{"id":8,"date":"2014-09-16T19:37:45","date_gmt":"2014-09-16T19:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.avner-falk.net\/?page_id=8"},"modified":"2014-10-30T14:18:43","modified_gmt":"2014-10-30T11:18:43","slug":"8-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/?page_id=8","title":{"rendered":"Norwegian Tragedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Anders<\/a> \"2083<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Mass Murder as Unconscious Liberation <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Reflections on the Norwegian Tragedy of 2011<\/strong>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Dedication<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

I wish to dedicate this essay to the memory of my late friend and colleague Ruth Stein (1947-2010), one of the finest people and psychoanalysts it has ever been my pleasure and privilege to know. A well-known, much-respected, and widely-loved psychoanalyst, both in Israel and in the United States, Ruthie, as we called her, gave her extraordinary and much-reprinted study of the tragic events of September 11, 2001 the striking title of Evil as Love and as Liberation. <\/em>After her untimely death, which shocked and saddened all of us who knew her, her outstanding book was published, entitled For Love of the Father: A Psychoanalytic Study of Religious Terrorism<\/em>. May this study be a small tribute to Ruthie\u2019s memory.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Introduction:\u00a0 The Private Roots of Public Tragedy<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Aage Storm Borchgrevink is a forty-four-year-old Norwegian human-rights activist and senior adviser at the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights who received the prestigious Ossietzky Award from the Norwegian PEN for his \u201coutstanding promotion of free speech\u201d and has written several books about conflicts in the Balkans and the Caucasus. In the fall of 2012 Borchgrevink published a book about the Breivik massacre which dealt with what happened on the Norwegian island of Ut\u00f8ya, where Anders Breivik gunned down sixty-nine persons after bombing the Norwegian government headquarters in Oslo and killing eight other people (Borchgrevink 2012, Berglund 2012a, Orange 2012).<\/span><\/p>\n

Borchgrevink\u2019s book also dealt with an aspect of Breivik\u2019s family background that most of the Norwegian mass-communication media had ignored: his traumatic childhood with his struggling divorced mother in Oslo\u2019s otherwise affluent west side. Borchgrevink had gleaned this vital psychological information from the psychiatric evaluations of the child Anders Breivik when he was three or four years old, from court records of custody battles between Breivik\u2019s divorced parents, and from interviewing witnesses to Breivik\u2019s early childhood. Borchgrevink\u2019s findings confirmed the psychiatric experts\u2019 evaluations that Breivik had suffered from gross neglect, a severe lack of child care from responsible adults that may have led to the hate, rage and lack of empathy that characterize him as an adult. (Berglund 2012a, Orange 2012).<\/span><\/p>\n

From the child psychologists\u2019 reports, Borchgrevink found that Anders Breivik\u2019s disturbed mother, Wenche Behring,\u00a0 had \u201csexualized\u201d her four-year-old son, smacked him, and often told him that she wished he were dead.\u00a0 A British journalist who interviewed Borchgrevink after his book was published gave us the following summary:<\/span><\/p>\n

The reports also show that when Breivik was just four-years-old, his mother became preoccupied with fears that her son would violently assault someone. \u201cShe saw him as an adult violent person, even though he was only a small boy,\u201d said Aage Borchgrevink, author of A Norwegian tragedy. \u201cShe was afraid that he would assault people.\u201d The psychologist reports show that Wenche Behring already felt her son was \u201caggressive, hyperactive and clingy,\u201d when she was breast-feeding him. By the time he was four years old, she \u201csexualised\u201d the young Breivik, hit him, and frequently told him that she wished that he were dead. \u201cThe mother and Anders sleep in the same bed at night with very close bodily contact,\u201d psychologists from Norway’s centre for child and youth psychiatry (SSBU), reported after Breivik and his mother spent several weeks there in 1983. (Orange 2012).<\/span><\/p>\n

Wenche\u2019s \u201csexualization\u201d of her son Anders was not only due to her not having an adult sexual partner ion her life at that time, but also to her infantile yearning for emotional fusion. She created in her son a lifelong confusion between maternal love, sexual intimacy, and impossible fusion with an engulfing female who wishes to kill him. His murderous rage, which gave rise to the terrible tragedy, can be traced back to these early days with his engulfing, sexualizing, and rejecting mother.\u00a0 Borchgrevink told the Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen, however, that \u201cblaming everything on his mother is a primitive clarification […]\u00a0 The mother was confused, scared and unstable, and sought help. The help she and her son received was inadequate. And the father wasn\u2019t around.\u201d (Berglund 2012a).<\/span><\/p>\n

Borchgrevink also questioned whether, in addition to the failure of the Norwegian police and of those responsible for emergency preparedness in Norway to prevent Breivik\u2019s massacres, the Norwegian state\u2019s child-protection service Barnevernet had also failed to do its job in this case. The Norwegian psychologists and psychiatrists who had seen Anders Breivik as a child, according to Borchgrevink, were disappointed that neither Barnevernet nor the courts had adopted their recommendation to remove Breivik from his mother\u2019s care. The lonely and troubled mother had insisted on retaining custody of Anders, his diplomat father was living abroad, and the family received only minimal monitoring and assistance from Barnevernet (Berglund 2012a).<\/span><\/p>\n

Borchgrevink also pointed out that Anders Breivik\u2019s father Jens had severed all contact with his son when Anders was fifteen years old, and that he told reporters shortly after his son\u2019s murderous attacks last year that he wished Anders had committed suicide. Jerrold Post, an American political psychiatrist, told the Norwegian newspaper Morgenbladet that \u201c[Anders\u2019s] father was preoccupied with his own fate, that he\u2019d have to live with his son\u2019s actions for the rest of his own life […] That was a rather self-centered commentary, so it seems to me that there\u2019s been problematic parenting on both sides.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In this paper I aim to follow Borchgrevink\u2019s lead and explore the troubled family dynamics that produced this terrible tragedy.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Family History and Diagnosis<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Anders Behring Breivik (born 1979), the young Norwegian who murdered seventy-seven innocent people, most of them younger than he, on July 22, 2011, in one of the worst catastrophes in modern Norwegian civilian history, comes from a broken family. His father, Jens David Breivik (born 1935), was a Norwegian civil economist and diplomat in England, where Anders was born. The father had been married previously and had three children by his previous marriage. The mother, Wenche Behring Breivik, had a daughter by her previous sexual partner, to whom she was apparently not married. There were violent quarrels between Anders\u2019 parents at the time of his birth, and they separated in 1980, when he was a year old. After their separation, the mother moved back to Oslo with Anders and his half-sister, where she soon married a Norwegian military man named Tore. This stepfather raised Anders, but he paid little attention to the boy, being too busy with his promiscuous sexual exploits. According to Anders, his sexually-promiscuous stepfather infected his mother with a venereal disease that ruined her health and her life (Berwick 2011, pp. 1171-1172).<\/span><\/p>\n

During his childhood and adolescence, Anders regularly visited his father Jens and his stepmother in England and later in France, where his father had retired. Anders\u2019 father lost his custody battle over Anders to the mother, and the parents were divorced in 1991, when Anders was twelve. Anders apparently last saw his father in 1995, when he was sixteen. After that visit, the father refused to see Anders again due to the son\u2019s adolescent excesses, which Anders later minimized as his \u201cgraffiti\u201d (Berwick 2011, p. 1386).<\/span><\/p>\n

