American Magic and Dread

Proverbs for Paranoids and the Culturally Schizophrenic

by ADM

“I just wanna go out and you know like really…really do

something…I got some bad ideas in my head.”

—Travis Bickle, who stalks and nearly kills a

presidential candidate in the film Taxi Driver (1976)

“I’ve got to do something to make you understand.”

—John Hinckley Jr., in a letter to Jodie Foster, written

shortly before he stalked and nearly killed then-

President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

The paranoid generate plots. They create systems of belief founded on whispers

and intelligences of suspect origin. They are the individuals versus society often

found in 10th grade novels and juvenile poetry, who subvert the establishment and

are continuously on the run from cabals and government. They are recluses who

plan great crimes and commit petty ones. Their plots often feature historical

implications and death threats, crimes with no witnesses, and the famous.

The Modern Psychosis. Paranoia is not limited to the psychologically unstable.

The same clinical terms and diagnoses psychologists employ in the discussion of

paranoia can apply to the culture we inhabit. The Cold War brought about a

nagging sense of impending apocalypse, a creation of the Soviet Union as an Evil

Empire with dark means of watching or controlling us. McCarthyism, our national

persecution complex, imbued Americans with the belief that Communism was a

virus destroying our body politic. Soon after, our government created a delusion of

grandeur, assuring us we would win Viet Nam, have the smartest children, and

always be at the top of the global economy. Occasionally, the paranoids in the

government hatched their own plots: radiation experiments, Watergate, most of

Hoover at the FBI, Iran-Contra. These schemes were a dream come true for civilian

paranoia, since imagined conspiracies grew indistinguishable from the real. The

Chinese injected me with plutonium, and the government approved. The CIA is

following me, stealing my glasses. The Contras have occupied Baltimore, at the

encouragement of the Bush administration.

With changing decades, America poured like concrete into its cities, and the

specter of communism gave way to the specter of crime. This gave Americans an

attitude of acute ambivalence toward the cities which, although prophesied as new

centers of civilization, sprawled into unmanageable, unmappable, capitals of fear

and confusion. Industrial smog blurs a person’s sense of self. Where once she had

a town and family to support her and her identity, the city dislocates these and

sends her reeling into a high-rise of unknowns. It becomes difficult for citizens of

the city to connect with their surroundings, and this disconnection brings fear. The

fear scares the inhabitant into stagnation — stick to the routine and you won’t get

hurt — until the routine fails in the face of the urban sprawl, maybe after personal

experience or simply extreme fear of crime. The citizen then realizes no routine

can escape the chaos, a discovery that leads to the breakdown of the pattern and

the scattering of thoughts. This condition is schizophrenia.

Proverbs for Paranoids #1: You may never touch the Master, but you can tickle

his creatures.

Postmodern Psychosis. The greatest example of schizophrenia is John Hinckley,

Jr., the disaffected young man who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

His life is so paradigmatically schizophrenic, it borders on the cliché. What makes

Hinckley remarkable, however, is that he succeeded in doing what only a handful

of paranoid schizophrenics have ever done: he touched the Master.

Schizophrenia, generally speaking, involves three primary subtypes, alluded to

above. First, the schizophrenic may be paranoid, e.g. he believes himself to be a

historically significant person or victim of persecution. Second, he may be

occasionally catatonic, or prone to sitting around, saying and doing nothing for

quite a while. Third, he may suffer from hebephrenia, or disordered, chaotic

thoughts. (Incidentally, schizophrenia is not equivalent to Multiple Personality

Disorder.)

Each of these subtypes has its own set of symptoms and peculiarities, and Hinckley

seems to have at least brushed with almost all of them. The symptoms of

schizophrenia include delusions, hallucinations, loss of boundaries between self and

nonself, blunted or inappropriate emotional expression, socially inappropriate

behavior, loss of social interests, and deterioration in areas of functioning such as

social relations, work, and self-care.1 Schizophrenics also are wont to express

happy ideas in a sad manner, or vice versa. As with paranoia, many of these

symptoms can be projected onto society at large. In other words, what is true for

Hinckley on a particular level, is in many ways true of our culture as a whole.

