Category: Historical Figures

This category contains the efforts I’ve made to cover territory that hasn’t been plodded upon too often. The Abraham Lincoln stories being the exception.

Don’t Go Chasing Eel Testicles: A Brief, Select History of Sigmund Freud

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We envy those who knew, at a relatively young age, what they wanted to do for a living. We may have experienced some inspirations along the way, but we either lost interest quickly, or we never follow through. Whatever the case was, no one I know read medical journals, law reviews, or business periodicals in our formative years. We preferred reading the latest NFL preview guide, a teenage heartthrob magazine, or one of the many other periodicals that offer soft entertainment value. Most of us opted out of reading altogether and chose to play something that involved a ball. Life was all about fun for the kids in our block, but there were other, more serious kids, who we wouldn’t meet until we were older. They may not have known they would become neurosurgeons, but they were so interested in medicine that they devoted huge chunks of their young lives to learning everything their young minds could retain. “How is that even possible?” we ask. How are they able to achieve that level of focus when they were so young? Are we even the same species?

At an age when we’re so unfocused, some claim to have had tunnel vision. “I didn’t have that level of focus,” some said to correct the record, “not the level of focus to which you are alluding.” They might have diverged from the central focus, but they had more direction than anyone we knew, and that direction put them on the path of doing what they ended up doing, even if it wasn’t as specific as we might guess.

The questions regarding what we should do for a living has plagued so many for so long that comedian Paula Poundstone captured it with a well-placed joke, and I apologize, in advance, for the creative paraphrasing: “Didn’t you hate it when your relatives asked what you wanted to do for a living? Um, Grandpa I’m 5. I haven’t fully grasped the importance of brushing my teeth yet. Now that I’m forty, I’ve finally figured out why they asked that question,” Paula Poundstone added with a comedic pause. “They were looking for ideas.”

Pour through the annals of great men and women of history, and you’ll find that some of the greatest minds of science didn’t accomplish much of anything until late in life. Your research will also show that most of the figures who achieved success in life were just as dumb and carefree as children as the rest of us, until something clicked. Some failed more than once in their initial pursuits, until they discovered something something that flipped a switch.

Even those who know nothing about psychology, know the name Sigmund Freud. Those who know a little about Freud know his unique theories about the human mind and human development. Those who know anything about his psychosexual theory know we are all repressed sexual beings plagued with unconscious desires to have relations with some mythical Greek king’s mother. What we might not know, because we consider it ancillary to his greater works, is that some of his theories might have originated from Freud’s pursuit of the Holy Grail of nineteenth-century science, the elusive eel testicles.

Although some annals state that an Italian scientist named Carlo Mondini discovered eel testicles in 1777, other periodicals state that the search continued up to and beyond the search of an obscure 19-year-old Austrian’s in 1876.[1] Other research states that the heralded Aristotle conducted his own research on the eel, and his studies resulted in postulations that stated either that the beings came from the “guts of wet soil”, or that they were born “of nothing”.[2] One could guess that these answers resulted from great frustration, since Aristotle was so patient with his deductions in other areas. On the other hand, he also purported that maggots were born organically from a slab of meat. “Others, who conducted their own research, swore that eels were bred of mud, of bodies decaying in the water. One learned bishop informed the Royal Society that eels slithered from the thatched roofs of cottages; Izaak Walton, in The Compleat Angler, reckoned they sprang from the ‘action of sunlight on dewdrops’.”

Before laughing at these findings, we should consider the limited resources those researchers had at their disposal. As is oft said with young people, the young Freud did not know enough to know how futile the task would be when a nondescript Austrian zoological research station employed him. It was his first real job, he was 19, and it was 1876. He dissected approximately 400 eels, over a period of four weeks, “Amid stench and slime for long hours” the New York Times wrote to describe Freud’s working conditions. [3] His ambitious goal was to write a breakthrough research paper on an animal’s mating habits, one that had confounded science for centuries. Conceivably, a more seasoned scientist might have considered the task futile much earlier in the process, but an ambitious, young 19-year-old, looking to make a name for himself, was willing to spend long hours slicing and dicing eels, hoping to achieve an answer no one could disprove.