At the outset of his trial, Anders Breivik was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia by two court-appointed Norwegian psychiatrists, Dr. Torgeir Husby and Dr. Synne S\u00f8rheim. According to their report, Breivik had acted out of his psychotic delusions. He thought of himself as a future Regent of Norway pending its takeover by his imaginary organization, the Knights Templar of Europe, of which he was, in his delusions, the “Justiciar Knight Commander.” As Regent of Norway, he would place all Norwegians in reservations and use them in his delusional breeding projects (Associated Press 2011). Two other court-appointed Norwegian psychiatrists, however, Dr. Terje T\u00f8rrissen and Dr. Agnar Aspaas, later found that Breivik was neither psychotic nor schizophrenic, was legally sane, and could stand trial (Borchgrevink 2012, BBC News Europe 2012).<\/span><\/p>\n

While I am well aware that long-distance diagnosis is hazardous at best, the available psychological data indicate that Anders Behring Breivik suffers from a severe borderline personality disorder. The key feature of this disorder is the patient\u2019s emotional instability. It is also characterized by black-and-white thinking, the product of unconscious splitting, by ever-alternating idealizations and devaluations of others, by chaotic and unstable interpersonal relationships, an unstable self-image, diffuse identity, erratic behavior, and a deep disturbance in the individual\u2019s sense of self. In extreme cases, this disturbance leads to dissociation and psychosis. The borderline patient alternates between idealizing and demonizing others, which, together with his mood swings, undermines his interpersonal relationships. Borderline patients often harm themselves: some commit intentional or unintentional suicide (Paris 1994, Volkan 1995; Kernberg 1995, 2012; Millon & al. 1996, 2000, 2004; Masterson 2000; Clarkin & al. 2005; Chapman & Gratz 2007; Gunderson & Links 2008, Kreisman & Straus 2010; Kupfer & Regier 2013).<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact that some experts have diagnosed psychosis and others have not is typical of the emotional instability of severe borderline personality disorder. Political assassins often suffer from borderline personality disorder (Falk 2001a, 2001b). Breivik himself intended to become a martyr by getting himself killed by the Norwegian security forces during his \u201cheroic operation to save Europe.\u201d How much psychological insight does this mass murderer have about himself? In his monumental \u201cCompendium 2083,\u201d which most writers have inaccurately called \u201cBreivik\u2019s manifesto,\u201d and which an American journalist has called \u201ca manifesto of madness\u201d (Friedlander 2011), Breivik minimized his own \u201cpersonality flaws\u201d as common and all-too-human:<\/span><\/p>\n

As for current flaws in my personality I guess have many stereotypical flaws. F [sic] example; I sound quite self righteous at times and I don\u2019t like admitting it when I\u2019m wrong, although I usually do. I still have a relatively inflated ego, with a constant need to feed on an intellectual level. This is a quite common flaw and I try to suppress it although I know I fail as most people do. Also, over the years I\u2019ve generally been perceived as quite arrogant (even downright unpleasant at times, the last few years). This is likely due to the fact that I do not care as much as I did for creating or preserving social relationships due to my life choice. I guess it is also due the way I choose my rhetorical approaches, which is to a certain degree only an indirect defensive mechanism. I, as most people, like to think I have a superb self confidence. But people who show signs of arrogance usually often use deliberate defensive manifestation to camouflage intellectual or social insecurity or perhaps they just don\u2019t care. I guess the root to a majority of human flaws is linked to mans fundamentally flawed nature. We want acknowledgement, appreciation and\/or love so we strive to be as perfect as we can be (Berwick 2011, p. 1401).<\/span><\/p>\n

The Israeli-American psychoanalyst and her American colleague have shown the intimate unconscious relationship between the craving for parental love and murderous aggression (Stein 2002, Kernberg 2012). The American journalist, however, saw Breivik as \u201ca right-wing nationalist fueled by a combined hatred of Muslims, Marxists and multiculturalists. His beliefs recall neo-Nazi politics that continue to linger throughout Europe, freshened with a new, 21st century toxicity.\u201d (Friedlander 2011).<\/span><\/p>\n

Breivik himself, however, sees himself as the Savior of Europe. One of the hallmarks of severe borderline personality disorders is the patient\u2019s poor reality testing. Breivik\u2019s self-awareness and reality testing are indeed badly damaged. In describing his childhood, he denied the massive emotional troubles in his family of origin and idealized his childhood as a happy one: \u201cI haven\u2019t really had any negative experiences in my childhood in any way. I had way too much freedom though if anything. I used to visit my father annually until I was 16. So guess [sic] I came from a typical Norwegian middle class family. We never had any economical troubles\u201d (Berwick 2011, p. 1387). In fact, there were enormous troubles between his mother and his stepfather, let alone his father and his mother. Similarly, before murdering scores of his fellow Norwegians, Anders had written in all seriousness, \u201cAs all my friends can attest to I wouldn\u2019t be willing to hurt a fly\u201d (Berwick 2011, p. 1395). This is obviously a massive denial of reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Rejecting Father<\/span><\/p>\n

Before carrying out his massacre, which he intended to be an act of martyrdom by getting himself killed by the Norwegian police or military, Anders Behring Breivik had penned a monumental, rambling and incoherent 1,518-page English-language online \u201ccompendium\u201d entitled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence under the English pseudonym of \u201cAndrew Berwick\u201d, which he seems to have e-mailed to his entire mailing list just hours before his mass-murderous attacks (Berwick 2011; Slaughter 2011b). For his logo or coat of arms Breivik chose the red cross of the medieval Crusader order of the Knights Templar with the Latin inscription De Laude Novae Militiae Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici which we shall discuss below (Fig. 1).<\/span><\/p>\n

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[insert picture here]<\/span><\/p>\n

Like everything else about this tragedy, Anders\u2019 choice of an English alias which resembles his own name was not accidental. His father, Jens David Breivik, had been a Norwegian diplomat in England for much of his life, and it was there that Anders had been born. If he could be an Englishman, Anders may have felt, perhaps his father would love him and want to see him again?<\/span><\/p>\n

[insert picture here]<\/span><\/p>\n

Fig. 2. shows a photograph Anders\u2019 grim-faced father, Jens David Breivik, accompanied by a French gendarme while his house in southern France was being searched by French police, shortly after he learned of his son\u2019s terrible act of mass murder. If the son expected to win back his father\u2019s love through his \u201cvalorous act of self-martyrdom\u201d he could not have been farther off the mark. After the massacre, his shocked father told the Swedish tabloid Expressen that he wished his son had killed himself. \u201cHow could he just stand there and kill so many innocent people and just seem to think that what he did was OK?\u201d the elder Breivik asked the Swedish journalist incredulously during the interview in France. \u201cHe should have taken his own life too. That\u2019s what he should have done.\u201d Jens Breivik had retired to southern France, after more than thirty years of service as a Norwegian diplomat in London, Tehran and Paris. Aside from a short phone call about ten years earlier (in 2001, possibly after the September 11 tragedy in the United States), Jens had not had any contact with his son since 1995. \u201cI feel awful,\u201d the elder Breivik said. \u201cI am deeply sorry over this situation. It\u2019s awful for me personally, but it is also tragic for the whole country\u201d (Huffington Post 2011). The father seems to have no idea that his son\u2019s murderous rampage may have anything to do with his desperate wish to be loved by him, that his repeated rejection of his son provoked this murderous rage.<\/span>
\n An anonymous British journalist, trying to make psychological sense of the crazy massacre, thought that \u201cAnders Behring Breivik had a privileged and international upbringing but nursed a deep resentment of his diplomat father.\u201d This statement implies that the key to Breivik\u2019s murderous rampage was his patricidal rage:<\/span><\/p>\n