Most people know two things about John Hinckley: (1) He tried to kill President

Reagan, and (2) he was obsessed with actress Jodie Foster. Behind these two facts

is a schizophrenic life deeply entangled in the Martin Scorcese film Taxi Driver. In

that movie, a cab driver named Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) is disgusted with the

filth of New York City, and decides to do something about it. He becomes obsessed

with a campaign worker (Cybil Shepherd), stalks a presidential candidate with

intent to kill, determines to rescue a twelve-year-old prostitute (Jodie Foster), and

then kills a handful of sleazy types in a grisly scene. The papers make a hero out of

the vigilante Bickle.

In his early college years, Hinckley identified closely with Bickle. He all but lost the

boundary between self and non-self, reality and non-reality. The similarities

between Hinckley and Bickle are striking, and it is remarkable that Hinckley was

able to translate the film so effectively into real life. When in college, Hinckley

fabricated a girlfriend so his parents would send him more money. In Taxi Driver,

Bickle writes a rambling letter home, in which he exaggerates the relationship

between himself and Cybil Shepherd’s character. “Her name is Betsy,” he writes.

“I am sorry I can tell you no more due to the nature of my work for the

government.” At college, Hinckley underwent long periods of depression and

despair, mirroring Bickle’s feeling that “the days move on with regularity, each one

as same as the next.” This may have been the near-catatonic phase of Hinckley’s

life. For Bickle, the days were so similar, he may as well have not moved at all.

During a recess from college, Hinckley again lied to obtain money from his parents,

and went to Yale to meet Jodie Foster, who played the prostitute Bickle tries to

save. Hinckley met Foster, though she brushed him off. Shortly after, Hinckley

began collecting guns, in emulation of Bickle, to be sure, but also as a paranoid

reaction to the crime he saw rising in the cities. The change in regularity for both

Hinckley and Bickle comes with the purchase of guns, a fact which indicates their

1Grolier’s Encyclopedia, 1993.

shared feeling of inadequacy or weakness when trying to cope with the mass of

people. After frequent target practice (also a scene in the movie), Hinckley began

stalking President Carter.

The stalking of a national figure points to a paranoid fantasy. Often, the

schizophrenic imagine relationships with famous people, as if to put themselves in

the same circle of power as the object of their stalking. In that sense, the

schizophrenic is parasitic, drawing power from important people in order to

compensate for their own feeling of impotence. Shortly before attempting to kill

President Reagan, Hinckley said in a recorded message, “I can’t hurt anybody,

really. I’m a coward.” The ability to remain close to a famous person — such as a

President — even while agents try to prevent you from getting close, is a victory, a

statement of worth.

For many paranoids, the President is the fountainhead of conspiracy. The collected

power of 250 million people in one accessible, cosmetic, public figure makes for

easy association with the troubles of those millions. In the mind of the paranoiac, if

one wants to eliminate his problems, he first builds his own power by stalking the

president, as though in preparation for a much greater task and, at the right

moment, kills him. The action steals the power of the President and invests it in his

assassin. “One day you and I will occupy the White House and the peasants will

drool with envy,” predicted Hinckley on a postcard to Foster.

One symptom of paranoia is the notion that a person is a historically significant

person. That this idea is characteristic of abnormal psychology indicates the

meaninglessness of the normal life in contemporary society. According to

psychological norms, individuals should be lost in the crowd, faceless and flat

among the masses. Citizens of the city may often find themselves feeling this way,

given the difficulty of observing the high-rises and throngs, and steel believing

oneself significant. Few rise to that level of importance, and those few are

generally famous.

