The Case of Ted Kaczynski – the Unabomber

The first example In the American edition of my book is Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. The Unabomber. This criminal carried on a seventeen-year killing spree by sending mail bombs to prominent, highly educated individuals, killing three and injuring twenty-three. As the reason for his malicious deeds, he proffered a liberalist manifesto that he sent to newspapers and was published. The case stumped the FBI for eight years and puzzled everyone who knew Ted, including his family. In the end, his younger brother, David, turned him in when he and his wife, Linda Patrik, recognized Ted’s style of writing, and identified it as his manifesto about social and political change.

One might think such actions would be due to low intelligence, but Ted Kaczynski’s case is a good illustration that there is no correlation between criminal behavior and intelligence. Intellectually, he scored higher than most. He was a child prodigy with a genius IQ who graduated from Harvard with a Ph.D. and went on to teach mathematics in university for many years. What then could have led him to turn to criminality? HOW did his behavior originate and WHY did it erupt in adulthood, seemingly out of nowhere, even after his admirable career? Did it really come from the beliefs he wrote in his manifesto? 

The media reported that a massive manhunt for Ted Kaczynski was on, and he was captured hiding in a remote shack in the wilderness. We learned he was the elder of two brothers and ironically, that it was his younger brother and brother’s wife who had turned him in. I was just as puzzled as everyone about the case. But for me and my DOLF method, the psychological answer to this criminal’s behavior unraveled itself when I saw a newsreel of younger brother David and their mother, Mrs. Kaczynski, walking to the courthouse. She was a small-framed elderly lady who naturally looked tense and frightened. They were swarmed by the media as they slowly made their way to face the destruction caused by Ted. They had had no contact with him in many years becuase he had hidden in the woods to work on his bombs, and now they felt estranged from him. 

While watching that newsreel, the Kaczynski family dynamics suddenly leaped out at me! My eyes were drawn to a tiny corner of LOVE between David and his mother!! In that somber scenario, their hands were clutched together in a gesture of mutual LOVE and support for each other! The LOVE was contained in that tiny hand-in-hand embrace! Added to this was the glaring contrast between the two boys: David seemed to be a mild-mannered, gentle “good guy”, and by DOLF standards he would be considered the perfect sibling that most parents and society at large would condone. Of course on the other hand there was Ted, the diametric opposite pole in behavior and the “bad guy” or misfit in the family! 

In terms of my Distribution Of Love thinking, it all made perfect sense. That clutch of hands was the epicenter of LOVE and caring in the Kaczynski family. In that tender grasp was concentrated ALL the precious, life-affirming LOVE that Ted had longed for. It struck me that this was the standard pattern playing itself out, even as it did in the first bible story about Adam and Even and their two sons, Cain and Abel. Now I saw played out before me that out of these two boys in the Kaczynski family that consisted of two parents and two siblings, Ted was the Disfavored sibling and, in stark contrast to Ted, David was the Favored sibling! 

Now, as would have been predicted by DOLF, I could assume that the younger brother, David, had grown up LOVED and prized by the parents, and of course he turned out to be a kind and caring soul. Here before me was the scenario of a typical 4-person family that contained one likeable, compliant sibling, with all the socially desirable personality traits that parents hope for and try to foster in their children, and one aberrant or less desirable one. Now for me I discovered that David was a prime example of the glaring, stark contrast he presented to the shame and agony that his older brother Ted had brought upon the family!! 

So it was obvious to me that Ted had NOT participated in that coveted CIRCLE of LOVE that included only David along with the prime parent of that family. Whether Mrs. Kaczynski or her husband was actually the Prime Love Giver in that family was unknown to me. Yet, it was abundantly evident that within the Emotional dynamics of that family, Ted was the outsider, the reject, the pariah, the outcast – frozen out, betrayed and Disfavored by comparison with his baby brother! Both in theory and in fact, I could actually understand Ted’s viciousness, burning Anger, illogical thinking. He must have felt he had been cheated out of his legitimate entitlement to that holy grail, that golden, coveted pot of LOVE that every child seeks out in their family! This imbalance of LOVE must have been just as true during the boys’ early lives as throughout their middle years and adulthood. And in Ted’s immature, Emotion-driven Mind of a Child his younger brother had succeeded in claiming and not only HOGGING but STEALING ALL the LOVE that had been available to the children in that family! 

