and saying to herself, “I’m trying my best to be nice to the poor creature; but really, after all, how can one be nice to a toad!” ...

... Did he somehow sense my deep contempt for him and (worse still) for the empty and artificial pretensions around which he had built his self-image? ...

It was not until the latter part of my Sophomore year that I made a couple of friends at Harvard. And I didn’t keep them any too long ... I think all this was due to certain abrasive personality traits that I had during my Harvard years: In my enthusiasm for mathematics and physical conditioning I became overly competitive — I was always wanting to have push-up contests, or I would challenge my friends to solve mathematical problems of my own devising. After a victory I’d never crow about my own prowess — but I would make what I imagined were humorous gibes at the loser’s expense. I didn’t think about the fact that — for example — when a person gets a Cina course, a joke about it may be very cutting to him. Thus it is not surprising that these 2 fellows lost interest in associating with me. Also, I think my manners were too coarse for Heinen’s taste, and he didn’t like the dirty jokes I occasionally cracked. He was somewhat fastidious.

Before my parting-of-the-ways with Bearse, he invited me to an all-male “beer party” that he gave. It was not a big party — I think no more than 5 people in the room at any one time. This was the only time in my life I ever got drunk. I did so on a pint of wine. I think I got drunk as much because I wanted to get drunk as because of the wine. (In fact, when I am in company where I feel comfortable, and in a certain mood, I can get somewhat drunk without a drop of liquor, simply by letting myself go ...

... Now, there have been two episodes in my life that I am really ashamed of. I am about to relate one of them.

In my Sophomore year, I received a circular in the mail

… ting Harvard sophomores to appear at such and such a place to take a psychological “test” (i.e., questionaire) for purposes of some kind of research. Pay would be $5.00 ...

... Soon afterward I received notice in the mail that I had been selected to participate in a psychological “experiment”, and, if I remember correctly, I think I was given an appointment, in this notice, to come in and speak to Professor H.A. Murray about it ...

... Now it is important to remember that, at this time, though I rebelled against all authority with my conscious will, I nevertheless was to a great extent enslaved (on the level of animal instinct) by my early conditioning ... it would have been very difficult for me to refuse any reasonable request from a Harvard Professor.

... Looking back on it now, it severely galls me and shames me to realize that I permitted that disgusting old fake to psychologically manipulate me into saying “yes” ... Actually it was a study of the socially alienated personality ...

... He said there were going to be some Radcliffe girls in it. (False: According to Keniston’s book “The Uncommitted”, students in this study were all male.) He said that there would be a party at the end of the year for the students in the study. (If there was a party, I never heard of it.) He said that at the end of the study the researchers would tell the students about the conclusions they drew. (They never told me any of their conclusions. I _never knew anything about those until many years later when I ran across ton’s book by chance.) He promised that all information obtained in the study would be kept confidential. (I have good reason to suspect that this confidence was broken ...

... All through the study, I felt hostile toward the project and toward the researchers as individuals — especially after one case where I was unsuspectingly led into a situation where I was subject to severe psychological harassment in order to gauge my reaction. (The researchers said afterward that they hadn’t intended it to be so harassing. They said their harasser went overboard on the first subject, so they had to have him do it the same with all the others, for the sake of uniformity. This is almost certainly another lie.) ...

... I intentionally wore a kind of mask in dealing with these researchers; and I told them many lies about my personal ideology and feelings ... unfortunately ... I didn’t systematically wear a mask, especially on questionaires ...

... As I said to myself at the time, I was to scae extent giving them my ideology as it had existed when I was maybe 11 years old ...

... though I knew I was “brainwashed”, I never accepted it — I had every intention eventually breaking free from law and order. But I felt it would imprudent to tell anyone this ...

... have skimmed through the greater part of Keniston’s book, “The Uncommitted.” There were 12 “alienated” students in the group that was studied ...

... Keniston’s book would be useless as a tool for understanding me personally. In order to learn anything about me personally from that Harvard study, one would have to go back to the original data gathered on me.

... Obviously it would be impractical for me to go through the whole book and list all of Keniston’s statements that are true for me and all that are false for me. Let me just give a few examples. p.83. “ ... they accept self-contempt ... “ False for me. I have never felt general self-contempt. I have often felt self-disgust at some particular weakness — for instance, the sexual perversions I practiced. But I have always had a deep-seated feeling that I am somehow noble and of the best. This is not an opinion based on any abilities or qualities of mine, but simply an emotion that I have about myself. I sneer at anyone who has a low opinion of himself. By the way, the fact that my self- esteem is not primarily founded on my abilities makes it easy for me to admit to myself my own weaknesses and failures in cases where I really do have weaknesses and failures. p.96. “They would very candidly discuss their worries and anxieties with [some of the research psychologists] ... and seek ce ... “ Totally false in my case! p.l22. “they were relatively solitary children.“I am not aware that I was Rrelatively solitaryR until I was around 8 — and then only because I felt myself rejected or treated with condescension (see these notes, p.12). p.388 “[Their mother] was (and still is) the key person in their lives.” Beyond the normal attachment of early childhood, I have never had any particular attachment to or intimacy with my mother. Any member of my family (including my mother!) will confirm this. This certainly would seem to debunk any possible application of Keniston’s theories to me personally, since all through the book he emphasizes this supposed special attachment of the RalienatedR student to his mother — its a crucial point in his theory. p.475. Keniston claims the alienated have a Rstrong sense of cosmic outcastness ... [and] self-estrangement.R I have never had any feelings of that kind. p.108. “Our subject’s mothers ... seem to have seen their own fathers, at least, as more unequivocally admirable figures, a perception which is reflected in our subjects’ accounts. Neither our subjects nor their mothers find this same strength in the subjects’ fathers.” e in my case. My mother has always depicted her er as being well-meaning but rather weak. My mother has expressed resentment of the fact that her father would never totally protect my mother when her mother would get drunk and beat her. On the other hand, my mother has always leaned on my father as a source of leadership and security. She does not accept criticisms (except trivial ones) of my father.

... I could give lots of other examples wher_e I don’_t tit the pattern described by Keniston. Butsome of the things he says in his book do apply to me.

... Since Keniston says much about the parents of “alienated” students, this is a good place for me to describe my own parents’ personalities. My parents have had a “good marriage” if there ever was one — they are extremely loyal to one another. When our family morale was low (during my teens) they would sometimes shout at one another, but it was always made up quickly. They never had a serious falling out. Remarks that my mother has made on a few occasions suggest to me that she had strong sexual impulses when young — but she was just slightly prudish, and my parents never showed sexual affection in front of us kids. Remarks made by my father suggest to me that he had the strong sexual desires typical of young men, and that he was sexually satisfied with his wife ...

My father was somewhat of a hoodlum or “tough” type in his youth, and he has often told me stories of his boxing prowess in those days. But in adulthood he put aside these ways and became a very steady, responsible type. He has always been a very capable, competent worker who takes pride in doing good work ...

... He has a very tranquil personality — Type B personality — the opposite of anxiety-prone. He sticks to routine. He had great self-discipline in performing his routine of work and so forth, but he seldom exercised initiative and strikes out for something new. If he wants something and is not sure he can get it, he prefers to suppress the desire rather than risk frustration and wasted effort by trying something of a new type. He occasionally suffered from headaches described as “migraine” until he was in, I think, his early forties. I conjecture that {until he got older) he was not really satisfied with his dull, routine life, but that he could not see any way of getting anything better for him, so he suppressed the desire.

As he got older, any such suppressed desire if it existed seems to have faded away, and his personality became more completely tranquil — say by around his early S0’s. By the time he was in his 60’s, his personality seemed to have gone slack and become flaccid, like that of many old men. He is still a good worker, but I suspect this results more from habit than from self-discipline. My father was always reticent about expressing his emotions ... When I was a kid I think the qualities that I most noticed in my father were strength and self- ipline. I began to lose the impression of his self-discipline as our family le began to go bad, but the impression was never completely effaced until I was in my 20’s ....

My-mother was the daughter of immigrant peasants from Poland, and claims to have been the victim of prejudice in childhood as a result. She tried to get some kind of status through her schoolwork, and so she has always looked romantically to the intellectual world, and has had literary ambitions, but has neither the talent nor the self-discipline to succeed at writing. I think, but am not sure, that she is a very good worker at jobs where she has been employed ...

... She is very anxiety-prone. She is lively and expresses her emotions freely. She has a good deal of energy, but is low in self-discipline. Respectability is important to her. She tried to vicariously satisfy her own ambitions for intellectual glory through her kids. The qualities that, as a kid, I most noticed in my mother, were liveliness, love, joy, and irrationality. The impression of love faded as I went through my teens, and I came to feel my mother as a kind of emotional parasite, trying to use me to satisfy her own needs. But, just in the last few years, she has finally adjusted to the fact that neither of her sons is interested in intellectual glory, and it’s clear that, underneath all that, she really does love us very much after all..

... Both my parents were always steady, responsible, stay-at home types. Their social life consisted mostly of occasional with a few old friends. They tended to consider themselves superior to their neighbors, but they never in any way put on ied to demonstrate this supposed superiority outside the visits … family circle.