Unfortunate for the young Freud, but perhaps fortunate for the field of psychology, we now know that eels don’t have testicles until they need them. The products of Freud’s studies must not have needed them at the time he studied them, for Freud ended up writing that his total supply of eels were “of the fairer sex.” Some have said Freud correctly predicted where the testicles should be and that he argued that the eels he received were not mature eels. Freud’s experiments resulted in a failure to find the testicles, and he moved into other areas as a result. What kind of effect did this failure have on Freud, professionally and otherwise? 

In our teenage and young adult years, most of us had low-paying, manual labor jobs. We did these jobs to get paid when no one else would pay us. We bussed tables, took bags to hotel rooms, parked cars, and did whatever we had to to get paid. Our only goals in life were to do the job well enough to keep the boss off our back. We had no direction, and no one I know did what they did to end up in the annals of history. When we got fired or quit, we just moved onto the job that paid us more. We didn’t think about rewarding or fulfilling. We just knew we didn’t want to do that (whatever we did in the first job) anymore. 

Was Freud’s search for eel testicles the equivalent of an entry-level job for him, or did he believe in the vocation so much that his failure devastated him? Did he slice the first 100 or so eels open and throw them aside with the belief that they were immature? Was there nothing but female eels around him, as he wrote, or was he beginning to see what plagued the other scientists for centuries, including the brilliant Aristotle? There had to be a moment, in other words, when Sigmund Freud realized that they couldn’t all be female. He had to know, at some point, that he was missing the same something that everyone else missed. He must have spent some sleepless nights struggling to come up with a different tactic. He might have lost his appetite at various points, and he may have shut out the world in his obsession to achieve infamy in marine biology. He sliced and diced over 400 after all. If even some of this is true, even if it only occupied his mind for four weeks of his life, we can imagine that the futile search for eel testicles affected Sigmund Freud in some manner.

If Freud Never Existed, Would There Be a Need to Create Him

Every person approaches a topic of study from a subjective angle. It’s human nature. The topic we are least objective about, say some, is ourselves. Some say that we are the central focus of speculation when we theorize about humanity. All theories are autobiographical, in other words, and we pursue such questions in an attempt to understand ourselves better. Bearing that in mind, what was the subjective angle from which Sigmund Freud approached his most famous theory on psychosexual development in humans? Did he bring objectivity to his patients? Could he have been more objective, or did Freud have a blind spot that led him to chase eel testicles throughout his career in the manner Don Quixote chased windmills?

After his failure, Sigmund Freud would switch his focus to a field of science that would later become psychology. Soon thereafter, patients sought his consultation. We know now that Freud viewed most people’s problems through a sexual lens, but was that lens tinted by the set of testicles he couldn’t find a lifetime ago? Did his inability to locate the eel’s reproductive organs prove so prominent in his studies that he saw them everywhere he went, in the manner that a rare car owner begins to see his car everywhere, soon after driving that new car off the lot? Some say that if this is how Freud conducted his sessions, he did so in an unconscious manner, and others might say that this could have been the basis for his theory on unconscious actions. How different would Freud’s theories on sexual development have been if he found the Holy Grail of science at the time? How different would his life have been? If Freud found fame as a marine biologist with his findings, he may have remained a marine biologist.

How different would the field of psychology be today if Sigmund Freud remained a marine biologist? Alternatively, if he still made the switch to psychology after achieving fame in marine biology, for being the eel testicle spotter, would he have approached the study of the human development, and the human mind from a less subjective angle? Would his theory on psychosexual development have occurred to him at all? If it didn’t, is it such a fundamental truth that it would’ve occurred to someone else over time, even without Freud’s influence?