The absent father is a theme that Anders returned to repeatedly in his rambling 1,500 page manifesto. \u201cI have not spoken to my father since he isolated himself when I was 15 \u2013 he was not very happy about my graffiti phase from 13 to 16. He has four children but has cut contact with all of them. So it is pretty clear whose fault that was […] I tried contacting him five years ago but he said he was not mentally prepared for a reunion.\u201d Speaking outside his home in the south of France, Mr. Breivik expressed his shock at the killings and how extreme his estranged son had become. \u201cI view this atrocity with absolute horror,\u201d he told reporters. This morning his house was being searched [by] teams of French gendarmes (The Telegraph 2011, quoting Berwick 2011, p. 1386).<\/span><\/p>\n

Breivik himself, however, never called his monumental \u201ccompendium\u201d a \u201cmanifesto.\u201d It was a bizarre and anonymous American blogger who calls himself \u201cKevin I. Slaughter, the unwanted advocate\u201d who put it on his website the day after the massacre and called it a \u201cmanifesto\u201d (Slaughter 2011a, 2011b). By his admission, \u201cSlaughter\u201d\u2019s contributions to our civilization have been \u201cthe 3rd largest private collection of vintage Super 8mm porn on the East Coast\u201d (Slaughter 2011c) and a barely coherent online review of Gerald Messadi\u00e9\u2019s book A History of the Devil (Slaughter 2007).<\/span><\/p>\n

In his own grandiose image of himself, Anders Behring Breivik is the author of the most important historical An political document of our time, if not of all timer. Before publishing his \u201ccompendium,\u201d he had put two videos on the Internet (on YouTube and on Veoh) to explain his great compendium, and inserted bold-lettered links to them at the beginning of his \u201ccompendium (Berwick 2011, p. 4). The first video was removed \u201cbecause its content violated YouTube\u2019s Terms of Service\u201d and the second was deleted without explanation. Breivik sees himself as the hated prophet and soothsayer: \u201cThe men the European public admires most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth\u201d (ibid.).<\/span><\/p>\n

The anonymous British journalist called Anders \u201cMummy\u2019s boy,\u201d implying that he was loved by his mother and that he loved her in return, and that Anders deeply resented his father and was caught in an Oedipal tragedy. (The Telegraph 2011). Did Anders in fact love his mother and hate his father? As we shall see, the story is much more complex. In fact, Anders\u2019 mother may have been a key figure in his life, and his fusional attachment to her his deepest problem.<\/span><\/p>\n

As we have seen, Breivik\u2019s \u201ccompendium\u201d was published as a \u201cmanifesto\u201d by the bizarre blogger \u201cKevin I. Slaughter\u201d on July 23, 2011, the day after the tragic massacre. Breivik grandiosely describes himself as a \u201cJusticiar Knight\u201d and as the leader the \u201cNew Knights Templar.\u201d The Latin name of the medieval Knights Templar was Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici (The Poor fellow-soldiers of Christ and of the Solomonic Temple). Breivik made up an acronym, PCCTS, for his \u201cnew chivalric order.\u201d The title page of Breivik\u2019s \u201ccompendium\u201d has the red cross of the medieval Knights Templar on a white background with the Latin phrase De Laude Novae Militiae Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici, which roughly translates as \u201cIn Praise of the New Army of the Poor fellow-soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Breivik\u2019s monumental \u201ccompendium\u201d is a fascinating example of massive unconscious splitting, constantly alternating between idealization and denigration. It is full of \u201cscholarly\u201d rambling about the wonderful Europe of the 1950s and the terrible Europe of today, \u201cdefiled\u201d by the millions of Muslims who have settled in it and destroyed its \u201cChristian greatness.\u201d Europe is idealized in much the same way as a child idealizes its mother, and later itself. Breivik\u2019s choice of the year 2083 as the title of his \u201ccompendium\u201d was not accidental. That year will mark the 400th anniversary of the unsuccessful Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, which Breivik saw as the previous attempt by the Muslims to conquer and defile Christian Europe, as well as the 200th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, whom Breivik sees as one of the great destroyers of Christian Europe. Breivik did not think that he would live until 2083. In fact, before committing his massacre, he thought that he would die a martyr in the battle for Christian Europe. By choosing that far-off year 2083 he could see himself as a prophet with a full-fledged plan to save Europe from her socialist, feminist and Muslim enemies and restore his Magna Mater to her former glory.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Infected Mother<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

[insert picture]<\/p>\n

Fig. 3 shows a photograph of the young man Anders Breivik with his half-sister and his mother. As in most borderline cases, Breivik\u2019s mother, rather than his father, is the key emotional \u201cobject\u201d of his entire life. His lifelong inability to separate and individuate from her and his diffuse sense of self are among the hallmarks of his severe emotional disorder. Here is what he had to say about his mother and his stepfather in his monumental, rambling and often incoherent \u201ccompendium\u201d (the acronym STD that he used here stands for \u201csexually-transmitted disease\u201d):<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother was infected by genital herpes by her boyfriend (my stepfather), Tore, when she was 48. Tore, who was a captain in the Norwegian Army, had more than 500 sexual partners and my mother knew this but suffered from lack of good judgement and moral [sic] due to several factors (media \u2013 glorification of certain stereotypes being one). Unfortunately for her, her poor judgment resulted in her being afflicted by genital herpes. In addition to this, the herpes infection went to her brain and caused meningitis (this condition is usually rare and occurs in less than 1% of herpes infected individuals). As a result of this brain infection, which prevented the spinal fluid from flowing freely, she had to operate a shunt into her brain as the herpes attacks occurred regularly. She was forced into early retirement as a result and her life quality has been significantly reduces [sic] since, and she now has the intellectual capacity of a 10 year old. Her STD has not only cause [sic] her much hardships, but it has also cost her and the state up to 1 million Euro. Both my sister and my mother have not only shamed me but they have shamed themselves and our family [emphasis added]. A family that was broken in the first place due to secondary effects of the feministic [sic]\/sexual revolution. I can only imagine how many people are suffering from STDs as a result of the current lack of sexual moral [sic] (Berwick 2011, pp. 1171-1172).<\/span><\/p>\n

This passage is so heart-breaking it makes one want to weep. This mass murderer has no insight into his own emotional tragedy. In the same way as his stepfather has infected his mother with a terrible disease, Anders feels, the Muslims have infected Norway, yet it is not the infecting stepfather but the promiscuous mother whom he blames and wishes to kill. The most striking thing about this heart-rending passage, however, is that Anders Behring Breivik is not enraged at his stepfather for destroying his mother\u2019s physical and emotional health and for ruining her life, but rather at his sister and at his mother for shaming him and his family. Similarly, one of the striking irrationalities about Breivik is that he did not set out to murder Muslims, who, he is convinced, had defiled and destroyed his beloved Mother Europe, and who had raped so many innocent Norwegian women, but rather the Christian members of the Norwegian political party that had let them enter \u201cher.\u201d<\/span>
\n .<\/span>
\n .Fig. 4. shows the little boy Anders with his mother Wenche. As he grew up and naturally sought to become independent and separate from her, she seems to have felt abandoned and to have latched on to him with ambivalent “double messages.” His impossible tie to his mother, involving a deep longing to fuse with her along with an overpowering wish to leave her, if not to kill her, is illustrated by the fact that he moved in with her when he was twenty-seven, when most men are married adults with children, and began to act alternately paranoid and fusional, secluding himself in his room at one time while kissing his mother violently at another. Witness the following interview with Wenche Breivik conducted by Dr. Torgeir Husby, the court-appointed Norwegian psychiatrist:<\/span><\/p>\n