The desire to contribute, to be well-known and famous, is not unusual. Many, if not

most, fantasize about the possibilities regularly. That desire seems to be at the root

of Hinckley’s behavior. Attempting to overcome the crowd, Hinckley committed a

reprehensible act, just as Bickle does in the last scenes of Taxi Driver. Before the

attempted assassination, Hinckley considered two other alternatives to killing

Reagan. Maybe I’ll hijack a plane and demand Jodie Foster as ransom. A typical

way to gain power quickly; very popular in the early 1980s.

The other choice — recently in vogue — was mass murder, a favorite past time for

violent paranoids. Colin Ferguson, the Long Island commuter train gunman,

thought the world was at bottom a racist conspiracy out to persecute him. The

Postal Service, the country’s largest and most wide-spread bureaucracy has a

history of paranoid attacks by frazzled employees seeking to escape the machine.

Hinckley’s plan was a peculiar inversion of Bickle’s rampage. He considered mass

murder at Yale, wiping out the country’s would-be upper crust, the cabalistic hands

behind the puppets. Whereas Bickle wiped out the pimps and sleazy johns,

Hinckley would storm the future of America. Instead of these, he went after the

history of America, in the form of Ronald Reagan. This action, more than any other,

would propel Hinckley into textbooks alongside Reagan. “Inside this mind of mine,

I commit first-page murder. I think of words that could alter history.”

In Taxi Driver, Bickle stalks and is about to shoot a leading presidential candidate,

when the Secret Service spots him and he flees. Hinckley succeeded where Bickle

failed: the former drew and fired, touching the master of masters, the actor-

president, the Great Communicator, the Great Conspirator. Hinckley, in a moment,

leaped from anonymity into timeless notoriety, by exploding the hierarchy that

oppressed him. This is the postmodern burst into celebrity.

Hinckley’s identity became synonymous with the image of the crime, just as Lee

Harvey Oswald’s merged with the Zapruder film and the struggle in the police

station basement. As with Bickle, Hinckley’s ego was validated in the media

coverage. What he wanted was fame, to be on the same level as the President and

a beautiful actress. Unlike Oswald, Hinckley lived to see it. It is appropriate that

Hinckley’s act intertwined with the media, because it originated in a fiction, a film.

Hinckley’s merging of the real and the fiction began when he saw Taxi Driver and

reached its zenith when he fired.

Proverbs for Paranoids #2: The innocence of the creatures is in inverse

proportion to the immortality of the Master.

The Larger System. American culture in general fits the diagnosis of John

Hinckley. The widespread yearning for significance, the self-obsession, the

dominant idea of historical impact and moral justification are all typical of the

American spirit. Hinckley’s rambling thoughts (“This mind of mine doesn’t mind

much of anything unless it comes to mind that I am out of my mind”) are typical of

postmodern literature. When authors attempt stream-of-consciousness, free-and-

direct discourse, and similar narrative techniques — even with psychologically

healthy characters — their efforts often read like journals of the schizophrenic.

According to critic Albert Borgmann, “the nation’s mood is sullen.” Borgmann

wrote these words at the nadir of the economic recession, and recent statements of

self-appointed experts on our generation seem to agree. Jimmy Carter made similar

declarations fifteen years ago when he was president. He observed the country

was stuck in a “malaise,” a period of inactivity and lack of motivation. Carter’s

comments came at around the same time John Hinckley, Jr., was suffering

depression and despair, a period of inactivity and lack of motivation. Carter was a

better psychologist than we might have guessed.

It is characteristic of schizophrenics to undergo periods of despair and then burst

into a flurry of activity. Hinckley broke out of his depression, but then entered

mania, collecting guns, trying to rescue prostitutes, and finally, shooting the

president. At the same time, America began to escape its own despair. With

Ronald Reagan at the helm, (and thanks to gimmicks like junk bonds, which seemed

to intermingle real money with imaginary money) the American economy gathered

unprecedented strength and inflated to dangerous levels. After his manic period,

Hinckley moved to a hospital. After American’s manic time of economic growth, we

plummeted to the other end of the economic spectrum.