My mother leans heavily on my father for security. I would say that my mother has somewhat more than average femininity in her personality, and my father has somewhat more than average masculinity.

My father always “wore the pants in the family” very definitely. But my mother was the initiator, the active one. If we made a family excursion, it was usually my mother who suggested it. My mother would ask, “Honey, can we do such and such today? and my father would grant it. I don’t want to exaggerate, though — it’s not as if my mother took the role of a child vis-a-vis my father. But I think the situation is adequately described by a few remarks that passed between my brother and me a few years ago. My brother said, “she sort of dominates him; or, well, not exactly dominates ... but ... ”

I cut in and said, “It’s not that she dominates him, but that he indulges her.” My brother said “yes, that’s the way to describe it.”

There’s another point brought up by Keniston’s book that I want to discuss. Earlier in these notes I have given my own ideosyncratic definition of “ego”, and it is always in this sense that I use the term in these notes, unless otherwise indicated ...

... On p. 364, Keniston warns, “The psychoanalytic conception of the ego should not confused with the popular notion of the ego as the center of interest, vanity, and pride ...

... In view of this, I want to clarify the term “ego” as I use it in this autobiography and in my other notes. My use of the word is of course drawn from the popular notion. But it does overlap slightly with the usage described by Keniston. As I use, it, ego means that part of the mind which is concerned with: Power, dominance, superiority, pride, revenge, autonomy, will, purpose, work, decision, reason*, action, aggression, self-discipline. Here, power is the central concept. Some of the other items (like work, reason, etc.) to start out with are merely tools for attaining power, revenge, etc., but these “tools” become ends in themselves. Thus, power holds a pre-eminent position, but the other items are also important, and some of them rival (maybe even sometimes exceed?) the importance of power. Speaking now from my own point of view, power alone is by no means enough ...

... to be satisfying, the exercise of power has to require an effort. It must require the use of some of the other items in the list, like reason, action, self-discipline, etc. Also necessary in order to avoid boredom is a seriouspurpose for the exercise of power. What’s the good of having power if you have no strong reason to use it?

... I would add that ... the only possible serious purposes are determined by biologicalinstincts — food, shelter, ysical rest, love, hate, social status, etc ... suggest that, for most people, needs for love, tification of hate, social status, and other instincts not connected with physical needs, are satiated long before the people concerned have expended enough time and effort. Thus a sense of purposelessness occurs. This holds also for more subtle “instincts“ like that for artistic expression. Few people seem able to fully satisfy their need for purpose through art ... a chronic sense of purposelessness is inevitable, unless that society can give its people a deeply-ingrained artificial purpose through some form of psychological engineering ...

... I think that when the average person is doing nothing, his mind tends to wander more-or-less at random. This can happen to me, too; but I have a strong tendency to settle instead on a particular subject, and think about it intently, turning it over and over in my mind and examining it from all angles. Once I get involved in a problem, whether in working with my mind or with my hands, even if that problem was of no great interest to me at the beginning, I have a tendency to become quite concerned with the problem and to devote great care and attention to it ...

... I think my analytical bent has had a very important role in my life. One example is my conclusion it morality described on p. 14 of these notes.

ow, at last, I will get back to straight autobiography.

... I think I became pretty well separated from all my Evergreen Park friends within about a year after leaving college.

Some of my friends (Russel Mosny, George Duba) seemed to lose interest in my company around the time I left high school.

Jerry Ulrich dropped me when I came home from college with certain eccentricities like a somewhat underdeveloped attempt at a beard ...

... Actually, I was becoming bored with all those friends anyway ...

... During my early years in college my relations with my parents were about as they were in my high school years, but toward the end of my Harvard career our relations improved somewhat. They continued to make insulting remarks about my personality, but this eased up toward the end of my time at Harvard. Of course, our family had good times, too, but these did not make up for the bad times, and basically I hated my parents ...

... the first 2 sunnners ... my parents put pressure on me to earn money to help pay for my education. I don’t think it was primarily the money they were concerned about — the idea of me doing nothing over the summers did not fit in with the image of me that they wanted to have. I was supposed to be not only brilliant, but industrious. The last 2 summers they put no pressure on me to work ...

From age, say, 15 — 18 I went through a certain phase. It srrowed its beginnings before I went to Harvard, came on strong during my Freshman year, and had largely faded out by about the middle of my Junior Year. This was what I may call a romantic phase. I wanted to let loose my passions and express them freely, rather than being stoical as formerly. I began to put great emphasis on music and certain kinds of literature.

Both before and after this phase I always enjoyed music and certain kinds of literature. The difference was that during the phase

I considered art to be something important, whereas before and after after the phase, I considered art to be merely an embellishment of life, not something really important ...

... I dislike most modern art, music, and literature, because it arouses too many feelings of a negative or “sick” type, whereas older art concentrated on the beautiful or the heroic ...

... In music I generally prefer Haydn and earlier composers. Vivaldi is one of my favorites ... I strongly prefer instrumental to vocal music. I prefer wind instruments, especially trumpets, trombones, French horns, oboes, and bassoons ...

... During this period I was attracted to German Romanticism. I also read Alan Bullock’s biography of Hitler and became interested in Nazism. I used to fantasy myself as an agitator rousing mobs to frenzies of revolutionary violence. Thereby I would become a dictator, and I would send my Gestapo out to round up all the people I hated — and there were plenty of those …

... I don’t remember the exact chronology of it, but there was a period of several years during my teens when I had a great many squabbles with my brother. He is gifted in the way of coordination, and, even though 7 1/2 years younger than me, he could always beat me at games that depended on skill rather than strength. Also, he was snotty and a chronic tease. On the other hand, I used my superior size and strength to dominate him with very little regard for his feelings ...

I think it might have been when I was around 20 that we began to get along better. Instead of competing, each of us would freely acknowledge the other’s areas of superiority. Since then I have always gotten along very well with my brother ...

When I was at my peak I was able to do 55 push-ups (minimum — the most I ever did was 59) Good push-ups — down each time until nose touches floor, up each time until arms are fully extended. I could do 17 chin-ups regularly (most I ever did was 18). Good ones. I would hang 19 pounds on my feet and do 11 chin-ups. But the actual amount of time that I spent on the exercises that I did on my own was very small.

In the woods I loved to pick out a small sapling and climb up it hand over hand without using my feet. I could do this easily and would climb around like an ape that way.

I would look at my body in the mirror and feel pleased with it — but at the same time very frustrated, for two reasons: For one thing, I had no practical purpose for which I could use my body. Thus, training it was no more than a game. In my daily activities I had no need for strength or agility. For another thing, though I thought I had a good-looking, wiry body that a girl might find attractive, yet I was not able to get a girlfriend ...

... Ever since my college days I have been somewhat of a worry-wart; not excessively so — not so much as my mother, for example. Most common is for me to worry about my health ... at Harvard ... playing basketball one time (a sport at which I confess I am completely incompetent!) I got accidentally knocked under the chin. The edge of my tongue got caught between my teeth, and this resulted in a bad scar and a bump on the edge of my tongue ... I had heard that rubbing or irritation of a scar could cause cancer, so eventually I went to see one of the Student Health Service doctors to see if the bump should be surgically fixed. I got a woman doctor, and, true to her sex, she misunderstood what I was saying ... She thought that I thought I already had cancer. I certainly did not think this. But she did not explicitly make it clear that she thought I thought I had cancer, and since I wasn’t sure I was correctly interpreting what she thought, I was too shy to correct her, not being sure she needed correcting. So the whole thing was an embarrassing farce, and I think I left her imagining that I thought I was going to die or something. Well, never mind that stupid episode anyway.

The reader must realize by now that in high school and college I often became terribly angry at someone, or hated someone, but, as a matter of prudence, I could not express that anger or hatred openly. I would therefore indulge in fantasies of dire revenge. However, I never attempted to put any such fantasies into effect, because I was too strongly conditioned, by my early training, against any defiance of authority. To be more precise: I could not have committed a crime of revenge, even a relatively minor crime, because my fear of being caught and punished was all out of proportion to the actual danger of being caught. I could have much more easily risked my life in a lawful way, than take an equal risk of spending 30 days in jail for some minor crime.

Thus, when I had a fantasy of revenge, I had very little comfort from it, because I was all too clearly clearly aware that I had had many previous fantasies of revenge, and nothing had ever come of any of them. This was very frustrating and humiliating. Therefore I became more and more determined that some day I would actually take revenge on some of the people that I hated.

In 1978 I knew a woman named Ellen Tarmichael. Once she told me that if anyone ever played a dirty trick on her she would get revenge no matter what; she would do anything, no matter how underhanded, etc. etc. She sounded so unscrupulous that I started to feel a little uneasy with her. Later that same day, she started giving me a spiel about how she felt everyone had a duty to help society and all that kind of stuff. I asked her how she would square this with the vengeful attitudes she had been expressing earlier. She said, “Well, those ideas of revenge are only things that I fantasy. I have never actually done anything like that.” Still, it would seem she found at least a partial relief for her resentments by means of from such fantasies. But I don’t function like that. Knowing my revengeful fantasies are not being realized, completely spoils them for me. Thus my hatreds accumulated, and I swore that some day I would break free of law and order.