We can state, without fear of refutation, that Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual theory has sexualized our beliefs about human development, a theory others now consider disproved. How transcendental was that theory, and how much subjective interpretation was involved in it? How much of the subjective interpretation derived from his inability to find the eel testicle? Put another way, did Freud ever reach a point where he began overcompensating for that initial failure?

Whether it’s an interpretive extension, or a direct reading of Freud’s theory, modern scientific research theorizes that most men want some form of sexual experience with another man’s testicles. This theory, influenced by Freud’s theories, suggests that those who claim they don’t are lying in a latent manner, and the more a man says he doesn’t, the more repressed his homosexual desires are.

The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, a sexual orientation law think tank, released a study in April 2011 that stated that 3.6 percent of males in the U.S. population are either openly gay or bisexual.[4] If these findings are anywhere close to correct, this leaves 96.4 percent who are, according to Freud’s theory, closeted homosexuals in some manner. Neither Freud nor anyone else has been able to put even a rough estimate on the percentage of heterosexuals who harbor unconscious, erotic inclinations toward members of the same sex, but the very idea that the theory has achieved worldwide fame leads some to believe there is some truth to it. Analysis of some psychological studies on this subject provides the quotes, “It is possible … Certain figures show that it would indicate … All findings can and should be evaluated by further research.” We don’t know in other words, there’s no conclusive data and all findings and figures are vague. Some would suggest that the facts and figures are so ambiguous that Freud’s theories were nothing more than a provocative and relatively educated and subjective guess.[5]

Some label Sigmund Freud as history’s most debunked doctor, but his influence on the field of psychology and on the ways society at large views human development and sexuality is indisputable. The greater question, as it pertains specific to Freud’s psychosexual theory, is was Freud a closet homosexual, or was his angle on psychological research affected by his initial failure to find eel testicles? To put it more succinct, which being’s testicles was Freud more obsessed with finding during his lifetime?

 

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eel_life_history

[2]http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/oct/27/the-decline-of-the-eel

[3]http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/health/psychology/analyze-these.html

[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation

[5]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/assault/roots/freud.html

The Perfect Imperfections of Kafka’s Metamorphosis

Rilaly2 Comments

It’s not funny that a man awakes one day to discover that a he has transformed into “a monstrous vermin, (Some readers have declared that Sama changed into a giant insect or a cockroach.) but it could be … in the hands of more humorous writer. The plot could be less cerebral, more slapstick, and loaded with innuendo in other hands. The premise is just ripe for one-liners, hilarious getups, and situational comedy gold. In Franz Kafka’s hands, however, Metamorphosis is not only unfunny. It’s not even humorous. If the story didn’t have such a preposterous premise, we might even call it tragic. As David Foster Wallace, suggests, all of these ingredients are what make Metamorphosis hilarious in a weird way that never leaves us.

If the stubborn reader refuses to accept the idea that Kafka’s masterpiece Metamorphosis is hilarious, they would have to acknowledge that using a man changing into a bug as a vehicle to explain human psychology is one of the finest literary definitions of the word clever.

For young, aspiring writers, Metamorphosis may also be one of the finest examples of Chekov’s razor we have in the literary canon. For what modern writer would write a story of a man turning into a bug without some sort of explanation of that transformation? First-time readers might read Metamorphosis from the perspective that it’s a widely-regarded masterpiece, but we can guess that most young people won’t get it.

“I didn’t think it was so great. They skipped the best part!” The best part, of course, would be the transformation, and young people, spoiled on modern technology, want a detailed, computer-generated-imagery (CGI) style, scientific description of how a man could turn into vermin. They want a description so through, they feel the ooze dripping out of whatever orifice is necessary to complete the transformation, and they want the screams of pain, as this man’s bones and organs undergo extreme changes. The modern reader might not be able to pay attention to such a story without sufficient explanation. They might even call the omission distracting. A writer shouldn’t start a story after the transformation, modern audiences might complain. The transformation is the story, or at least the cool part of the story.