The mother of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik described how her \u201ckind\u201d son transformed into a \u201ccrazy\u201d loner who wore a face mask and talked of a war against Muslims, a psychiatrist has told a court. Torgeir Husby read out quotes from an interview he carried out with Breivik\u2019s mother, Wenche Behring. It is the first time her words have been heard during the trial of her son, who has admitted killing 77 people in bomb and shooting attacks in July.\u00a0 \u201cI thought that he was turning completely crazy, I thought there must be something wrong with his head,\u201d Dr Husby said, quoting Ms Behring, as a visibly-nervous Breivik looked on at the hearing. The court heard Breivik had behavioural problems as a child and a [child] psychiatrist had recommended he be removed from his family at the age of four. He was kept under observation at home and Breivik\u2019s mother told Dr Husby her son soon got over his early problems. \u201cHe was a good student (before high school), had friends […] He was so kind, always thought of me and helped with everything possible,\u201d Dr Husby read out. \u201cHe was outstanding […] He was incredibly kind and caring.\u201d But things started deteriorating when [the 27-year-old] Breivik moved back in with his mother in 2006 after some business ventures failed, said Ms Behring, who refused to appear at the hearing. \u201cWe had had so much fun together then it became just politics […] He would speak of an impending civil war,\u201d she said according to the psychiatrist\u2019s account. \u201cHe spoke loudly and intensely even as I tried to avoid those topics.\u201d Dr Husby said the mother told him Breivik started going to the gym, playing computer games in his room and became paranoid about cleanliness. The transcript did not include any explanation on what had caused the transformation. \u201cHe accused me of being in contact with too many people who could infect us. He ate food in his room then put the dishes by the door. He walked with his hands over his face and for a while he used a face mask. One time he kissed me on the cheek but it was so violent and it bothered me,\u201d she added, Dr Husby said. (Sky News 2012; cf. Lewis 2012, Views and News from Norway 2012, Vaim 2012).<\/span><\/p>\n

The image of the infected mother haunts her anxious son. He is obsessed by her boyfriend, the sexually-potent stepfather who infected her with her venereal disease. He wants his mother to feed him, but is afraid that the food she gives him is poisoned. His wish to cleanse Norway of its “Muslim infection” was a displacement of his wish to cleanse his mother from her infection by her boyfriend.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Europe and Norway as the Idealized Mother<\/span><\/h3>\n

The subtitle of Breivik\u2019s rambling \u201ccompendium,\u201d A European Declaration of Independence, makes psychological sense if we substitute the word \u201cmy\u201d for the word \u201cEuropean\u201d and read its title as \u201cMy Declaration of Independence.\u201d We can then understand that, unwittingly, Anders was writing about his own desperate struggle for separation and individuation from the women who dominated his life, above all his mother, whose maiden name is his own middle name (Mahler & al. 1975). For her own unconscious emotional reasons, this tragic mother seems to have tied Anders to her in an impossible fusional relationship, from which he could not break away. He could neither live with his mother nor without her. Anders had unconsciously displaced his own desperate struggle to that of Europe, which he idealizes as a great good mother. When he committed his massacre, he thought that he was saving Norway, and Europe, from those who had defiled and infected \u201cher.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In a classic psychological process of unconscious splitting, since a very early age Anders Breivik had unconsciously split his internalized mother into two, the great good mother, who was later displaced to the idealized Norway, or Christian Europe, and the evil witch, which was later substituted by the ruling Norwegian labor party, the party which allowed all the foreign immigrants into Norway and \u201cdefiled the good mother.\u201d His matricidal rage had been displaced to the Norwegian labor party, whose leader and whose youth wing he attacked, while his desperate wish for a good mother was displaced to his motherland, Norway, and to Europe, whom he thought he was saving from the \u201cevil Muslims,\u201d just as the medieval Knights Templar had fought to save \u201cthe Holy Land\u201d from the \u201cevil Saracens.\u201d The Muslims may also symbolize his bad father in his unconscious mind.<\/span>
\n It is no accident that during the fourth day of his ten-week trial, on April 19, 2012, Breivik voluntarily revealed that he had wanted to behead the former Norwegian prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland. In his unconscious mind, this Socialist, liberal woman who had “destroyed Norway” is the embodiment of the bad mother, the evil witch, the mother who wishes to kill her own son, the she-monster, the Gorgon who must be beheaded, as in ancient Greek myth the monster Medusa was beheaded by the hero Perseus. Alas, Breivik has no idea that his wish to behead Brundtland comes from his matricidal rage. It is also no accident that he told the court he had to be acquitted or executed, denying the reality of Norwegian law, which does not mandate the death sentence. For Breivik, the only way out of his impossible emotional fusion with his bad mother is suicide-murder, so that both of them are killed and, paradoxically, remain fused together in death.<\/span><\/p>\n

If we read Breivik\u2019s \u201ccompendium\u201d with special attention to what he has to say about men, women, and mothers, we can detect an anti-feminist and even a misogynist viewpoint. For instance, \u201c[In the 1950s] Children grew up in two-parent households, and the mother was there to meet the child when he came home from school. Entertainment was something the whole family could enjoy\u201d (Berwick 2011, p. 12). One of the themes that preoccupies Breivik is the promotion of \u201cmatriarchy,\u201d which he blames on the \u201cCritical Theorists\u201d of the \u201cFrankfurt School\u201d of social and psychoanalytic theory, especially Erich Fromm, Wilhelm Reich, and Theodor Adorno (Berwick 2011, p. 1518). Here are some of his bizarre ideas about their \u201cdestructive matriarchal theory\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n

Critical Theory incorporated sub-theories which were intended to chip away at specific elements of the existing culture, including \u201cmatriarchal theory,\u201d \u201candrogyny theory,\u201d \u201cpersonality theory,\u201d \u201cauthority theory,\u201d \u201cfamily theory,\u201d \u201csexuality theory,\u201d \u201cracial theory,\u201d \u201clegal theory,\u201d and \u201cliterary theory\u201d […] these theories were to be used to overthrow the prevailing social order and usher in social revolution. To achieve this, the Critical Theorists of the Frankfurt School recognised that traditional beliefs and the existing social structure would have to be destroyed and then replaced. The patriarchal social structure would be replaced with matriarchy; the belief that men and women are different and properly have different roles would be replaced with androgyny; and the belief that heterosexuality is normal would be replaced with the belief that homosexuality is equally \u201cnormal\u201d (Berwick 2011, p. 16).<\/span><\/p>\n

The child of a broken family, a helpless psychological victim of his parents\u2019 emotional troubles, Anders Behring Breivik displaces his patricidal and matricidal rage to the socialists, feminists and Muslims. He blames the socialists, feminists, critical theorists and other \u201cdangerous revolutionaries\u201d for having destroyed the old European family and turned the old patriarchy into matriarchy. Instead of the father, the mother rules the family. To him, one of these dangerous revolutionaries was the social psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, whose books, Escape from Freedom and The Dogma of Christ, Breivik sees as a call for destroying the good old family:<\/span><\/p>\n