Prior to my senior year at Harvard I don’t recall ever having had a nightmare — though I suppose I might have had oneat some at one time or another that I don’t remember. But during my senior year I had maybe 3 or 4 or 5 nightmares. One of them I recall clearly. My trombone teacher Jaroslav Cimera was standing in a room, looking like a fine, noble, erect old man. Then there came a singing as if of angels. Then everything faded into mist. The mist cleared, and Cimera had been transformed into a bent, senile, slobbering old wreck. woke up in a sweat.

Some time during college, I had the following dream, which I found very pleasant. There had just been an atomic attack, and civilization had melted into anarchy. My father, brother, and I had some containers of precious food in our hands, and we were hurrying to get out of the city with them. Some hooligans came after us to rob us of our food. They were armed with pieces of 2X4 and other makeshift clubs. I let my father and brother run on ahead with the food, and I hung back to hold off the hooligans. The first hooligan ran up intending to attack me with a piece of 2x4, but I drew my hunting-knife from my belt and ,bed him in the chest. He fell down dead. The other hooligans drew back afraid. Then I ran to catch up with my mother and brother ...

... I think I was maybe 12 or 13 when my mother started telling me I was good-looking ... During the romantic phase that I went through in my first couple of years at Harvard, I was decidedly vain about my good looks, even though I had a bad case of acne at that time ... Not long ago I looked back over some old photos and slides taken when I was in my teens and early twenties, and in some of them I really do look very pretty; but also young-looking and lightly built ...

... I knew that girls tend to prefer a solidly-built, mature-looking fellow who resembles a man rather than a boy ...

This is something that has always puzzled me. I have never been able to figure out whether I am or am not attractive to women. Sometimes I have felt that I must be extremely attractive to them; at other times I have felt that I must me totally unattractive to them. In some cases it has seemed obvious that a good-looking girl was attracted to me; but.in some of these cases I have later learned that I was completely mistaken. I simply feel quite unable to give any intelligent answer to the question of how many or how few attractive females may have liked me in my lifetime. I do not know how to interpret women’s words and actions. And also there is this problem: I think sometimes a pretty girl will behave in a tatious way with a man in whom she really has no rest. She wants to attract him merely in order to feel her p r, just as a strong man enjoys lifting a heavy weight.

(But in many cases this can be a cruel sport.) ...

... While at Harvard I made very few advances toward girls.

One reason was lack of social self-confidence. Another reason was the conflict between sex and ego ...

... I had a strong tendency to resent pretty girls; being attracted to them bruised my pride. Also, when meeting a girl to whom I was much attracted, I tended to feel shy, flustered, and at a loss for what to do or say. These feelings were humiliating, and the humiliation roused my resentment. Thus, in contact with a pretty girl, not wishing to reveal my shy awkwardness, I tended to assume a manner that was cold, or even somewhat hostile.

This was not planned, but simply an instinctive reaction ...

... During my first couple of years at Harvard, it seemed to me that there were some instances in which attractive girls invited acquaintance with me. But generally the reaction described above intervened. I got a certain satisfaction out of snubbing a pretty girl — it was like getting revenge on Rthe enemyw for the social rejection I had experienced myself and I felt fiercely

[Page 102 Begins]

... proved that my ego was scoring a victory over sex. But this was a bitter and painful pride, because I wanted very badly to have a girlfriend. Thus, I regretted afterward having been cold to a pretty girl. The very strength of my desire for girls made it even harder for me; I didn’t find it hard to be friendly with a girl whome I found only mildly attractive. But in any case I didn’t when or how to ask for a date. In high school, my social situation was such that I learned nothing about dating customs, and, being largely isolated socially at Harvard, I never learned any such information there, either. Also, the fact that I had no interest in most of the common entertainments meant that it was hard for me to think of any place where I could ask a girl to go with me. Dancing I viewed with utmost contempt.{1} Movies bored me. I might add that, while some men seem proud of their sexual activities with women and regard it as proof of their virility, I have never looked on sex or the “conquest” of women as something to be proud of. To me it is nothing to take pride in any more than eating candy, watching television, or any other soft pleasure. On the contrary, I’ve always considered sex a weakness. Thus, while pride and ego helped me to steel my will to overcome, say, a mathematical problem, pride and ego did not steel my will to overcome my shyness with girls.

Let me illustrate all this with a few examples. When I first got to Harvard, there was a good-looking Miss Been who used to ...

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[Footnote continued from last page] To take just one example, Wagner’s opera Das Rheingold, Scene One: “He who should shape, from the Rheingold, the ring that would give him measureless power, would win for his own the world-inheriitace (or, would inherit the world for his own?) … [But] only he who for wears the power of (sexual) love, only he who drives out the joy of (sexual) love, only he attains the magic to overcome the gold so as to make it into a ring.”

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[Page 102 Ends]

... When all alone in the woods, many times I have done a little dance when feeling very cheerful. A few days ago in the morning I played a record. I got carried away by the music and danced around in a circle waving my arms and laughing delightedly until I was almost too dizzy to stand up ...

... Anyhow, I never did get a girlfriend — or even one date — at Harvard. Consequently, I suffered considerably from acute sexual starvation. I found by experience that I could not study well in Widener library, because my thoughts were too much distracted by the sight of female behinds swaying up and down the aisle. All-male Lamont Library was a refuge for me; but even there on many days my ability to study was severely impaired by a tendency for my thoughts to wander off into day dreams about girls.

I was never attracted by the idea of going to a prostitute. I felt there would be no point in having intercourse unless the woman wanted it too. But even if I had wanted a prostitute, I would have had no idea how to find one ...

... At home in my room, when I got sexually excited, I would either fantasy a variety of oral and anal sexual perversions with either a male or female partner or an animal, or I would fantasy normal intercourse. In imagining normal intercourse, I might put myself either in the male role or in the female role. In imagining myself in the male role, I usually imagined myself as having a greater or lesser amount of affection for the girl. (But still my desires toward girls were mostly just physical ...

... I might imagine myself living a stone-age life all alone in some far wilderness; then I find a beautiful girl off in the woods, injured or in some other danger or difficulty; I rescue her, nurse her back to health, and make her my mate. Fantasies of myself as female had a completely different character. Usually I imagined myself as a sexually hot but unloving female, using her sexual power to seduce males. In many cases I imagined my sex partner as being Dale Eikelman (seep. 50 of these notes), and except when provisionally submitting to him intercourse, I imagined myself as dominating him physically ... in fantasies of myself as a female, the emphasis was always on myself as a girl — the man in the fantasy only served to provide a prick. I have never been sexually attracted to men ...

... I never had a wet dream in my life until I was 22 or 23 years old, probably because I masturbated often enough in my waking hours so that I didn’t have to do so in my sleep. By the time I was 22 or 23., many permanently distended blood-vessels were visible on my penis, presumably because I had erections so often. Because I feared this was physically injurious, I made a serious attempt to keep sexual thoughts out of my head. I made considerable progress at this in my waking hours, but then the sexual thoughts started coming out in my sleep. This was the first time I ever had any wet dreams. I gave up trying to reduce my sexual thoughts, since it seemed they were bound to come one way or another ...

While at Harvard I might have masturbated an average of 4 times a week, at a rough guess ...

... my yearning for Carol Wolman made me so miserable that I felt a need to tell someone about it. So I wrote to my p entsand told them about it. They seemed to be astonished dismayed by this news. But why should they have been ized? What could be more commonplace than a teenage crush? (Ever since my early teens, my parents seem to have held a strangely unrealistic view of me. Their view is still as unrealistic today as it ever was.) In their reply, my parents made some perfunctory expressions of sympathy, because they felt it was their duty to do so, but I did not feel there was any warmth in these expressions. I got the impression that they were displeased because their perfect genius, their source of pride, had revealed a weakness.

In my mother’s letter I got a whiff of that same old “there-must be-something-wrong-with-you” attitude. My mother wrote, “I think it is very important for you to start dating.” Certainly this was very sound advice — just as sound as advising a starving man to “get some food quick”, or advising a poor man to “hurry up and get some money.” When I was home at Christmas and over the summer, my parents never mentioned my infatuation. I once tried to raise the subject with my mother, but got a cool and somewhat embarrassed response. So I had to sweat it out on my own ...

... There was something about Carol Wolman, and especially about her smile, that gave an impression of wildness, and of an indefinable kind of romance. When I first got stuck on her, I used to have fantasies of her as a kind of satyr-like creature from Greek mythology, with the legs of a goat, cavorting on some dian mountainside. She seemed to me like a beautiful le wild animal. Not that there was anything about her that was cc:Yarse or “animal” in the derogatory sense. But to me she had the air of one on whom civilization had not clamped down its vice of artificial restraints and learned mannerisms ...

... But she had been well trained and absorbed her training thoroughly ... I was very disappointed. She was just a goody-liberal. All those mannerisms of hers that suggested to me a certain wildness were just an illusion ...

... But even after that — even today — when I think of Carol Wolman I get a little echo of what I once felt for her.

In recent years I have even dreamed about her a few times ...