We can only guess that Kafka had some ideas for gestating transformations in early, rough drafts, and that he couldn’t come up with one he considered satisfactory. Those of us who know literary techniques could also guess that at some point in the creative process, Kafka learned of Chekov’s razor, and Kafka began to believe that the explanations were of no value to anyone but himself, thus leading him to place the metamorphosis on the editing room floor. The only explanation we get is, “Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams. He found himself in his bed into a monstrous vermin transformed.” Kafka might have deemed all preceding details irrelevant and best left to the imagination of the reader.

Gregor’s dreams weren’t even Horrific! Evil! or MADDENING! Kafka does not even lead the reader to believe the transformation was the result of the dreams. The dreams were just “uneasy”. Subtle, in other words, and inconsequential to the story.

Kafka’s apparent adherence to Chekov’s razor informs the reader that the transformation, or metamorphosis, is not the story. Kafka apparently deemed the transformation so low on the scale of importance, in the story, that when his publisher informed him that a bug would be on the cover of the story, Kafka replied, “Not that, please not that!” Kafka may have hoped to attract readers with the premise of the transformation, he did title the story Metamorphosis after all, but he hoped that readers would approach the story with more nuance. If Kafka were alive today, and awash in modern lexicon, he might say that readers should read Metamorphosis from an “It is what it is” perspective and nothing more.

Although, Kafka spends some time revealing how the other characters react to Gregor’s transformation by screaming, fainting, and falling, he does not portray these reactions in an over-the-top, slapstick manner that helps us define funny. The mother falls over a table, and Gregor’s employer runs from the apartment. A reader, reading from the “more is always more” perspective would not be pleased with Franz Kafka, and Kafka might even find himself the subject of notes from an editor for if he attempted to publish it today.

“You could do so much more with these scenes,” one imagines a group of beta readers informing Franz Kafka, in a modern day writing circle. “Why don’t you have the sister, this Grete, vomit? You could then describe the vomit in intricate detail.” “What about having the father soil himself in some way? Bodily functions are always funny,” and Kafka might eventually hear a culmination of the complaints, along the lines of, “You just left us hanging here, begging for more.”

In Kafka’s “it is what it is” hands, however, the family’s reactions are portrayed in a serious, if not sad vein, as the victim of the metamorphosis becomes more ostracized from his own family due to his affliction. The humor, if there is any in this scene, is for the reader to define.

Another lesson Metamorphosis provides the aspiring writer seeking to learn a lesson in style, is in the power of subtlety. The outlandish storyteller, seeking to provide modern lessons in disturbing and evocative imagery, learns in one reading of this story that the “it is what it is” principle of storytelling should be employed to lay a foundation of pedantic reality from which the reader can leap.

“It’s not that students don’t “get” Kafka’s humor,” David Foster Wallace wrote, postulating on the frustration of teaching Franz Kafka, “but that we’ve taught them to see humor as something you get –the same way we’ve taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke– that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. It’s hard to put into words up at the blackboard, believe me. You can tell them that maybe it’s good they don’t “get” Kafka. You can ask them to imagine his art as a kind of door. To envision us readers coming up and pounding on this door, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it, we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and pushing and kicking, etc. That, finally, the door opens … and it opens outward: we’ve been inside what we wanted all along. Das ist komisch (Translation: That’s really funny).”

Even those of us who appreciate subtlety, find it difficult to read this quintessential Kafka story, Metamorphosis, without feeling a little letdown by the anti-climactic ending. The monstrous vermin, that is Gregor Samsa, dies without ceremony. The advent of his death is subtle and inconsequential. By the time Gregor succumbs to death, his family is glad to be rid of him. To them, he has become a burden and an embarrassment. The reader infers that the Samsa family members are already at peace with the loss of Gregor, but there is little evidence of this fact in the passages that follow the transformation. The mother does state that she wants to visit her son, at one point, but the family easily dissuades her from doing so. Her plea, we can only guess, is nothing more than a mother attempting to display motherly concern, and the idea that the other two family members are able to easily dissuade her suggests that her concern is largely self-serving symbolism. After the transformed Gregor finally dies, the Samsa family calls upon the maid to dispose of the carcass, in the manner they might any other burdensome vermin.