Fromm made the real meaning of this \u201cPositive Freedom\u201d clear in another of his many books \u2013 The Dogma of Christ \u2013 wherein he describes a revolutionary character such as himself as the man who has emancipated himself from the ties of blood and soil, from his mother and father, and from special loyalties to state, race, party or religion. Fromm makes his revolutionary intent very clear in The Dogma of Christ […] \u201cWe might define revolution in a psychological sense, saying that a revolution is a political movement led by people with revolutionary characters, and attracting people with revolutionary characters.\u201d (Berwick 2011, p. 21).<\/span><\/p>\n

Breivik sees himself as a knight, a hero and a poet, and hates psychologists who attempt to uncover the unconscious emotional roots of the heroic creations of poets:<\/span><\/p>\n

If a poet wrote a poem that included a female character, the critics would look into the poet\u2019s relationship with his mother, his wife, his sister and so on in an effort to offer up an interpretation of the work. This could have (and often did have) the positive effect of using biographic information to gain new understanding of the work; however, these new interpretations were not attempts to discern the true meaning of the work (as the New Critics had done) or even to discover the author\u2019s intended meaning (as traditional readings attempted). This new generation of critics instead became prime practitioners of what is known in literary circles as \u201ccultural criticism.\u201d They strained to view literature from the \u201cwoman\u2019s point of view\u201d or the \u201cvictims\u201d or the \u201cradical minority point of view.\u201d Their attempts were not to find meaning \u2013 they were influenced too greatly by relativists for that \u2013but to find sexism, racism or \u201chomophobia\u201d in the works of male, European or heterosexual authors. (Berwick 2011, p. 27).<\/span><\/p>\n

Breivik sees the Frankfurt School scholars, especially their studies of the authoritarian personality (Adorno & al. 1950), as the enemies of his own manhood. He connects them directly to Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, the founders of socialism, and blames them for destroying his family and for trying to emasculate him, to take away his manhood, to castrate him:<\/span><\/p>\n

The Frankfurt School theorised that the authoritarian personality is a product of the patriarchal family. This idea is in turn directly connected to Engels\u2019s The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, which promotes matriarchy. Furthermore, it was Karl Marx who wrote in The Communist Manifesto about the radical notion of a \u201ccommunity of women.\u201d He also, in 1845, wrote disparagingly in his The German Ideology of the idea that the family was the basic unit of society. The concept of the \u201cauthoritarian personality\u201d is not just to be interpreted as a model for the conduct of warfare against prejudice as such. It is a handbook for psychological warfare against the European male, to render him unwilling to defend traditional beliefs and values. In other words, the aim was to emasculate him. Undoubtedly the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt University meant this, as it used the term \u201cpsychological techniques for changing personality.\u201d (Berwick 2011, p. 29).<\/span><\/p>\n

Breivik clearly sees the social and psychoanalytic theories of the Frankfurt School as an attack on his masculinity and as an attempt to turn him into a woman:<\/span><\/p>\n

Critical Theory as applied mass psychology has led to the deconstruction of gender in the European culture. Following Critical Theory, the distinction between masculinity and femininity will disappear. The traditional roles of the mothers and fathers are to be dissolved so that patriarchy will be ended. Children are not to be raised according to their biological genders and gender roles according to their biological differences. This reflects the Frankfurt School rationale for the disintegration of the traditional family (Berwick 2011, p. 30).<\/span><\/p>\n

Breivik unconsciously identifies \u201cmother\u201d with \u201cmother country,\u201d and thus his idealized mother \u2013 and himself \u2013 with Norway, or Europe, as we can see seen from the following statement about the medieval crusaders in his \u201ccompendium\u201d in which reality and fantasy are freely mixed, as they are in the rest of his rambling essay:<\/span><\/p>\n

There was no mother country with which the Crusader states had an economic relationship, nor did Europeans economically benefit from them. Quite the contrary, the expense of Crusades to maintain the Latin East was a serious drain on European resources. As an outpost, the Crusader states kept a military focus. While the Muslims warred against each other the Crusader states were safe, but once the Muslims united, they were able to dismantle the strongholds, capture the cities, and in 1291 expel the Christians completely (Berwick 2011, p. 140).<\/span><\/p>\n

Like much of Breivik\u2019s historical and political rambling, this is a gross oversimplification of Crusader history. In fact, the various \u201cFrankish\u201d chivalric orders of the Crusades, such as the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, and the Teutonic Knights, fought among themselves, much as the \u201cSaracens\u201d did (Falk 2010).<\/span><\/p>\n

[insert picture here]<\/span><\/p>\n

The Justiciar Knight<\/span><\/p>\n

In a classic unconscious-splitting process, Breivik glorifies the traditional family of his beloved Old Europe, while denigrating the psychoanalysts, the socialists, the feminists who had destroyed the family and its values, and the Muslims who have \u201cdefiled\u201d Mother Europe. Anders Breivik obviously has the grandiose self that characterizes the narcissistic and borderline personalities. He meant his monumental \u201ccompendium\u201d as a scholarly study of two millennia of Christian-Muslim relations. One especially disturbing scene in the \u201ccompendium\u201d described the brutal rape and murder of the old mother of an Assyrian Christian leader by Kurdish Muslims and the following massacre of ten thousand Christians by the Muslims:<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1842 Badr Khan Beg, A Hakkari (southeast Turkey) Kurdish Amir, combined with other Kurdish forces led by Nurallah, attacked the Assyrians, intending to burn, kill, destroy, and, if possible, exterminate the Assyrians from the mountains. The Kurds destroyed and burned whatever came within their reach. An indiscriminate massacre took place. The women were brought before the Amir and murdered in cold blood. The aged mother of Mar Shimun, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, was seized by them, and after having practiced on her the most abominable atrocities, they cut her body into two parts and threw it into the river Zab, exclaiming, \u201cgo and carry to your accursed son the intelligence that the same fate awaits him.\u201d Nearly ten thousand Assyrians were massacred, and as large a number of woman and children were taken captive, most of whom were sent to Jezirah to be sold as slaves, to be bestowed as presents upon the influential Muslims (Berwick 2011, p. 174).<\/span><\/p>\n

In his own eyes, Anders Breivik is not only the greatest historian and political analyst that ever lived, he is also the bravest knight in chivalric history.<\/span><\/p>\n

As part of his tormented ravings about the history of Christians and Muslims, Breivik\u2019s glorification of the medieval Christian heroes who defeated the Muslims conceals his unconscious fear of being castrated by an overpowering father (or mother). In a section of his \u201ccompendium\u201d entitled \u201cEuropean Crusader heroes, champions, legends\u201d Breivik inserted the pseudo-scholarly article entitled The Twelfth Viking by \u201cUnspiek Bodissey\u201d or \u201cBaron Bodissey,\u201d the fictional, snobbish and pretentious author of the multi-volume Life in the novels of the American speculative-fiction author Jack Vance (born 1916), with whom Breivik easily identifies (Bodissey 2006).<\/span><\/p>\n

In The Twelfth Viking, Jack Vance, in the person of the fictional \u201cBaron Bodissey,\u201d idealized Holger the Dane, the mythical hero of the Christian battle against the \u201cMoors\u201d at Tours-Poitiers in 732, who first appeared as \u201cOgier de Danemarche\u201d in the medieval French epic Geste de Doon de Mayence, part of the third cycle of the chansons de geste of Charlemagne. In Breivik\u2019s fantasy, however, the fictional \u201cBaron Bodissey\u201d becomes an outstanding real-life scholar, who considers the mythical Holger a real historical hero.<\/span><\/p>\n