Ted and David Kaczynski’s example is also a perfect illustration that age difference is NOT a factor in determining Favoritism. It illustrates that Favoritism will always be spurred by children’s instincts and that they do not perceive any external factors as distinguishing features between them such age, sex or ability/disability. Rather, children perceive ALL their siblings as the same. That is, they see them as merely children who are equal under the care of the same parents. So no matter that there was a 10-year age gap between Ted and his baby brother. From young Ted’s point of view, that Circle of Love contained only his brother and NOT him, and he missed out on enjoying the nurturance of that epicenter of LOVE that should rightfully have belonged to him! 

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Ted Kaczynski, The Unabomber, Part 2

Now as students of DOLF and observers looking on the situation objectively, we would have to admit that Ted was probably NOT treated as well as David and that he was not in fact receiving as much LOVE as his brother. We know too that this disparity had not occurred only in fantasy, that is, in Ted’s mind or in the Mind of a Child, but actually occurred in reality. That is, the parents actually LOVED David more than they LOVED Ted! We recognize through DOLF that there can never be an exact division of the LOVE resources in any family, so that it would have been impossible for their parents to have actually LOVED TED as much as they LOVED his sweet-tempered, affable younger brother! And we can theorize that the reason for the disparity in LOVE is because, as we can see from Ted’s anti-social and criminal behavior as an adult that he was probably not very likeable or easy to attach to as a child either! All his life he seems to have been shy, quiet, withdrawn, introverted, reclusive and difficult to access  or reach, whether verbally or Emotionally. Perhaps it can even be argued that his unusually sharp Intellect had taken over early in his life and dominated his personality, social attitudes and behaviors to the point where it would have become difficult for others to communicate with him. However, it has been the experience of the author that Intelligence or Intellectual capability alone, whether very high or very low, can NOT be blamed as a reason for either Favor or Disfavor. 

So we can imagine that as soon as David was born and throughout their childhood as siblings, Ted’s Anger and frustration had been on a slow boil! In the underground SIBLING RIVALRY with his younger brother, even though David was much smaller, weaker and more helpless, Ted and David had actually been engaged in a bitter underground strife! And David had actually WON the most important WAR in the life of any child – the SIBLING WAR with his next-born brother! It was this LOSS, and the extreme ANGER it generated that had festered for all those years. It had shaped Ted’s mind, influenced his personality, and continued to invade, plague and torment his psyche every moment of his childhood, teenhood and adult life!

Ultimately then, it was the LACK OF LOVE directed toward Ted in comparison with his younger brother David, and his longing for this LOVE that Ted felt had been STOLEN from him, that generated the ANGER, as well as the DEPRESSION and ANXIETY. Ultimately, these are the Emotions or feelings that guided Ted’s behavior and constituted the MOTIVATION behind the murders he committed!

For just a moment as professional observers, let us put ourselves in little 9-year-old Ted’s shoes. He was a boy who was immersed in an intense SIBLING RIVALRY struggle with his baby brother as soon as the second child was born. In his young, Emotion-driven world, how must this bright, eager-to-please but socially awkward single child of 9 years have felt to have a new LOVE object invade his private life? Given the warmth that must have been present in his first Circle of LOVE that consisted only of himself and his Mom and Dad before David was born, how deep and burning must Ted’s jealousy and longing have been when he began to see the tide shift? It started by  including his sweet-tempered new brother into his exclusive Circle of Love, and soon he had to see it slowly slip out of his reach and exclude him completely?? From Ted’s point of view, now his good nature, high Intelligence and the fine social reputation he had struggled to build even with his limited capabilities, the attributes that he, albeit in his own eccentric way, had worked so hard to establish through his youth by trying to please his parents, teachers, friends and others about his Intellectual superiority, and about which was confident and secure that he owned and monopolized – no longer mattered to anyone! The entire world he knew and was familiar with had come crashing down on him because David, (that sneaky little culprit), had sucked away his LOVE, ATTENTION and SOCIAL GLORY!!! Slowly but surely, little baby David had WON the WAR for that cherished pot of LOVE. It was the only world that Ted knew, and it was slowly being destroyed with every day that passed!! And even more disturbing to Ted was that David had done all this so easily by acting sweet, charming, gentle and kind! Or, as Ted would have seen it, by pandering to his elders and being a “suck”! 