Kafka scholars state that he agreed that Metamorphosis had an unsatisfactory ending stating: “Unreadable ending. Imperfect almost to its very marrow.” After the initial reading of the story, this reader found himself letdown too. I fell prey to imagining the possibilities. I thought of other avenues for the story, great one-liners, hilarious getups, and the manner in which the situation could be weaved to comedic gold for others “to get”. The more I thought about Metamorphosis’ ending, the more I thought the imperfect ending might have been the perfect one. For, if as David Foster Wallace suggested, “The horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.”

Kafka’s Metamorphosis is one of the few stories I’ve read more than once. I didn’t consider it a masterpiece when I was forced to read it in high school, and I subscribed to my teacher’s interpretation. When I read it later, I tried to approach it from a different angle, but as a member of the everything-is-funny generation, I thought it should’ve been funnier. Reading it recently, I now think, Metamorphosis requires a long form, subjective interpretation (if we can view the subject matter from the perspective of a senior citizen). If the reader is able to view this story from the perspective of one of the lucky few to live a long life, and that term is relative to all the players involved, as we continue to exist beyond our expiration date. If we are one of the lucky few to live a long life, we will eventually and progressively gain distance from what made us consequential throughout our life. Our need to establish, and re-establish ourselves will begin to wane, as will that constant struggle. At some point, we will note that we’re the same age as our grandparents were when we remember them best, and we will recall how soon thereafter, they began to metamorphose into senile, old people who were incapable of taking care of themselves. We remember how they became a burden to our parents, and our extended family, and we realize that if we are lucky enough to live as long as our grandfather did, we will become reduced to that perspective for our loved ones. If we are lucky enough to continue to exist beyond that point, we might eventually reach a point where they no longer cherish what we once were –when we took care of them and guided them through life– and as with our grandfather, it will eventually become a relief to them that we’re finally gone when we arrive at our own anti-climactic ending that requires them to find someone who will help them properly dispose of us. 

Wearing a Mask the Face Grows Into

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Shooting the Elephant involves the struggle to find an authentic voice in the midst of ceding to authority and group thought. Shooting the Elephant is about a moment in Eric Arthur Blair’s (George Orwell) young life when he was forced, by a number of external forces, to shoot an elephant. The goal of a writer is to take a relatively benign moment in their life and translate it into a meaningful moment, and by doing so unearth the ideas and characters involved. In the course of discovery, an author might become obsessed with why they acted the way they did. What was my motivation at the time, a writer may ask, and what does it say about me, or what does it say about humanity as a whole? 

As a standalone, i.e., listing off the events that took place, I’m guessing that the aspiring Eric Arthur Blair considered the story incomplete and without purpose. I’m guessing that he probably wrote and rewrote it so many times, and introduced creative bridges, that he couldn’t remember which details took place and which details he created to support the bridge between actual events that took place and that which would make the moment transcendent.

We can also guess, based upon what Blair would achieve under the pseudonym George Orwell, that the search for the quality story, supported by a quality theme, was the driving force behind his effort. If the driving force behind writing a story is to achieve fame or acclaim, so goes the theory, you’ll have neither the fame nor a quality story. The mentality most quality writers bring to a piece is that fame and acclaim are great, but it should be nothing more than a welcome byproduct of a well-written piece. Shooting the Elephant is a really good story, but the thought provoking, central message is the reason Eric Arthur Blair would go on to achieve fame as George Orwell.