Breivik quotes \u201cBaron Bodissey\u201d as saying that Holger the Dane was glorified by the British poet laureate Edward James \u201cTed\u201d Hughes (1930-1998), the husband of the tragic American poetess Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), who committed suicide. In fact, Jack Vance, in the person of \u201cBaron Bodissey,\u201d only wrote that Ted Hughes \u201cwrote a number of poems that touched on the men of the North,\u201d such as The Warriors of the North (Bodissey 2006). \u201cBaron Bodissey\u201d called Hughes \u201cmy favourite English poet\u201d (Bodissey 2006; Berwick 2011, p. 240). Ted Hughes was a troubled man who wrote angry, violent and shocking poetry about cannibalism, disembowelment and other horrors. In a poem entitled Wodwo this tormented poet laureate wrote of a Red Cross Knight, \u201cthe rider of iron, on a horse shod with vaginas of iron\u201d (Hughes 1967).<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the poems of Ted Hughes that Breivik likes best is Gog, a name taken from the apocalyptic Biblical \u201cbattle of Gog and Magog.\u201d In the Old Testament, the Hebrew god Yahweh orders the prophet Ezekiel to tell the rebellious \u201cGog of the Land of Magog\u201d that He will drag Gog from the North to the mountains of Israel, kill him, and give his corpse as food to the wild birds and animals (Ezekiel 38-39). In the New Testament, this epic battle between God and Gog becomes an apocalyptic struggle between Jesus Christ and Satan (The Revelation of Saint John, 20:7-10).<\/span><\/p>\n

There is some confusion about Hughes\u2019 poems. For instance, Gog is at times listed as part of a larger work entitled Wodwo, at other times as a stand-alone poem. Here is some of the text of Hughes\u2019 violent poem Gog, in which the poet assumes the character of the rebellious Gog, or Satan, confronting Jesus Christ, \u201cThe Alpha and the Omega\u201d (The Revelation of Saint John, 1:8, 21:6, 22:13):<\/span><\/p>\n

I woke to a shout: \u2018I am Alpha and Omega!\u2019 \/ Rocks and a few trees trembled \/ Deep in their own country \/ I ran and an absence bounded beside me \/ The dog\u2019s god is a scrap dropped from the table \/ The mouse\u2019s savior is a ripe wheat grain \u2013 hearing the messiah cry \/ My mouth widens in adoration \/ How far are the mosses! \/ They cushion themselves on the silence \/ The dust, too, is replete \/ The air wants for nothing \/ What was my error? My skull has sealed it out \/ My great bones are massed in me \/ They beat on the earth, my song excites them \/ I do not look at the rocks and trees, I am frightened of what they see \/ I listen to the song jarring my mouth \/ Where the skull-rooted teeth are in possession \/ I am massive on earth \/ My feetbones [sic] beat on the earth \/ Over the sound of motherly weeping (Hughes 1967).<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Jack Vance\u2019s fictional \u201cBaron Bodissey,\u201d Ted Hughes glorified the mythical eight-century Danish warrior Holger in his poem The Warriors of the North. Moreover, writes \u201cBaron Bodissey\u201d (that is, Jack Vance), \u201cThe third section of Ted Hughes\u2019 Gog evokes Holger the most strongly. This is a deep, dark, and difficult poem, and parts of it are not suitable for family reading. It deals with the lifelong and ultimately futile efforts of Everyman to escape from the softness and weakness of his mother and establish his own manhood without being sucked in and corrupted by the softness and weakness of his wife\u201d (Bodissey 2006; Berwick 2011, pp. 242-243).<\/span><\/p>\n

According to \u201cBaron Bodissey,\u201d as quoted by Breivik, this is the opening stanza of the third section of Hughes\u2019 poem Gog:<\/span><\/p>\n

Out through the dark archway of earth, under the ancient lintel overwritten with roots \/ Out between the granite jambs, gallops the hooded horseman of iron \/ Out of the wound-gash in the earth, the horseman mounts, shaking his plumes clear of dark soil \/ Out of the blood-dark womb, gallops bowed the horseman of iron \/ The blood-crossed Knight, the Holy Warrior, hooded with iron, the seraph of the bleak edge \/ Gallops along the world\u2019s ridge in moonlight […] (Hughes 1967, Bodissey 2006, as quoted in Berwick 2011, p. 242).<\/span><\/p>\n

The Cambridge Book of English Verse, however, prints this text as the opening of Part III of Hughes\u2019 poem The Otter (Bold 1976, p. 136).<\/span><\/p>\n

The horrors that beset Ted Hughes are those that Breivik\u2019s tormented mind is also filled with. In his fantasy, he is the iron knight that gallops out of his mother\u2019s blood-dark womb on a horse shod with iron vaginas to kill those who have defiled her, chief among whom is his stepfather, Tore, who infected Anders\u2019 mother with a horrible disease that destroyed her life and gave her the mind of a ten-year-old.<\/span><\/p>\n

Breivik blames his mother rather than his father for his parents\u2019 divorces and for the emotional pain they inflicted on him. This is revealed by a section of his \u201ccompendium\u201d that blames women rather than men for divorce and childlessness in general. He quotes a fictional columnist named \u201cMolly Watson\u201d who has purportedly blamed modern men for the \u201cepidemic\u201d of not having children in modern society. In fact, \u201cMolly Watson\u201d is the fictional invention of an anonymous misogynist Norwegian blogger who calls himself Fjordman and who blames women for the ills of our society:<\/span><\/p>\n

Strangely enough, after decades of feminism, many Western women are now lamenting the fact that Western men hesitate to get married. Here is columnist Molly Watson […] What happened to the slogan \u201cA woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle\u201d? I\u2019d just like to remind Ms. Watson that it was in fact the women who started this whole \u201csingle is best\u201d culture that now permeates much of the West. Since women initiate most divorces and a divorce can potentially mean financial ruin for a man, it shouldn\u2019t really be too surprising that many men hesitate to get involved at all. As one man put it: \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ll get married again. I\u2019ll just find a woman I don\u2019t like and give her a house.\u201d At the same time, women during the past few decades have made it a lot easier to have a girlfriend without getting married. So women make it riskier to get married and easier to stay unmarried, and then they wonder why men \u201cwon\u2019t commit?\u201d Maybe too many women didn\u2019t think all this feminism stuff quite through before jumping on the bandwagon? (Fjordman 2005; quoted in Berwick 2011, p. 349).<\/span><\/p>\n

Breivik quoted Diana West, an neo-conservative American columnist who had published a book bemoaning the ideas and state of womanhood:<\/span><\/p>\n

She believes that \u201cWhere womanhood stands today is deeply affected by the death of grown-up. I would say the sexualised female is part of the phenomenon I\u2019m talking about, so I don\u2019t think they\u2019re immune to the death of the grown-up. Women are still emulating young fashion. Where sex is more available, there are no longer the same incentives building toward married life, which once was a big motivation toward the maturing process.\u201d Is she right? Have we become a civilisation of Peter Pans refusing to grow up? Have we been cut off from the past by disparaging everything old as outmoded? I know blogger Conservative Swede, who likes Friedrich Nietzsche, thinks we suffer from \u201cslave morality,\u201d but I sometimes wonder whether we suffer from child morality rather than slave morality. However, there are other forces at work here as well. (Berwick 2011, p. 360; cf. West 2007).<\/span><\/p>\n

