the essential
Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Toulouse, Jean-Baptiste Dethieux publishes “Ordinary monsters – Clinic and theory of conformism” (In Press editions). Why do we obey? How far can pathological conformism lead? A fascinating – and enlightening – read.
“Ordinary monsters” are these ordinary humans who, one day, turn upside down. Fascinated by a “barbaric ideal”, or object of “blind internal violence”, they obey the most despicable orders, committing the worst misdeeds in all (apparent) innocence. Drawing on numerous historical and literary examples, from Adolf Eichmann to Hannah Arendt via Meursault de the Stranger, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and the works of Bacon, Dethieux analyzes with acuity and while taking care to keep his text readable to all, an ordinary madness, a banal deviation. Encounter.
Is man one of these “ordinary monsters”, a monster who ignores himself, who has not had the opportunity to reveal his monster side?
Man is a monster, of course, but he is often an extraordinary monster. I was interested in showing to what extent he can become an ordinary monster. He is someone who can walk along walls, be all-purpose, who will not be talked about until this raptus [le terme désigne une impulsion violente et soudaine pouvant pousser à commettre un acte grave, NDLR], this taking action. Real monsters never look like monsters.
Tell us about Stanley Milgram’s experiment from 1963, which you mention in the book: does obedience mean the annihilation of free will, of courage?
This experience is quite phenomenal to the extent that, indeed, the result, if I may say so, far exceeds what this social psychologist could have imagined, since it is close to 60% of cases of people capable of administering electric shocks. near fatalities to subjects who are in fact actors. Milgram himself imagined a much lower figure.
“The important thing is to obey”
Jean Hatzfeld, who has written extensively on the Rwandan genocide, received this sentence from the mouth of one of the executioners who obeyed the order to “kill all the Tutsis, down to the last one”: “It was simply said , it was easy to understand.”
There is “monster” and there is “ordinary”: ordinary like the “placid and good-natured” face of Adolf Eichmann…
He is “I obey therefore I don’t think”. Throughout the book, I start from the individual to join the group and historical facts. We can try to understand how men, singular subjects, can function in such a configuration that they are going to be or put themselves at the service of the greatest of evils, but in all good faith. A single concern which is to serve well, to serve the directing entity well. The important thing is to obey.
“As long as there is a belief…”
The subject of JB Dethieux’s book resonates with the recent violence observed among young people: “We must reread His majesty of the flies, by William Golding (1953): everything is there. A group united by a leader – or not – and as long as there is a belief, a law or a dogma, white violence can be unleashed in its name, especially in a group: when Jean Hatzfeld questions the Hutus who massacred the Tutsis, he notes that they are taken aback when he says “you” to them rather than “you”… The subject fades away, amputates a part of himself.”
