Eichmann and his fellow Nazis were capable of atrocities not because they were ordinary decent folk in uniforms but because they believed passionately in their cause.
Recently, a number of revisionist books have been published highlighting this point. In addition, the validity of the classic experimental studies of conformity and obedience—which supported the banality-of-evil hypothesis—have since been challenged on several counts (including methodological weaknesses). Professors Haslam and Reicher assert:
…from Stanford, as from the obedience studies, it is not valid to conclude that people mindlessly and helplessly succumb to brutality. Rather both studies (and also the historical evidence) suggest that brutality occurs when people identify strongly with, brutal group that have a brutal ideology.
According to this new view, people commit atrocities because they believe what they are doing is right. Ordinary people are not closet monsters after all; however, they can become monsters if they subscribe to certain beliefs. Today, social psychologists should no longer be asking the question: How is it that ordinary people can be persuaded to do terrible things? A better question would be: What are the factors that cause ordinary people to identify with brutal belief systems? In the modern world, the answer to this question is needed with some urgency.
The wide appeal of fundamentalist ideologies—of which national socialism is an example—reveals a flaw in our intellectual and emotional apparatus. The world is a complex place, and we yearn for the comforting solidity of absolute truths. Freud posited that human beings have an infantile wish to experience again the certainty of parental declarations, the tidy polarities of good and bad, wrong and right. Such answers keep the chaos at bay—the complexities of reality, our insignificance, and our likely appointment with oblivion.
The first of our existential crises probably coincides with the onset of adolescence—a fact that provides us with a further reason to admire Robert Musil. He sets The Confusions of Young Torless in a military academy—not only to exploit the obvious resonances relating to nationalism and war, but also because such institutions are full of adolescents. Brutality is one of the things that human beings employ to make the world a simpler place—and the generation of Austrians depicted in Musil s masterpiece chose to simplify the world with devastating consequences.
Frank Tallis
London, 2008
“Questioning the Banality of Evil.” S. Alexander Haslam and Stephen D. Reicher. In
The Psychologist,
vol. 21, no. 1, January 2008. Published by the British Psychological Society.
“Introduction.” J. M. Coetzee. In
The Confusions of Young Torless
(2001) by Robert Musil. London: Penguin Harmondsworth.
The Death of Sigmund Freud: Fascism, Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Fundamentalism
(2007). Mark Edmundson. London: Bloomsbury
FRANK TALLIS is a practicing clinical psychologist and an expert in obsessional states. He is the author of
A Death in Vienna, Vienna Blood,
and
Fatal Lies,
as well as seven nonfiction books on psychology and two previous novels,
Killing Time
and
Sensing Others.
He is the recipient of a Writers’ Award from the Arts Council England and the New London Writers Award from the London Arts Board.
A Death in Vienna
was short-listed for the 2005 Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger Award. Tallis lives in London.
Fatal Lies is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Frank Tallis
Dossier copyright © 2009 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
MORTALIS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books,
an imprint of The Random House Group, Ltd., in 2008.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Tallis, Frank.
Fatal lies : a novel / Frank Tallis.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-795-2
1. Liebermann, Max (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Psychoanalysts—Fiction.
3. Police—Austria—Vienna—Fiction. 4. Vienna (Austria)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6120.A44F38 2009
823’.92—dc22 2008023474
www.mortalis-books.com
v3.0
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