Now Ted’s world was crumbling. His pride and everything he had accomplished as a child in his effort to reach his social position up to the age of nine had been for nothing. And this was bound to continue because he could see no way of breaking into that precious Circle of Love that was becoming tighter by the day and pushing him out!! He was trapped!! His instincts forbade him from changing his own behavior to conform so he would act the same the way as his brother. No chance of that! It was a matter of pure instinct and pride! He was caught and could see no way out! He felt he could no longer catch up with his brother to retrieve his coveted spot as the single Favored child and that there was no recourse for him. So it was that throughout his childhood since the birth of David, his Anger had continued to churn and fester inside him.  

Unfortunately, the Anger followed Ted well into adulthood to warp his Adult Mind and fracture his thoughts, reasoning and logic. It was out of this burning, buried Anger that Ted later conjured up his radical, oppositional philosophical and political views. But these were really just a way to bolster his effort to build a separate, unique identity for himself. The politics, ideals and manifestos were all just extraneous issues – completely irrelevant and entirely moot and moreover they were illogical and made no sense to any sane adult mind.  All his achievements in the real adult world with his Adult Mind held no weight compared with the coveted, precious LOVE he had LOST so early in his life.  It all harked back to the time during which he was raised in that miserable little world with his parents and his adorable new baby sibling, David.  All that Ted knew and had become for his entire 9 years no longer mattered! His life, and he himself, amounted to NOTHING as soon as his brother was born. Sadly, from that time onward he had felt forced to go through his life seeking out some way to prove himself worthy and revive his early glory.

DOLF Theory exposes the Anger, Depression and Anxiety that was aroused by Ted’s seething desire to WIN the prized LOVE of his PLG. The reason for his vengeful acts of aggression lay in those feelings of rage and envy of David, that had boiled up and disturbed him all his life since the birth of his baby brother. He felt discriminated and unwanted at that critical time, and life was never the same for him again. 

Ted could have committed suicide, which would have been a demonstration of the deep, dark Depression that lurked beneath his primary Anger. This opposite pole to the Anger would have meant acting out his Depression in the form of suicide. As we know, Depression is the turning in and release of Anger onto the SELF rather than onto others. Aided and abetted by the ever-present human Emotion of Anxiety, Depression turns Anger inward and punishes the SELF, while pure Anger, also accompanied by Anxiety, finds external targets. Ted being male, and apparently having few social skills at his disposal to begin with, was overcome by Anger about not being treated fairly inside his Family of Origin, and ended up venting his feelings of Anger in a social direction. He could have chosen to kill his brother, his mother or his entire family, as many criminals in his position do. But no less affected by his Jealousy and hatred, for reasons that are as yet unknown to us and are probably unknow to himself, he chose to direct his Anger against people he never knew, punishing outsiders, and ultimately causing enormous problems for society at large.

Overdramatized you think? Is the DOLF explanation is too simplistic, impossible or even stupid? Yes of course it is to us! But children are single-minded and could even be considered “stupid” by adult standards, since the purpose of their behavior, which is to be Number One to their chosen PLG, is dictated entirely by their Instincts, and NOT by logic. In fact, Ted actually once wrote that he felt he was never as tall or as good-looking as his brother, clear firsthand testimony that these feelings were spurred by jealousy and his basic SIBLING RIVALRY!