... Needless to say, I desired physical contact with Ellen [Arl]. But, because of my extreme ignorance and lack of self-confidence in such matters, it was a long time before I got around to it ... Once she said to me, “Don’t you have any animal desires?” This certainly seemed like a hint that she was inviting physical contact; but what if I was mistaken? I would feel like a great fool if I tried something and it turned out I had misinterpreted. Besides, I didn’t know how to go about making physical advances ...

On one occasion I held hands with her. Finally, on the last date before I went back to Harvard, realizing that this would be the last chance I would have for months, I had sufficient nerve ta .....ask her for a kiss. She agreed of course, so I just put my arm d her shoulders and pressed my mouth against hers. She ground lips into mine, so to speak, by turning her head back and forth in a kind of circular motion. At that time, I hadn’t realized that that is how a sexual kiss is ordinarily performed. I had seen it done that way in the movies, of course, but I had assumed that that was only a Hollywood affectation, a show that they put on, just like the fancy clothes and other romantic ostentation. I wondered whether Ellen had borrowed the idea of kissing that way from the movies. I would have felt foolish doing anything in imitation of things I had seen in the movies.

Anyway, I enjoyed that kiss very much. It was the first good sexual experience I had ever had (unless you want to count the time I tickled Linda Dybas when I was 9 or 10).

Masturbation, sex fantasies, sexual perversions (whether private or with Dale Eikelman) — all these were frustrating and unsatisfying experiences.

The limited pleasure that I got out of them was not enough to compensate for the frustration resulting from the fact that I was not getting what I wanted. But kissing girls is different. The pleasure and satisfaction I get from it is more than enough to compensate for the fact that I wish I were getting a lot more than just kisses. Alas, there have been only 4 occasions in my life when I have had the opportunity for such enjoyment — twice with Ellen Arl (but there were many individual kisses on the second occasion), and twice wi._th Ellen Tarmichael ...

... In spite of the fact that I now had considerable contempt and no affection for Ellen [Arl], I very much enjoyed the physical contact.

But, because of my feelings toward her, the enjoyment was necessarily of a rather detached kind. With one part of my mind I got pleasure from pressing my mouth against hers, while with another part of my mind I looked on the whole process with a kind of amused contempt ...

After having had a taste of physical contact with a girl, for a while I suffered a good deal more from sexual starvation than I had done previously. At times I used to get a powerful craving for the feel of a soft feminine cheek against mine ...

... While I was at Harvard I developed a style of living that most people in modern society would consider quite ascetic, and I have maintained that style of living ever since.

By “ascetic” I mean that I spent almost no money on luxuries, fine clothes, entertainment, and the like. In part this was the result of my inclination toward power. (To get by with a minimum of things is associated with strength and toughness; to wallow in luxury is associated with softness.) But mostly my asceticism was simply due to a lack of interest in the things that money can buy, but whenever I really want something, and can rationally afford it, I buy. For instance, when I lived in California and made a good salary, I wanted a car so I could visit wild areas of the state; so I lost no time in buying a new car. (A 1967 Chevelle. It was a good car. I had it for about 7 years and developed a real affection for it.) For another example, when I went out with Ellen Tarmichael a few months ago, I did not hesitate to spend $32°0 (including $5°0 tip) for a meal for the 2 of us in a gourmet-type restaurant. Thus I am no miser. But I don’t spend money for something unnecessary when I feel I will get no real satisfaction out of it ...

... On page 25 I indicated that it was “fairly obvious” that my bad social experiences in school that followed my skipping 6^th grade were what caused me to have such great difficulty in making advances to girls. However, the reason may not be so simple. (One can tell what one’s feelings are, but sometimes it is difficult to tell what are the ultimate causes of those feelings.) In particular, I wonder about this fact: So far as I know, my brother has had no more sexual contact with women than I have. Is this pure coincidence? One would be inclined to look for some common cause for his celibacy and mine. If there is such a common cause, it is not bad social experiences in school or cutting insults from parents, since my brother never underwent these experiences to any great extent if at all.

Never having discussed this question with my brother, the best an do to answer it is this: There may be such a common cause, but it is not strong enough to be the determining factor -ifl and by itself. Other factors were necessary, but these /\0ther factors in my case were not the same as in my brother’s case. I will not attempt to determine what the other factors were in my brother’s case ...

However, I will explain what I think may be the common causes that hindered both my brother and me from getting girlfriends. For one thing, as a result no doubt of heredity and early family environment (probably mostly the latter), we both grew up with personalities and attitudes that predisposed us to be social outsiders. We both have little respect for most of the human race and areinterested in friendship only with selected individuals. We both have no interest in the values, entertainments, conventions, and social rituals of most of the major social groupings. This by itself would tend to limit our social lives, and therefore limit our opportunities to meet girls ...

... while we like to joke about breaking the law, my brother would never have the nerve to actually commit a crime, and I myself acquired the nerve to break the law only after a long struggle.

the sexes are somehow Rofficial,w that they are to get the same

This relates to our sex lives as follows: Somehow I (and I think also my brother) absorbed the attitude that the relations between

d of respect that is due to authority, that approaching a girl something to be taken as seriously as obeying the law. this is not to be confused with puritanism. We kids were always owed to crack “dirty” jokes at home; my father made dirty jokes, and my mother laughed at them too, though often in a slightly embarrassed way; our parents always led us to feel that sex within marriage is a wholesome thing.) ...

... When I was in my early teens I thought one couldn’t ask a girl for a date unless one had been acquainted with her for a long time. I had heard that one wasn’t supposed to kiss a girl on the first date. So I assumed it was almost prohibited to kiss her on the second date because it would be too obvious that one was trying to kiss her as soon as possible after the minimum waiting period ...

... Naturally, as I grew older, my information improved, and I became less naive, but the conditioned response remained — the inhibitions about approaching girls. I think this same factor has affected my brother ...

... I think that I would have been able to get girlfriends if it were not for the fact that bad experiences at home and (still more) at school destroyed my social self-confidence. My reason for thinking this is that, at the age of 13, before I had the worst of my bad experiences, I did begin making definite advances toward girls, as recorded on p.52 and p.54 of these notes ...

Period From Age 20 – Age 24

... During my last year at Harvard I applied for admission as a graduate student in mathematics to U. of Calif. at Berkeley, to U. of Chicago, and U. of Michigan. All 3 accepted me, but none (at first) offered me a teaching assistantship or any other form of financial support ...

... Accordingly, I went to an employment agency, and separately applied for a job with IBM, where I had been recommended by an acquaintance of my parents who worked there. The employment agency said I made a very good impression on potential employers ...

... But just then I got a letter from the University of Michigan offering me a teaching fellowship. That was what I had wanted ...

... So I went to U. of Michigan in the Fall of 1962, spent 5 years there. These were the most miserable life {except for the first year and the last year). enthusiasm and a high level of self-discipline ...

and I years of my

I started out with

... I still had pretty good morale at the end of the year, ce I had high hopes of getting better teaching next year. ext year the teaching was even worse. That is my morale began to slide rapidly downhill ...

... The fact that I not only passed my courses (except one physics course) but got quite a few A’s, shows how wretchedly low the standards were at Michigan ...

... On the whole, fields at Harvard. small minority ...

I had high respect for the academic standards in scientific At Michigan, the instructors whom I considered good were a

... Sloppy, careless, poorly organized teaching can destroy the morale of many studehts ...

... What was I doing with all the time that I was supposed to be spending on my course work? Mostly I spent it on research problems of my own devising ... the work was excellent training and did much to develop my mathematical ability; but an imbalance in my mathematical knowledge resulted from the fact that I neglected my course work in order to work on my own research problems ...

... Mathematics — even at its best — was only a game ... I needed purposeful activity in the real world ... even though I began to feel profoundly dissatisfied with mathematics, I still got from it an intense pleasure. In retrospect, I look upon this kind of pleasure as .- olesome ...

... During my first 3 years at Michigan I.was a half-time teacher. During my 4^th year I declined to teach, and got by on savings accumulated during my first 3 years; this permitted me to devote full time to thesis and courses. During my 5^th year I held a National Science Foundation Traineeship, which paid my way ...

... I have a certain strain of perfectionism, whereby I become angry, frustrated, and upset whenever I mess up a job that I am doing. It is important to me to do any job right, and in many kinds of work this implies an element of tension ...

... the longer I taught at Michigan, the more contempt I had for the bulk of my students. For this reason, I became a poorer teacher, but not by becoming sloppy in conducting my courses. Exactly the opposite! In teaching, I lived up to certain high standards of my own, but (feeling contempt for the bulk of my students) I took less and less interest in making the material palatable to my students.

My classes consisted more and more of formal, perfect, cold, detached lectures.

The majority of the students I think felt uncomfortable in this atmosphere ..

... My teaching supervisors, who occasionally visited my classes, always told me I did a good job, because I was always well and carefully prepared for my classes; but they sometimes remarked (later in my teaching career) that my classes seemed d”, i.e., unenthusiastic ...

During my 3^rd or 4^th year at Michigan, I was very surprized to be given a prize for supposedly being the “best graduate student in mathematics” ...

... Shortly after I left Michigan permanently, I got a letter from the Math Department. They awarded me a 100 — dollar prize for writing the best thesis in mathematics that year ...