It’s possible –knowing that Shooting the Elephant was one of Orwell’s first stories– that the theme of the story occurred in the exact manner Orwell portrays, and he built the story around that theme, and he then proceeded to build a writing career around that theme. The actuality of what happened to Orwell, while employed as the British Empire’s police officer in Burma is impossible to know, and subject to debate, but the quality of the psychological examination Orwell puts into the first person, ‘I’ character is not debatable, as it relays to the pressure the onlookers exert on the main character, based on his mystique. It’s also the reason Orwell wrote this story, and the many other stories that examine this theme in numerous ways.

The first person, ‘I’ character of George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant was a sub-divisional police officer of the town of Burma. Orwell writes how this job, as sub-divisional police officer, brought him to a point where he began to see the evil underbelly of imperialism, a result of the Burmese people resenting him for his role as the one placed among them to provide the order the British Empire for the otherwise disorderly “natives” of Burma. Orwell writes, how he in turn, began to loathe some of the Burmese as a result, while secretly cheering them on against the occupiers, his home country Britain. It all came to a head, for him, when a trained elephant went must<1>. Orwell’s responsibility, to those he swore to protect, and to those who commissioned him to protect, as a sub-divisional police officer, was to shoot the elephant.

Orwell describes the encounter in this manner:

“It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act.”

The escaped elephant gone must wreaked some carnage in his path from the bazaar to the spot where Orwell came upon him. En route to the eventual spot where Orwell came upon the elephant, Orwell encountered several Burmese people who informed him of the elephant gone must. Orwell then discovered a dead man on the elephant’s destructive path that Orwell describes as a black Dravidian<2>coolie in one spot of the story, and a Coringhee<3> coolie in another. Several witnesses confirmed, for Orwell, the fact that the elephant killed the man.

When the ‘I character’ finally comes upon the elephant, he sees it “peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow,” Orwell then describes the Burmese throng that surrounded him:

“It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib<4>. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.”

Orwell states that he did not want to shoot the elephant, but he felt compelled by the very presence of the thousands of “natives” surrounding him to proceed. He writes:

“A white man mustn’t be frightened in front of “natives”; and so, in general, he isn’t frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that (coolie) up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh.”

In the aftermath of the shooting of the animal, Orwell describes the controversy that arose, and he concluded it in the following manner:

“I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.”

The Hard-Ass Boss

At a warehouse-sized office I worked in, we had a supervisor who enjoyed the mystique of being a hard-ass. He enjoyed having those of us under him believe that he would do whatever it took to help the employees on his team achieve maximum efficiency. If we did well, he took credit for it. He was proud to take credit for it, and we were supposed to feel proud when we made him look good. Some of my team members were proud, for there are always some who enjoy autocratic rule. What they didn’t consider was what might happen if they had a poor quarter. Not only did he deflect 100% of the blame to the accused, but in a stylistic homage to Josef Stalin, he had them unceremoniously stricken from the record. We had a friend sitting next to us, laughing at our jokes and telling us stories from their life one day, and we had an empty desk sitting next to us the next. If he didn’t choreograph the chilling effect this had on the team, he might have taken credit for it if we asked him about it.

In this particular office, a sub-par employee had so many chances to recover from past performance that it was an ongoing joke among the employees that we could set the building ablaze and nothing of consequence would happen. If our perceptions of this climate were anywhere close to the truth, this supervisor stood out. In a corporate climate of managers defining supervisors on their creative abilities to retain employees and receive quality, employee review scores from those employees, our supervisor was an aberration. I do not know if the numbers we produced for him placed him above reproach among his superiors, or if my fellow employees were afraid to score low on their reviews during his tenure as their boss, but he managed to remain a supervisor of a team that hated him. If the reader knows anything about the corporate climate of America today, and the constant reviews employees and their bosses undergo, they know that is a near-herculean chore. 

The walk to an unscheduled, closed-door, one-on-one with this supervisor was equivalent to a criminal suspect being frog marched into a courthouse. The audience of it found themselves caught between trying to see the emotions on accused’s face and trying to look away to preserve the accused’s dignity. These moments informed us that in a world of supervisors claiming to have our back, in closed-door sessions with Human Resources and their managers, we had one that had so little concern for us that he did not even try to fake the support other supervisors did.  