Was Breivik thinking of his infantile mother whose infection by his stepfather gave her a ten-year-old child\u2019s mind when he complained about \u201cchild morality\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

The last 170 pages of Breivik\u2019s 1516-page \u201cEuropean Declaration of Independence\u201d are a bizarre interview with himself, in which he asks himself the questions and answers them as well. Breivik grandiosely titled it \u201cInterview with a Justiciar Knight Commander of the PCCTS, Knights Templar\u201d (Berwick 2011, p. 1349). The PCCTS, you will recall, is Breivik\u2019s acronym for Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici, the Latin name of the medieval Knights Templar, which means the \u201cPoor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon\u201d (Berwick 2011, p. 812). The American journalist has observed that \u201cthere is a singular creepiness to a person who will conduct and publish a conversation with himself \u2013 but it\u2019s perfectly in keeping with the horrors he would eventually cause\u201d (Friedlander 2011). In fact, this self-interview is hardly supervising in a borderline personality with extreme narcissistic pathology. This young man has only himself: he has been unable to forge any mature and satisfying emotional ties with any other person.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[insert picture here]<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Fear of Emasculation<\/span><\/h3>\n

After his parents\u2019 divorce and his mother\u2019s remarriage, the boy Anders was raised by his mother\u2019s third husband, Tore, an officer in the Norwegian army. Anders described his stepfather, who had \u201c500 sexual liaisons\u201d and who had infected his mother with the disease that caused her total physical and mental deterioration, as a \u201csexual beast,\u201d but also as a weak man who may have ravaged his mother sexually but who also let her dominate the family and \u201cfeminize\u201d Anders himself:<\/span><\/p>\n

Tore, my stepfather, worked as a major in the Norwegian military and is now retired. I still have contact with him although now he spends most his time (retirement) with prostitutes in Thailand. He is a very primitive sexual beast but at the same time a very likable and good guy. I can\u2019t say I approve of that lifestyle although I can\u2019t really blame him when I see today\u2019s Marxist social structures. So all in all, I consider myself privileged and I feel I have had a privileged upbringing with responsible and intelligent people around me. I do not approve of the super-liberal, matriarchal upbringing though as it completely lacked discipline and has contributed to feminise me to a certain degree (Berwick 2011, p. 1387).<\/span><\/p>\n

The fear of becoming feminine, castrated, emasculated by his mother, lies deep in Breivik\u2019s psyche, and is closely connected to his fusional tie to his mother. In order to combat this fear, he has denied his \u201cfeminized\u201d self and has unconsciously created an internal image of himself as an iron knight, masculine, strong, powerful, aggressive, violent, a man who can kill in the name of his ideals. Breivik is very interested in his three names. His Christian name, Anders, derives from the old Greek word for man, male and warrior. In his bizarre self-interview at the end of his \u201cDeclaration of Independence,\u201d Breivik said that he was very proud of his name, of his race, and of his ancestors:<\/span><\/p>\n

I am very proud of my Viking heritage. My name, Breivik, is a location name from northern Norway, and can be dated back to even before the Viking era. Behring is a pre-Christian Germanic name which is derived from Behr, the Germanic word for Bear (or \u201cthose who are protected by the bear\u201d). Anders (Andreas) is the Scandinavian equivalent of; [sic] English: Andrew, Greek: Andreus, Italian: Andrea, Russian: Andrey. I have managed to trace the Behring side of my family tree back to around 1680 and know that the origin of the name reaches all the way back to a Teutonic German family which used the Bear in their coat of arms. There is a church in Southern Germany that carries my family\u2019s coat of arms (a black bear on yellow background) or the coat of arms of my ancestor, Behr\/Ber\/Bear. It is likely that I am somehow related to the great Danish explorer Bering (Bering Island, Bering strait, Bering sea) although I have been unable to trace my lineage to his particular family branch. As the German Ber\/Bear clan grew up to a millennia [sic] ago, they added an h and eventually \u201cring\u201d to establish a distinction between the various related families. Animal names violated the principles of Christendom so adding various endings might have been as a result of the increasing convertion [sic] to Christianity approximately a thousand years ago. (Berwick 2011, p. 1400).<\/span><\/p>\n

The German word for bear is actually Baer, but that is not the important thing about Breivik\u2019s ancestry fantasy. The key emotional fact is that he has kept his mother\u2019s maiden name as his middle name. This indicates his symbiotic attachment to her. One of the ways in which he has convinced himself that he was not a \u201cfeminized\u201d sissy but a masculine and powerful male was wearing a diver\u2019s suit with a \u201cMarxist Hunter\u201d badge on his sleeve and a powerful sniper\u2019s gun in his hands:.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[insert picture here]<\/span><\/p>\n

In his deepest feelings, Anders Behring Breivik experienced the \u201clack of discipline\u201d at home as an emotional abandonment, not only by his father but also, and perhaps even more so, by his mother. His immature and narcissistic mother could not love him normally. She abandoned him emotionally when he tried to break away from her, thus keeping him under her tight symbiotic dominance. In fact, the \u201cfreedom\u201d he enjoyed was an emotional abandonment (Mahler & al. 1975). His \u201cmatriarchal upbringing\u201d had \u201cfeminized\u201d him. He was enraged at his mother, whom he saw as the source of all his emotional troubles. At one point his anti-feminism and misogyny enraged his brother\u2019s girlfriend so much that she \u201calmost\u201d strangled him (Berwick 2011, p. 1387).<\/span><\/p>\n

The Muslims that Anders hates so much may be an unconscious stand-in for his rejecting father and for his abusive stepfather. In his feelings, they have \u201cdefiled\u201d and polluted Europe, just as his stepfather had defiled and infected his mother. As a boy, Anders remembers being victimized by Muslim gangs in Oslo. The Muslims became the embodiment of evil to him. In his \u201ccompendium\u201d he wrote of his childhood traumatization by the Muslims:<\/span><\/p>\n

Even at that time, the Muslim gangs were very dominating in Oslo East and in inner city Oslo. They even arranged \u201craids\u201d in Oslo West occasionally, subduing the native youths (kuffars) and collecting Jizya [the traditional tax on non-Muslims in Muslim countries] from them (in the form of cell phones, cash, sunglasses etc) […] I remember they systematically harassed, robbed and beat ethnic Norwegian youngsters who were unfortunate enough to not have the right affiliations. Muslim youths called the ethnic Norwegians \u201cpoteter\u201d (potatoes, a derogatory term used by Muslims to describe ethnic Norwegians). These people occasionally raped the so called \u201cpotato whores\u201d (Berwick 2011, p. 1389).<\/span><\/p>\n

In Breivik\u2019s unconscious mind, then, his mother, whom the \u201csexual beast,\u201d his stepfather, had infected, ravaged and destroyed, is like the Norwegian \u201cpotato whores\u201d whom the Muslim gangs had raped and he did nothing to save. Is there a hidden connection between his sexual life, his mother and sister, and his murderous act? Could it be that by murdering the Labor Party members he was also unconsciously murdering his stepfather, a Labor Party adherent, who had infected his mother with the sexually transmitted disease that turned her into a physical and emotional wreck?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sexuality and Martyrdom<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Breivik himself connected his forthcoming \u201cmartyrdom\u201d with his abandonment of his sexuality. His mother’s infection by his stepfather may have caused him to view sexuality as life-threatening. His fusional tie to his mother may have added to his fear. From a promiscuous \u201csexual beast\u201d like his stepfather, he had gradually become an abstinent monk. His ambivalence about the Muslims who raped the Norwegian women is betrayed by the following passage, in which tragedy alternates with heavy irony:<\/span><\/p>\n