Concurrent with American financial insanity, cocaine began the glamour drug of the

jet set, and the addiction of the poor. It cut across social boundaries like the best

postmodern trends, completely reversing the previously established hierarchy.

Cocaine ruined the famous and the wealthy and made millionaires of sixteen-year-

olds. The drug put everyone who used it on the same desperate level, severed from

reality. Use of cocaine enhances one’s reality. Users claim they see and hear more

clearly, feel strong and potent. These feelings are typical of a postmodern

phenomenon known as hyperreality, in which the artificial exceeds the benefits of

the real, at least on a superficial level. A significant psychological byproduct of

long-term use of cocaine is toxic psychosis, or drug-induced paranoia. Cocaine,

then, seems like the perfect schizophrenic drug, in that it mixes reality with

unreality, encourages mania followed by despair or catatonia, and results in

paranoia. On another level, cocaine and similar drugs had much to do with the

rising crime level in the United States during the 1980s. The tide of crime

sponsored a kind of national paranoia toward the drug and its users. The

widespread use of cocaine helped to prevent anyone from feeling removed and safe.

Proverbs for Paranoids #3: You hide, They seek.

The Fearful Life. This paranoid schizophrenia has led to a new way of living for

many Americans, from crossing the street at the sight of another person to buying a

gun or moving farther away from the city. Human relations have changed because

an almost inherent fear in everyone toward everyone else. The gun control debate

centers on the fear of crime, and devices such as The Club and Mace sell to

millions, as though a plume of peppergas will mask the larger fears destroying a

person’s peace of mind.

The close relationship between paranoia and capitalism is clear. Retailers push

often useless commodities onto terrified consumers, capitalism is in some way

responsible for the economic conditions that precipitate crime and fear, and certain

groups have turned to the private sector for solutions to crime. Giant real estate

developers have begun building small-city sized development in the Nevada desert

outside of Los Angeles. Simple adjustments such as carrying a can of Mace or not

going to ATMs after dark are no longer enough. Living without fear, for some,

requires not only changing one’s lifestyle, but changing one’s life.

Developments such as these aim to protect the mental and physical well-being of

their inhabitants. “People want safety from threats both real and imagined,” one

development manager says. The developments tend to adopt a small-town, rather

than big-city, look to appeal to the residents’ nostalgia for the crime- and fear- free

days of the Eisenhower era. The management decides the size and look of

mailboxes, gardens, and (of course) property walls for each house under its

jurisdiction. They limit freedom not to provide safety, but rather to provide the look

of safety. Says one commentator, the development is “a simulacrum of a real

place.” Indeed, at least one development has hosted its share of fringe-types,

including a mass-murderer. The opportunity for a truly safe, large-scale

environment seems to be deteriorating rapidly. “Even Eden — designed by God —

had its serpents,” one critic observes.

Proverbs for Paranoids #4: Paranoids are not paranoids because they’re

paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves

deliberately into paranoid situations.

Our society seems incapable of functioning without schizophrenic tendencies. The

cyclical nature and the obsessive nature of the country seems as naturally

ingrained in American history as television and the Masons. We cannot help but

plot or build conspiracy theories. These paranoid activities pass the time, serve as

an intriguing alternative to formal education, and perpetuate the flow of

information. We place ourselves in paranoid situations precisely because it gives us

the opportunity to be paranoid, to create our own story. Any conspiracy, whatever

its subject — JFK, UFOs, radiation — always adds to our cultural identity. The

consipiracy is our myth-making device, our attempt to understand what machine

drives the world around us.

Sources:

Borgmann, Albert. Crossing the Postmodern Divide.

Grolier’s Encyclopedia, 1993.

Guterson, David. “No Place Like Home,” Harper’s Magazine. 11/92.

Newsweek, May 24, 1982. 56-61.

Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity’s Rainbow. (All “Proverbs for paranoids”)

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