Those of us who worked under this hard ass boss knew he would not defend us, even if we had verifiable reasons that warranted a defense. We figured that if we had that reason that we might have to go to our Human Resources department to mount our own defense, and there was also a sneaking suspicion that we might have to mount a defense against him in that meeting.

This resulted in most of us believing that he cared little about us and only about advancing his mystique, until it advanced him within the company. Was this a fair characterization? It might not have been, but it was pervasive throughout the team, and he never did anything to dispel us of this notion.

Thus, when I was frog marched into my first unscheduled one-on-one session with him, I was astonished to find out that not only did I receive the least severe punishment possible, but I didn’t receive the punishment specifically proscribed for my offense. He informed me of the charges against me, and he provided print outs of my action in the event that I might mount a defense, and then he cut my punishment in half. He did so in a congenial manner that I found unsettling, and his unassuming smile of sympathy was so shocking that I experienced an inexplicable disappointment.

Another inexplicable emotion I experienced was a diminished respect for him that I couldn’t avoid pursuing. My characterization of him, compiled data furnished by him and the group thought that pronounced such characterizations after all of his actions, left me with blanks to fill that included pleasant and unassuming characteristics.

He offered me another pleasant and unassuming smile in the silence that followed.

“See, I’m not such a bad guy,” he said.

Had he had asked me what I thought of this side of him, before I left the boardroom, I would’ve told him that he would have been better off refraining from all that smiling. “Smiles look weird on your face,” is something I might have said. I would have added that there was nothing unusual, or unattractive about that smile, but that it just looked odd on him. I also would have informed him that we both would’ve been better off if just gave me the proscribed punishment for my offense. I would’ve told him that the mystique he had a hand in creating, and that which was so firmly entrenched by the time I entered this boardroom, placed him in a no-win situation … “If,” I would add, “it is your hope that I like you, or in anyway consider you to be something other than a bad guy.” I would’ve informed him that once you establish a firm, hard-ass leadership mystique, doing otherwise will only lead the recipient of your leniency to believe that you are flexing an authoritative muscle in a condescending reminder to those under your stewardship that they will forever be subjected to your whims and moods, until they leave the room loathing you more than they had when they entered.

I would’ve ended my assessment by informing him that he’s so worked hard to foster this image, and sustain this mystique, that he should probably just sit back and enjoy it. The employees on your team are now working harder than they ever have, because they fear that you won’t do anything to help them if they don’t. They are also putting a great deal of effort into avoiding anything that could even be reasonably perceived as wrongdoing, based on the idea that if they get caught up in something that you won’t defend them. I would tell him that by firmly establishing yourself as a hard-ass boss you’ve given up the freedom of latitude in your actions. We’ve adjusted our working lives to this mask you created, and any attempt you make, going forward, to foster a “nice guy” image will be perceived as weakness, and it will not redound to the benefit for any of the parties involved.

It’s too late for you, and your current mystique, I would inform him, but if you want to escape this cycle in your next management position, clear your desk library of all of these unread “how-to lead” guides that you have arranged for maximum visibility and pick up a copy of Orwell’s Shooting the Elephant. In this story, you will find the true detriment of creating a hard-ass boss mask, until your face grows into it, and while it may impress your superiors to be this way, the downside will arrive when you try to impress upon “the natives” the idea that you’re not such a bad guy after all, and you spend the rest of your days trying to escape the spiraling duality of these expectations.

<1> Must, or Musth, is a periodic condition in bull (male) elephants, characterized by highly aggressive behavior and accompanied by a large rise in reproductive hormones.

<2> A Dravidian is described as any of a group of intermixed peoples chiefly in S India and N Sri Lanka

<3> “A Coringhee coolie” refers to such an Indian immigrant working in colonial Burma as an unskilled laborer in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

<4> Sahib –A name of Arabic origin meaning “holder, master or owner”.