You become a zombie where the highlight of your day is purchasing a 1000 Euro garment or a 100 Euro sushi meal, or getting a blowjob [sic] from someone you met outside the toilet at a club that Saturday. On your way home you see a girl getting gang-raped by 4 Somalis. You don\u2019t offer it much thought as the slag probably had it coming anyway[…] Why should you risk your health for someone you don\u2019t know? [emphasis added] And the poor Somalis are probably only acting out as a result of centuries of European colonialism.\u00a0 Poor fellas. Society should take responsibility and offer these underprivileged individuals better accommodations and more rights, perhaps affirmative action would ensure that they feel at home, that they finally would like us? How can we be so cruel and treat them this way? (Berwick 2011, pp. 1401-1402).<\/span><\/p>\n

Ironically, and tragically, by trying to get himself killed and to become a martyr, Anders Breivik was unconsciously trying to become a shaheed, just like a Muslim suicide bomber: This is yet another indication of his ambivalent identification with the very Muslims whom he hates so much, those very Muslims who symbolize evil in his convoluted fantasy, but who also seem to stand for the sexual power, violence and strength that obsess this tragic murderous \u201cknight,\u201d as well as for his oppressed, rejected and downtrodden image of himself.<\/span><\/p>\n

A couple of years before committing his \u201cact of martyrdom,\u201d Anders Breivik began to avoid sexual relations. In the fall of 2009 he went to Hungary on a five-day partying binge to celebrate a friend\u2019s birthday. He later wrote, \u201cHungarian girls are hot as hell, too bad I have to avoid relationships for the good of my mission\u201d (Berwick 2011, p. 1415). Here is what he had to say about his relationships with women and his planned martyrdom:<\/span><\/p>\n

As for girlfriends; I do get the occasional lead, or the occasional girl making a move, especially now a day [sic] as I\u2019m fit like hell and feel great. But I\u2019m trying to avoid relationships as it would only complicate my plans and it may jeopardize my operation. And I don\u2019t feel comfortable manipulating girls any more into one night stands. I am not that person any more. I did screw two girls in Prague though, but that was mainly because it was a realistic chance that I would end up dead during the process of establishing a weapons connection. I won\u2019t make any effort to try to completely justify it though. Human males are imperfect by default as they are plagued by their biological needs. Nevertheless, screwing around outside of marriage is after all a relatively small sin compared to the huge amounts of grace I am about to generate with my martyrdom operation. And it is essential that you do what is required to keep moral and motivation at a high level; especially, just prior to operation critical moments. I have reserved 2000 Euro from my operations budget which I intend to spend on a high quality model escort girl 1 week prior to execution of the mission. I will probably arrange that just before or after I attend my final martyrs mass in Frogner Church. It will contribute to ease my mind as I imagine I will get tense and very nervous. It is easier to face death if you know you are biologically, mentally and spiritually at ease (Berwick 2011, p. 1424).<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the most frequent questions about this terrible tragedy are \u201cWhy now?\u201d and \u201cWhy this particular individual?\u201d These are very difficult questions to answer. One way to try to answer them is to examine the events in Anders Behring Breivik\u2019s life prior to the massacre. In his \u201ccompendium\u201d he listed eight separate humiliations involving physical violence that he had suffered at the hands of Muslims, from the time when he was fifteen (about the time his father refused to see him again) until he was twenty-one. He was also threatened with physical violence on ten other occasions (Berwick 2011, pp. 1393-1395). He had also helplessly watched Norwegian girls being gang-raped by Muslims (ibid. pp. 1401-1402). There is little doubt that all this not only enraged Anders but also constituted deep narcissistic injuries that damaged his already-precarious self-esteem.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[insert picture here]<\/span><\/p>\n

The Avenging Cop
\n<\/span><\/h3>\n

Anders Behring Breivik committed the tragic massacre when he was thirty-two, however, and he did not aim to kill Muslims: he murdered scores of his fellow Norwegians, himself dressed up as a Norwegian policeman. The disguise betrays his inner ambivalence and his diffuse sense of self: part of him wants to keep law and order, to act like a policeman, while another part of him wants to kill, to murder, to wreak havoc, to avenge himself for all the rejections and humiliations he had suffered, to break away from his mother\u2019s emotional stranglehold on him. The Norwegian Labor Party had come to symbolize his bad mother:<\/span><\/p>\n

My parents were not politically active but supported the policies of the Norwegian Labor Party which was common for most individuals working in the public sector. My stepfather, Tore, was a moderately right wing while my stepmother, Tove, was a moderate cultural Marxist and feminist. My mom, Wenche, was an apolitical moderate feminist […] I remember the occasional crackdowns on right wing youth movements during this period. The police raided them several times, called their parents and invested a lot of resources on squashing the right wing movement all over Norway. Blitz and other extreme left, SOS Rasisme [sic] and the hip-hop community on the other hand received public funding. The Blitz house, a building they had occupied a few decades earlier, was subsidised and under protection by the government in Oslo and still is even today. They are often referred to as the \u201cstorm troops\u201d of the Norwegian Labour Party. The government subsidy of the apartment block were Blitz resides equates to more than 3 million USD per year alone. The violent Marxist group \u201cSOS Rasisme\u201d [sic] receives 2-3 million NOK annually. It\u2019s disgusting (Berwick 2011, pp. 1386, 1391).<\/span><\/p>\n

So, the anonymous British journalist of The Telegraph was only partly right. It was not only Anders Behring Breivik\u2019s patricidal rage that moved this tragic young man, whose middle name is his mother\u2019s maiden name, to commit his horrendous massacre. This \u201cmummy\u2019s boy\u201d is also seething with unconscious matricidal rage whose object is his infantile, narcissistic and symbiotic mother. Breivik suffers from the diffuse sense of self which is common in borderline personality disorders. His massacre was a desperate attempt to establish a clear sense of who he was. He wanted to be a \u201cJusticiar Knight,\u201d a latter-day Knight Templar, who would save his idealized mother, Europe, or Norway, from the ravages of the social-democratic Norwegian Labor Party, which, he was convinced, had destroyed \u201cher\u201d by letting all those \u201cevil Muslims into \u201cher.\u201d This party is led by none other than the Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, the \u201cbad father,\u201d whose Christian name is that of Anders\u2019 father, Jens Breivik. Anders\u2019 matricidal rage merged with his parricidal anger, and above all, with his quest for self, and for liberation from his fusional mother, to produce one of the most tragic civilian massacres in recent memory. The tragic massacre was the only way this tormented young man could express his desperate quest for his father\u2019s love and for his liberation from his fusional mother.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jerusalem, Israel, October 2012<\/span><\/p>\n

Last updated October 2014
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Mass Murder as Unconscious Liberation Reflections on the Norwegian Tragedy of 2011   Dedication I wish to dedicate this essay to the memory of my late friend and colleague Ruth Stein (1947-2010), one of the finest people and psychoanalysts it has ever been my pleasure and privilege to know. A well-known, much-respected, and widely-loved […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.AVNERFALK.NET\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}