"Unrest of spirit is a mark of life"

'Unruhe' could well be a testament to the memory of Dr. Karl A. Menninger. He it was who said,

It is much easier, more logical and more efficacious to help a child grow up with love and courage than it is to instill hope in a despondent soul.

Gerry Schnauz certainly didn't benefit from the 'Menninger environment'. A father who probably abused his daughter likely didn't instill too much love and courage in the boy who would go to jail for beating that father with an axe handle. Should we therefore hold the father responsible for Gerry's abducting and lobotimising of, curiously, only female victims?

Gerry's time behind bars did nothing to rehabilitate him, another of Dr. Menninger's major concerns. In 'The Crime of Punishment' he concludes that "all the crimes committed by all the jailed criminals do not equal in total social damage that of the crimes committed against them." As someone who has worked at the rehabilitation of criminals, I find this assessment somewhat ludicrous. If, like Freud, we take the essence of Messinger's theory, we can do nothing but agree that society has a measure of culpability in the production of its criminals. The suggestion that jail creates criminals is preposterous in that the inmate is only there because they transgressed the laws of society. Their chicken came before society's egg.

While the prison system must accept some responsibility for falling short in its endeavour to rehabilitate, we must be aware of the material with which it works. I have heard it said more times than I can remember that the law is for 'ordinary' people. Anyone who believes that criminals are poor victims of circumstance really does not understand with whom they are dealing.

Gerry Schnauz, however, is a different animal. He is not a criminal because the laws don't apply to him, he is a killer because he is 'damaged' by circumstance. He is sane enough to know that what his father did to his sister was wrong. He had an awareness of right and wrong to the extent that his father must be punished. In his meting out of that punishment he demonstrated his own messed up view of the world. It is nothing but chance that prevented his killing his father but that was surely his intention. And here we must acknowledge Messinger's basic point. In American society and culture, death is the punishment for wrong. While society doesn’t often use an axe handle, there is possibly some influence of society upon his decision processes and his actions.

How he responded to his father's crime forces us to ask why his own victims were female? Surely he should have become some kind of vigilante, dispensing justice to those who did as his father? Instead he becomes at least as bad as his father in his victimising of those who could be his sister.

Why does Gerry change from being a defender to an offender?

The answer lies not with society, as Menninger would contend, but with Gerry himself. He knows that what he did to his father, however deserving an abusive father might be, was wrong. It is society that must impose punishment, not the individual.

Knowing he did a wrong thing for the right reasons only serves to create a perception of self that Gerry is unable to accept. In a desperate effort to protect his sense of self he creates the 'Howlers' and projects them into others. Just as he tried to protect his sister so he now strives to protect others like his sister who are victims of the 'Howlers'.

Why he chooses an ice pick lobotomy as his means of salvation is his way of getting at the root of the problem which lies in his own head. Just as he is not consciously aware of the 'psychic photography' so he is not consciously aware of his motivation. But subconsciously he is perfectly aware that he is trying to drive the 'Howlers' out of himself. There is no other reason for his choice of weapon and aim.

"Unrest of spirit is a mark of life", as Menninger says, but it is my unrest more than it is society's.