... I had virtually no social life at Michigan, but I didn’t miss it — except that I desired women ... During my 4^th year at Michigan I stayed in a rooming house ... supposedly a men’s rooming house ... [a couple] had the room next to mine. I didn’t realize the situation until one evening I heard them screwing. They certainly made plenty of noise about it. I suppose the bitch was squealing so loud because she found it sexually exciting to advertise to everyone what she was doing. Anyhow, it made me very angry, for these reasons: It roused my sexual feelings, which was unpleasant because I had no means of gratifying them in a satisfactory way, and this sexual frustration distracted me from my thesis work. Moreover, it roused my jealousy, especially since this couple seemed to be vaunting their sexual activities by being so unabashedly noisy ...

... I made it

— relationships almost a matter of principle to close on any but the most superficial level ... myself against social

... I had long since lost interest in romantic ideas. But my desire for a wilderness life independent of civilization grew stronger than ever...I had made no progress against the social and psychological obstacles; I felt trapped in my pattern of life; I felt I lacked the social courage to break away ...

... The Vietnam war was on, and, while I approved of exterminating gooks, I preferred to have someone other than myself get his legs blown off by a land mine. If I quit my mathematical career, I could expect to get drafted. Actually, I wasn’t all that much afraid of being sent to Vietnam. While I abhored the idea of getting crippled, I was somewhat attracted by the idea of shooting it out with the Commies (I have always hated Communism and Socialism).

But I felt that submitting to military discipline would be an intolerable indignity. I couldn’t stand the idea of being arbitrarily pushed around and abused by loud-mouthed sergeants. I felt sure that if I were drafted, one of 2 things would happen: Either I would go AWOL in desperation, or else in a fit of rage I would shoot some bullying sergeant ...

... Even if I could never break away physically, I would never let organized society capture my heart and mind; I would never become a docile and willing slave in the machine; I would never permit self to give in to morality and conscience, which are among biggest and heaviest chains by which society enslaves our minds. course I did have a conscience in the sense of conditioned responses, but my conscious will rebelled against this ...

... I described my growing discouragement with mathematics. I have also described my growing hopelessness about leading the wilderness life I wanted. I had no sexual or social relationships to provide any consolation for my fundamental dissatisfaction with life in modern society. Thus, by the end of my 4^th year at Michigan, I was deeply demoralized, discouraged, and bitter ...

... By this time I had become completely alienated from the entire human race. I had broken free of all institutionalized values. I had achieved a great degree of inner solitude and isolation. (To quote from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, “I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low .... There was nothing either above or below him .... He had kicked himself loose of the earth ... He was alone.”) I made it a principle to avoid all social feelings insofar as possible. There was no one whom I respected and no one whose friendship I desired. This situation had existed to a greater or lesser degree for many years previously, but by my 4^th year at Michigan it had reached an extreme ...

... I sometimes wish today that I could recover that complete psychological isolation ... I wished that I could permanently remove all my al instincts, so that I would no longer be nagged by desires that I couldn’t satisfy

... The perversions I occasionally practiced consisted of transvestism (with crudely improvised imitations of female clothing) and inserting my finger or other objects in my anus. But mostly my sexual activities consisted of ordinary masturbation accompanied by erotic fantasies. These fantasies were either of normal sex with a woman., or of myself as a woman, or of oral or anal perversions. However, as I became more and more completely hopeless about ever getting a girlfriend, the fantasies of normal sex with a woman declined and were more and more replaced by fantasies of sexual perversions or of myself as a woman ...

... By my third year at Michigan, though I still could hardly keep my eyes off good-looking girls, I had closed my heart against them. Since I felt sure I would never have any kind of sexual relationship with any of them, it was less painful, frustrating, and humiliating to simply close off all hope and hate all goodlooking women ...

... finally I got disgusted with the whole thing, and angry, and said to myself, “What am I doing here working up a sweat trying to phone some stupid broad. It’s an indignity. To hell with it. I don’t need any damn women.” This incident was a major step in making me completely hopeless about ever getting a girlfriend. I tended to close my heart against women. (Against people erally, for that matter ...

ing my U. of Michigan period I no longer felt ashamed of my perverted sexual fantasies in the same way that I did at the age of, say 15. That is, I still felt more or less revulsion after orgasm associated with a perverted fantasy; and I felt thoroughly and strongly disgusted after orgasm whenever I had spent a long period playing with perversions, especially when I feared I might be damaging my health through prolonged accelerated heartbeat and prolonged erection, or when I wasted, on perversion, time that I should have spent on some task. But, on the other hand, when I looked back on my sexual fantasies and activities from a little distance of time, I no longer felt any particular shame about them. Though of course I was very careful to keep these activities concealed, since I knew how other people would react to them ...

... During my Michigan years I began occasionally having dreams of a type that I have continued to have occasionally over a period of several years. In the dream I would feel either that organized society was hounding me with accusations in some way, or that organized society was trying in some way to capture my mind and tie me down psychologically, or both. In the most typical form, some psychologist or psychologists (often in association with parents or other minions of “the system”) would either be trying to convince me that I was “sick”, or ld be trying to control my mind through psychological techniques.

uld be on the dodge, trying to escape or avoid the chologists either physically or in other ways. But I would grow angrier, and finally I would break out in physical violence against r the psychologist and his allies. At the moment when I broke out into violence and killed the psychologist 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 having broken out into violence, but at the same time with some frustration at the fact that my victims wouldn’t stay dead. However, in the course of some dreams, by making a strong effort of will in my sleep, I was able to make my victim stay dead. I think that, as the years went by, the frequency with which I was able to make my victim stay dead through exertion of my will increased ...

Period From Age 24 – Age 27

... During the summer following my 4^th year at Michigan ... I had become thoroughly discouraged with mathematics. Music, reading, and other hedonistic pursuits bored me if indulged in to more than a limited extent. Thus, my life began to seem completely empty. I felt that I had nothing to look forward to or to live for...There was much talk in the news media about eliminating draft deferments for teachers. I felt there was a serious risk that I might be drafted...I was full of hatred for organized society and for many of the people around me, and the fact that I could not get revenge on those I hated was an additional depressing factor. Thus my morale sank to the zero point. It was lower than at any other period before or since …

... the extreme low morale that I experienced in the latter part of the summer after my 4^th year at Michigan led to the second of the 2 episodes in my life that I am really ashamed of. I got into a state where, for I guess about the last 2 or 3 weeks of the summer, I was more or less sexually excited nearly all the time, with fantasies of myself as a woman. It makes me squirm to think of it, but I actually decided to make an effort to have a sex-change operation. It was not that I imagined I would be happy as a woman, or that I had a favorable view of womanhood, or any such thing as that. It was simply that the idea of being a woman, and having intercourse as such, was extremely titillating sexually. This was because, to me, femininity has always been extremely exciting sexually, whether the femininity was present in myself (as in my fantasies of being a woman) or in someone else; and because fantasies of taking a feminine role in sex provided ego-negation or self-surrender, if you prefer to call it that. (For my opinions concerning the sexual excitement provided by self-surrender, or what I have called ego-negation, see my recent journal notes. [Early 1979 journal notes.] I have since learned that a far more satisfactory sense of self-surrender in sex fantasies is obtained by loving a woman than by imagining myself in a physically feminine role, but I cannot feel a sufficiently unreserved and open-hearted kind of love for women when I feel rejected by them ...

... Anyhow, during the stated period, I was constantly having sexual fantasies of myself as a woman. When the excitement got too intense, I would masturbate, but within a few minutes after orgasm I would get excited again. During those few minutes after orgasm I would feel intense revulsion. I would feel that death would be a better fate than having a sex-change operation.

But death was all I had to look forward to. As explained above, I had no hope for anything. Aside from the unwholesome pleasure of constant sexual excitement, everything seemed like a black, dismal dead-end. Thus it is not surprising that I would promptly get sexually excited again ...

... When I got back to the U. of Michigan, I made an appointment to see one of their psychiatric counselors. You may be sure that my purpose in doing this was emphatically NOT to be ‘cured’ or ‘treated’ or have my mind altered or meddled with in any way...I knew that you can’t just purchase a sex-change operation by walking into the surgeon’s office and plunking down your money. You first have to be examined by psychiatrists who decide such an operation would be “good” for you. Anyhow, I didn’t know where to go for such an operation. I knew that if I frankly revealed myself to the psychiatrist, he would not decide that such an operation would be good for me, because certainly I was not suited to a feminine role in life — my motive was exclusively erotic. But I hoped that, by putting on an act, I could con the psychiatrists into thinking me able for a feminine role, so that they would help me to obtain a sex-change operation. I seem to be pretty good at concealing my feelings and playing a role before other people, so it’s possible I might have been able to fool the psychiatrists ...

... However, as the time approached for the appointment, I felt a certain revulsion setting in. While I was sitting in the waiting room I turned completely against the idea of the operation. So when I went in to see the doctor, I just gave him a bullshit story about being depressed about the possibility of being drafted ...

... As I walked away from the building afterward I felt disgusted at what my uncontrolled sexual cravings had almost led me to do, and I felt humiliated, and I violently hated the psychiatrist. Just then there came a major turning point in my life. Like a phoenix I rose from the ashes of my despair to glorious new hope. (I ask the reader to pardon the melodramatic language. When I write like that, it is with a sly grin.) ...

... I wanted to kill that psychiatrist. Because the future looked utterly empty to me, I felt I wouldn’t care if I died. And so I said to myself,

“Why not really kill that psychiatrist and anyone else whom I hate.” 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 hopelessness had liberated me. Because I no longer cared about death, I no longer cared about consequences, and I suddenly felt that I really could break out of my rut in life and do things that were daring, “irresponsible”, or criminal.

My first thought was to kill somebody I hated and then kill myself before the cops could get me. (I’ve always considered death preferable to long imprisonment.) But, since I now had new hope, I was not ready to relinquish life so easily. So I thought, “I will kill, but I will make at least some effort to avoid detection, so that I can kill again.” Then I thought, “Well, as long as I am going to throw everything up anyway, instead of having to shoot it out with the cops or something, I will do what I’ve always wanted to do, namely, I will go up to Canada, take off into the woods[s/o] with a rifle, and try to live off the country. If that doesn’t work out, and if I can get back to civilization before I starve, then I will eeme come back here and kill someone I hate.” What was new here was the fact that I now felt I really had the courage to behave “irresponsibly”.

.. All these thoughts passed through my head in length of time it took me to walk a quarter of a mile. By the end of that time I had acquired bright new hope, an angry, vicious kind of determination, and high morale.

I didn’t feel I wanted to take off into the wilderness in autumn, with the cold northern winter coming on, and besides, I would need a little money ... I promptly embarked on a consciencious program of physical conditioning, mainly running and walking ... And I made a new, vigorous effort in learning to recognize edible wild plants, so that I began to learn new plant species rather rapidly ...

... My morale remained very high all that year ... I ceased to have trouble with sexual excitement. That is, my sexual feelings did not disappear, but whenever I got excited I would promptly masturbate to relieve myself, and so sex never caused me much trouble that year ...

... I had no social life at this time and more than ever I made it a principle to be both asocial and amoral (but it is important to understand that these two are not the same thing!). I often had fantasies of killing the kind of people whom I hated {e.g. govern- ment officials, police, computer scientists, behavioral scientists, the rowdy type of college students who left their piles of beer-cans in the Arboretum, etc., etc., etc.) and I had high hopes of eventually committing such crimes ...

... But I had not actually been liberated from my conditioned “bitions against defying authority overtly. What I had acquired was strength and hopefulness to actively fight those inhibitions ...

... my room got smelly for several reasons: I would sometimes leave half-eaten cans of tunafish standing for a few hours before finishing them; I never ate in restaurants, but only in my room, so that there was food garbage in my trash can; I would gather, keep, and eat wild garlic and onions, which are very strongsmelling; I seldom bothered to open my windows, so that these odors would accumulate, along with farts; during most of my life I have tended to bathe infrequently ...

... I never was foolish enough to complain to those stupid [neighbor] jocks when they were having one of their roaring, drunken parties, because I know they would only have ridiculed me if I did so.)

One time, angry at having been kept awake by one of their parties, I sneaked down in the dark before dawn and put a piece of broken glass under one wheel of their car, so that they would roll over it when backing out. (This I think is the first thing I ever did that might have got me into minor trouble with the police if I’d been caught.) ...

... I also did them another dirty trick ... Just as I was moving out of the place at the end of the year, I told [the landlady] about the fact that the jocks were screwing girls in their apartment ...

I think it was in January, 1967 that I received a letter the Mathematics Department at the University of California at Berkeley offering me a position there as Assistant Professor ...

... The Berkeley offer was for only around 9,000, but I accepted that, because I figured that California had more wilderness opportunities to offer than Southern Michigan. Since I was still intending to take off to the wilderness, I have to explain why I accepted any offer at all. My hopelessness had led to a certain psychological liberation which in turn had given me hope. But since I now had high hopes in life I again became cautious. Instead of making the rash gamble of taking off into the woods unprepared, I wanted to do the job more carefully. I wanted to buy a plot of land, put up a cabin, live there, and then after familiarizing myself with the surrounding country I could hope to live far off where no one would know my location, so that I would be completely detached from society. But this plan would take a little money, so that I intended to teach for one or at most 2 years to accumulate the cash..

I wanted to get some money before trying to go live in the woods, so in Fall, 1967 I went to Berkeley ...

... Reactions to my teaching were quite varied. Some classes seemed to hate me while others thought I was very good. Students of engineering and the like seemed to have the most negative reaction to me. I think they disliked my formal approach and my distant manner. Also, spect that students who wouldn’t work diligently sensed my contempt them ...

... At Berkeley, as usual, I had virtually no social life, and mostly I continued to purposely avoid social relationships (except that I would have been very glad to get a girlfriend if I had had an opportunity and had been able to make good use of it). I had no social contacts with my colleagues and didn’t desire any. I had no respect for any of them ...

... My recreations at Berkeley consisted, as before, almost exclusively of reading and outdoor activities. My reading centered around true accounts of the adventures of explorers, frontiersmen, Indians, etc ...

... One time, on one of my walks in the Berkeley Hills, I was coming up into a residential area from off a steep, rough hillside below it. I was coming up along a narrow little path, rather disshevelled and dressed in my raggedy old jacket. Some kids were entering the path, and just after I passed them I heard one murmur, “He looks like he was out there all night.” Another one mumbled, “Wino”. This both amused and pleased me..

... During this period I found it necessary to begin disciplining myself to avoid reading newspapers except just occasionally, because if I read the papers regularly I would build up too much tense, frustrated anger against politicians, dictators, businessmen, scientists, communists, and others in the world who were doing things that endangered me or changed the world in ways that I resented.

Five examples of just a few of the things that I resented: The that my life depended on the decisions of dictators and politicians who had atom bombs at their disposal; boosters in the political and business worlds who pushed economic and population growth, thereby increasing air pollution, noise, over-crowding, and destruction of such wilderness as remained; scientists and engineers whose discoveries and inventions encouraged economic growth, and population growth by increasing food-supply*, and increased the power of society to control individuals by either physical or psychological means; groups that pushed collectivist ideologies, which I feared might change society in such a way as to restrict my personal autonomy even further ...

... As for sex, at Berkeley, I rarely practiced perversions or had prolonged sex-fantasies, because I would usually masturbate promptly whenever I got excited, so that sex didn’t get much grip on me.

My sex fantasies were either of having normal intercourse with a woman, or of being a woman myself and having intercourse that way. I made no sort of advances toward women during my 2 years at Berkeley. I felt myself unattractive to women ...

... here is where my one great weakness — my social weakness — interfered. I was too self-conscious ... I feared people would think me foolish or peculiar if they knew I proposed to go off into the woods for 2 weeks alone; and still more so if they knew I wanted to live as a hermit ...

... Thus, I had a great social problem in trying to bridge the gap between civilization and the wilderness ... Doubtless the reader will think it weak of me to have not overcome this problem — and I freely admit that I do have a great weakness in the social sphere ...

... There have been ... occasions in my life when I have been a little surprized and perplexed at learning that certain other people know more about me than I expected. Perhaps they learn these things via the “grapevine”. Ever since my high-school days it has seemed to me that I learn much less by way of the grapevine than other people do. I suppose it’s a natural consequence of my social isolation.

Anyhow, I left Berkeley in Spring, 1969 and set off looking for land for a cabin-site ...

Period From Age 27 On

Much of the information for this period is contained in my journals and other notes. Therefore, I will only cover here, perhaps in a disorganized way, that information for this period which I do not remember covering in my other notes. Also, I expect to include some general information about my personality. And I may go back and record some occurences from earlier periods, since I omitted some occurences that I would have liked to include, because I feared I would never finish this account if I tried to put everything in.

As long as this section is probably going to be disorganized anyway, I can just as well begin by stating my motives for writing these autobiographical notes.

I intend to start killing people. If I am successful at this, it is possible that, when I am caught (not alive, I fervently hope!) there will be some speculation in the news media as to my motives for killing (As in the case of Charles Whitman, who killed some 13 people in Texas in the 60’s). If such speculation occurs, they are bound to make me out to be a sickie, and to ascribe to me motives of a sordid or “sick” type. Of course, the term “sick” in such a context represents a value-judgement. I am not very concerned about the negative value — judgements that will be made about me, but it does anger me that the facts of my psychology will be misrepresented. For that reason I have attempted to give here an account of my own personality and its development that will be as accurate as possible.

Desire for self-expression. From my early teens, I have never had any strong desire to communicate with another another human being on an intimate level, or to “unload” any of my troubles by talking about them, except in 2 cases. One was when I was so desperately in love with Carol Wolman. The other has been over the last few months, after my desire for women was strongly brought to life by Ellen Tarmichael. This so strongly roused my life-long frustration at not being able to get a girl, that I wished very much that there were someone I could talk to about it.

So I partly relieved myself by writing about my past social life — or lack of social life, I should say.

Since passing the age of about 30, I have enjoyed reminiscing about my past life. A sign of aging, I suppose.

Item 1. induces these remarks: As I said, if I succeed in killing enough people, the news media my have something to say about me when I am killed or caught. And they are bound to try to analyse my psychology and depict me as “sick”. In this connection I would point out that many tame, conformist types seem to have a powerful need to depict the enemy of society as sordid, repulsive, or “sick”.{2} This powerful bias should be borne in mind in reading any attempts to analyse my psychology. Also bear in mind that psychoanalytic type theories are without adequate scientific foundation. (I recently read a small part of a book called “your own true love” by a psychiatrist named Robertiello. If I remember correctly, this author stated that studies have shown that, in psychotherapy, the psychiatric theory followed by the therapist is of little importance, and that the personality of the therapist is the important factor in “curing” the patient. Of course, many of the various poycha psychiatric theories are mutually contradictory; so, if they are all equally effective in “curing patients”, this suggests that none of the theories actually are objectively true.)

Be that as it may, I think that there are certain qualities of my mind that could be described as intellectual rather than emotional which have been of central importance in determining my development. I refer to my strong tendency to think everything over in a careful, disciplined, analytic way; to turn things over and over in my mind until I have seen them from every angle. I also refer to the fact that my mind is very “closely organized” in the sense I have used that term in my essay on purpose. One way in which these characteristics have been of critical importance for me is this: They have (by and large) prevented me from using or being used by?>the self-deceptions, escapisms, and other other shams that make life in modern society tolerable for many other people. (Of course, I am not claiming to be totally free of self-deception; only to be much freer of it than the average person, including the average high-intelligence person.)

Also, I want to say this about my motives for wanting to kill people: As is indicated in some of my other notes, my central motive for wanting to get revenge on society is that organized society is destroying such opportunities as remain for an independent life in wild country, and is also closing off all other avenues to personal autonomy ...

Some readers will argue: “You are really looking for revenge for the social rejection you have experienced, and are seeking an outlet for frustrations related to this social rejection.” This argument, as stated, is incorrect in my opinion. However, I think it contains important elements of truth. Let me explain.

I think that the powerful resentments I experienced as a result of being treated with contempt or condescension have caused me to have a strong tendency to anger. (This I suppose can be partly explained in neurological terms; the neural pathways associated with anger and hatred were probably reinforced through frequent use during my teens. But also there is the fact that this hatred had to be stifled, as a matter of prudence. This resulted in frustration which in turn strengthened the hatred.) Of course I still hate cliques and in-groups and people having the personality-types of those who rejected me ...

But this does not change the fact that I have a powerful source of hatred independent of social rejection: The fact that organized society frustrates my very powerful urge for physical freedom and personal autonomy. The situation can be described this way: My bad social experiences created a predisposition to hatred, which probably greatly increased the strength of my reaction to the frustration of my urge for personal freedom ...

There is no doubt that I would have been a happy man if I could have lived alone in the wilderness with no kind of interference from society. Often, when I was alone in the woods and for a long time had suffered no annoyances from people or society, my anger would fade away, and I would have a good feeling toward the human race — but only until I was awakened at night by a sonic boom, or disturbed by the sound of a motorcycle tearing up the mountain meadows, or reminded of the fact that my health might be dependent on the judgement of the jerks responsible for maintaining storage facilities for atomic waste…

…presumably my anger at these things was made greater by the predisposition Kc,-, nger that I acquired due to social rejection ...

…I might add that when I have experienced anger from sources other than technological progress, invasion of wilderness, etc; I often have made a conscious effort to turn this hatred against organized society, technology, etc., because I regardd0 organized society, technology, etc. as my greatest enemy. I feel I can never get enough revenge on organized society, technology, etc., so that ideally that should be the object of all my hatred ...

What people who hold a steady job through most of their lives I regard as part of the system, as more-or- voluntary participants in the technological society. I would like to get revenge on all such people, and also on all people who do much buying of unnecessary luxuries, since such buying promotes economic growth. The only people I regard as more or less “innocent” are social drop-outs of various types, and those who border on being social drop-outs by working only sporadically and buying not very much beyond their physical needs. (For example, my parents are part of the system and therefore are “enemies”. My brother on the other hand I consider to be more or less “innocent”.)

... Of course, my resentment of people who are part of the system is in some cases overcome by personal feelings ...

... I of course have the greatest hatred for those who make the biggest contributions to the system, such as businessmen, scientists, and politicians ...

... Throughout most of my life I have had a sense of inner strength. This has been especially marked ever since that turning point in my life that occurred at age 24. However, it has not given me social confidence ...

In recent years there has been an important change in my feelings toward people. But before explaining this, let me go back and review some of my feelings toward people from childhood. I have said that in childhood I was attracted to power and aggression. For instance, I found war stories and war games attractive and exciting…

... Toward someone for whom I had a definite resentment my feelings could be very hard. Also, I had a tendency to favor stern punishment of anyone who broke rules laid down by authority. Also, in some cases, I could sometunes be drawn by other kids into sadistic harassment of someone ...

... As I got into my teens, I think I became callous and uncompassionate. I speculate that this may have been in part due to biological changes associated with puberty in males. But certainly part of it must have been the result of the resentment I felt toward the whole human race on account of the way I was treated by my schoolfellows and parents. This in my early teens ... From the age of about 17, I tended to feel more and more compassionate and sympathetic as time went on toward people’s hurt feelings ... I mean such things as the loss of some great life-long aspiration, or a mother’s loss of her child). I had virtually no compassion for members of social in-groups, and I was most inclined to feel sympathetic toward people who were most rejected socially ...

... Despite all the foregoing remarks, toward physical suffering I have remained very callous, as judged by the standards of modern society. Also toward physical fear I am callous.

For example, once while out walking during my last year at Michigan I came on a small crowd of people standing around a college girl lying in the street who evidently had just been hit by a car ... So far as one could judge from appearances, this girl seemed like the very personification of stupid mediocrity, both physically and mentally. I did not feel the slightest pity for this girl. In fact, I was rather amused by her injury, and I had to restrain myself from smiling, so as to avoid shocking the other bystanders ...

... In three other cases I have seen people injured in automobile accidents (in one case some of the people evidently had been killed), and I felt no pity for them. In fact, I was usually pleased at their injuries, because they looked like the type of people whom I would dislike. But in a couple of these cases I was sobered by what I saw, thinking, “That could happen to me if I’m not careful”. But that doesn’t mean I felt any compassion ...

... I have mixed feelings toward my parents; I strongly resent them, and have no real affection for them, but nevertheless I have a kind of pity for them, and would feel sorry for them in any adversity ...

... One time in a supermarket market around 1969/1970(?) I saw a woman looking anxiously around and calling her child’s name. A little further on I saw a small boy hurrying along an aisle looking extremely anxious ... but he kept himself under control, rather than bawling or running frantically. Thus I respected him. If he had just acted like a squalling brat, I probably would have thought it would be a pleasure to bash his head in…

... I have indicated before that I am attracted to power. This requires explanation. In personal relationships, I do not like to dominate other people. I absolutely cannot endure being dominated by anyone else ... and in doing anything with other people, I have a strong desire to make all the decisions, but I hate to dominate anyone, because I don’t want to hurt their feelings — knowing well myself, from my high school days, how it feels to be dominated ...

... I think I am better at taking pain than the average person is. For example, think it was about 6 years ago that I asked a dentist to drill my teeth without anesthetic. (I feel vaguely uncomfortable at the idea of having those narcotics or whatever they are shot into me.) The cavity was a deep one, and the dentist remarked 2 or 3 times while he was drilling, “Gee, you’re a hard guy to hurt!” I was feeling pain, certainly, but had no difficulty keeping control, and did not feel that I was seriously suffering. For that matter, when I was a little kid, the dentists never used to use anesthetics when drilling cavities, and ever had any trouble taking it, even when the cavity was deep ... A conscious effort at stoicism helps ...

... But let us get back the subject of power. The kind of power that has attracted me most, in adult life at least, is power of a physical rather than social kind… I never had an ambition to be dominant in personal relationships ...

... When, in my teens, I had fantasies of becoming a dictator, it was not exactly social dominance that rested me. I dreamed of getting revenge on those I hated; I dreamed of being an orator rousing mobs to a frenzy of revolutionary violence; I dreamed of manipulating vast world-shaking forces. I did not dream of dominance in personal relationships. I wasn’t interested in personal relationships to any great extent ...

... Either I would imagine myself getting power and rebuilding society so as to guarantee maximum individual autonomy; this accomplished, I would retire to spend the rest of my life in some isolated wilderness. Or else I would imagine myself becoming a dictator then wiping out the human race by means of an atomic war or some such thing ...

(As I became more and more aware of the extreme difficulty of reforming society so as to guarantee what I cons der sufficient individual autonomy without wiping out 99.99% of the human race, I leaned more and more toward the second type of dictator fantasy.) ...

... between the ages of about 20 and 30, I used to have a fantasy that I found extremely pleasant, and at times I would wish ardently that it were possible: I dreamed of waking up in the morning and finding that every human being but myself had disappeared from the face of the earth. Then I would have the whole world all to myself ...

... Now, as indicated earlier, During my last couple of years at Michigan and my years at Berkeley, I was extremely alienated from the entire human race ... After I left Berkeley, my feelings toward people very gradually began to soften ... I’m not even absolutely certain that it began before I’d spent a year alone in the mountains in 1971–72. But I very gradually became more ready to like certain individuals, to warm up to them ... It’s difficult to say what the cause of this was. Part of it may have been simple mellowing with age. It may have been partly due to getting away from the university intellectuals ... Among the working class I found more individuals whom I liked or respected ...

... In 1973 I first discovered that I liked small children very much ... I thought it would be very pleasant to be like a father to them ... I have often thought how pleasant it would be to raise a son. However, this thought is always spoiled by the following consideration: I would have to either encourage a son to be a rebel against the technological society, in which case he would almost certainly have to suffer the unhappiness of eat, since escape from and successful rebellion against the technological society both are becoming impossible; or else I would have encourage him to acquiesce in the technological society, in which case he would be despicable; or else I could encourage him neither way and leave him to make his own choice between being defeated on the one hand or despicable on the other ...

... Anyhow, as I grew older, I gradually grew less unwilling to like people ... But the biggest change in my feelings toward other people has occurred within the last year.{3} This is described in detail in my journal notes for the last year ...

By this time, I think of psychological intimacy with a woman as being even more important to me than physical intimacy. In my sex fantasies, what turns me on more than anything else is the idea of opening my soul to a woman...This was true to some extent even before I met Ellen Tarmichael, but since knowing her I have felt this in a much fuller and stronger way ...

... To me this woman was not just a physically desirable object, she was someone toward whom I had a certain personal relationship; she was a personality toward whom I had certain feelings ...

Physically, classic regularity of face and figure in a woman is less important to me than these factors: a woman should be of good biological quality, with a firm, vigorous body, healthy-looking skin, and hands that are small but strong and capable. Athletic ability in a woman is attractive to me — but not the kind of athletic ability that depends on a lot of muscle, since heavily-muscled women are physically unfeminine…

... Very much in contrast to my attitude during my teens and even during my twenties, I now find women attractive in their maternal role… one fairly common fantasy that I’ve had during the last year is that of a woman with a baby at her breast. I imagine myself putting my arms around the woman and the baby together, with a strong desire to protect and care for them ...

... Despite all the foregoing remarks, I have a deep-seated contempt for women. To some extent this is a contempt for individual women, but to a greater extent it is a contempt for the general idea of womanhood...Social, rather than technical interests. Less ego than men… Dependence … Timidity and excessive need for physical security… Irrationality. Hysterical tendencies… Excessive need for respectability and social status. Excessive concern with clothing... I will not argue the point, but will simply state my opinion that probably most of the abovementioned traits of women are based on biologically-determined predispositions ...

When I was up in the mountains, I had very little sexual desire. My sexual fantasies were usually of very low intensity and quite perfunctory. Sometimes in the evening, if I had trouble getting to sleep, I would intentionally excite myself with a brief fantasy, masturbate, and pop off as quickly as possible. Then I would usually drop right off to sleep. I did not feel sexually frustrated, usually.

But occasionally, if I went to town on some errand and happened to speak to an attractive girl, For a week or 2 afterward I might suffer from an intense desire for a sexual relationship. But by and by this would fade out and I would feel OK again ...

... I would willingly have stolen money from the government if I could get away with it, but applying for welfare would put me in a position of a supplicant and also would put me under the supervision of the welfare dept.) I felt I would rather take to robbery (surely with fatal results for me, in the end) than apply for welfare or beg from my parents. Of course, it may be that if I had got hungry enough...I would have “chickened out” and applied for welfare — I don’t know, not having actually gotten that desperate. But still, when I scrounged for meat, firewood, etc., it was not just to gratify my ego or keep occupied or because I was told to do it; I did this work to prevent myself from having to choose between alternatives that to me were horrible and unacceptable, namely, starvation or applying for welfare ...

... I decided not to apply for work anymore — in fact I acquired a powerful aversion for making any such [TEXT OBSCURED]ication ... Perhaps even greater than my aversion for applying welfare ...

It is true that my parents sent me occasional gifts of money (without my asking for it) amounting to about $35000 a year, and this was almost all the money I had… what is more important is the fact that I felt independent of that $35000/year. I had little fear of the consequences of having it withdrawn — even though, without it, I couldn’t have kept my belly full without poaching deer, or stealing, or the like, so extensively that I would surely be caught. Still, I wasn’t afraid of this — not much, anyway. I didn’t hesitate to insult my parents when I felt it, even though I didn’t know how this might affect their propensity to send me checks from time to time. I felt very much that I was on my own to an extent that is not possible when one functions as a regular part of organized society …

... I was warm toward some of them. But I fear some readers may get an exaggerated idea of this change, so I will qualify what I said....

First, I still have as much hostility as ever toward people participating in or contributing to things that interfere with my life or threaten what I value. But most people in modern society do contribute to things that interfere with my life or threaten what I value. So, one day I might like a fellow and feel friendly toward him. But, the next day, if I see him riding a snowmobile, boarding an airliner, performing technological research, doing anything that promotes economic growth, or any other such activity, then I will want to kill him. And I would do it, too, if only it were safe ...

Moreover, I retain a great capacity for cold, bad hard feelings against people. To some extent, I can turn on my cold or my warm feelings at will toward a person. I cannot completely control my cold or warm feelings, but I can do so to a certain extent. For instance, I mentioned, on page 204, three children toward whom I had warm feelings to determine whether I was developing too much of a tie with them, I asked myself whether I would be psychologically capable of killing them if I had something very important to gainby it, and I decided that I would be capable of killing them, provided I were relieved of the fear of being punished for it. Anyhow, I could comfortably picture in my thoughts the idea of killing them.

(However, when I am infatuated with a woman, I am not able to make myself feel cold toward her. And it is probable that through long association with a small child, I would develop a strong attachment which would prevent me from feeling cold toward it)

Furthermore, the idea of being tied down emotionally, or in any other way, to another person often gives me a kind of sick, nauseated feeling. Even when infatuated with a woman, I am apt to experience an occasional wave of nausea at the idea that I could be permanently tied to her by my own feelings. It makes me feel sick to think of being tied down or trapped or having my autonomy restricted in any way ...

May 1 [1979]. Sometimes I feel such an acute longing for sex that it is almost unbearable. It was easier when I was younger and only suffered from physical lust with a big hard on that could be relieved by masturbation. Now masturbation brings only a limited amount of relief, because what I want is much more than just a screw. I want a screw very much, but I also want the rest of what goes into a love-relationship between a man and a woman, and this presents a picture to that is so intensely pleasurable that sometimes I can hardly stand not to have it. Especially since it represents a life-long frustration. I have written the same things before in these notes; I write them again in different words only to relieve my feelings.

[Page 108(?) Begins]

… except when final exams were approaching, or when I was heading to finish my thesis before the deadline, I always put my outdoor activities first. I spent much time in the library trying to look up and identify plants. I had found and I had purchased Fernald and Kinseys excellent book “Edible wild plants of eastern North America” and other books on edible plants. I did a great deal of reading of first-hand accounts of Indiana Forest Indians as members of their tribes. Anthropologists accounts of primtives first to contact of descriptions of taboos, rituals, social customs, etc. This tells us no more about these societies than our own society. To know what it really feels like to live in a primitive society, we should need the accounts of those who have wholly or at least partly shared the goals of the members of that society, rather than viewing that society as an object of scientific curiosity. The accounts I read of men who lived with the Indians—including some who were captured in childhood and grew up as Indians – seem to indicate that many eastern forest groups had a very free and individualistic kind of life. At times the Indians would gather together in villages. At other times they would disperse at will in small groups, as for the winter hunt. Small groups of hunters might wander off into the forest for long periods, obeying only their own sweet will. These groups could break up and recombine with other groups. For instance, one white man who lived as an Indian for five years described how he spent a winter with only an old Indian far off in the forest with only one Indian for company. Once a solitary Indian of another tribe came into their camp and they gave him some meat… but I am digressing too far.

Anyhow, I do want to say that it is not really essential for …

* I suggest that the goals that are in practice persued by most primitive societies in a [TEXT OBSCURED] undisturbed state are predominantly (not exclusively) materialistic (food, shelter, [TEXT OBSCURED] this quite wholesome except when material goods become so [TEXT OBSCURED] longer makes sense to continue persuing them. But this (over)

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Photos of the Autobiography

{1} I mean dancing as a social ritual. Dancing as a sp[TEXT OBSCURED]

{2} An example: A “responsible” historian named Robert Waite, in a book titled (I think) “The psychopathic God” gave a physical description of Hitler. … Anyone reading that description, without having seen a picture of Hitler would assume that Hitler must have been grotesque in appearance. Of course, photographs of Hitler show him to have been a very ordinary-looking person, neither handsome nor ugly. (I mean ordinary-looking if you discount his supposedly “hypnotic” eyes and facial expression.) I am certainly not defending hitler. I am only pointing out how some people have a need to depict the enemy of society as grotesque.

Anyone reading that discription, without having seen a picture of Hitler would assume that Hitler must have been grotesque in appearance. Of course, photographs of Hitler show him to have been a very ordinary-looking person, neither handsome nor ugly. (I mean ordinary-looking if you ...

{3} Today’s date is April 30, 1979.