The best explanation for the Austrian, Josef (imprisoned and had seven children with his daughter) Fritzl, is alcoholism.
Austrian monster Josef Fritzl: he could be simply crazy, but…
Statistics and anecdotes recounted in “Drunks, Drugs & Debits” provide a wealth of evidence that monstrous behaviors are generally rooted in alcoholism. While journalists often fail to mention that their subjects had prior arrests for behaviors directly linked to heavy drinking or drugging, when able to dig deep enough we usually find this connection. Whenever we shake our heads and wonder, “How could anyone engage in such conduct?”we should suspect alcoholism. As the “note to readers”below says, we not only give the benefit of the doubt without excusing, but also make sense of the nonsensical and point to the cure.
Josef Fritzl is one such case. While the only known indication of possible heavy drinking is the oft-cited quote that “he liked to drink beer,”there are few if any instances of guilt for false imprisonment, rape, incest and murder by negligence that, if we are able to get the whole story, could not be linked to substance addiction.
The planning, secrecy and lies surrounding this case are the stuff of an Edgar Allen Poe or Stephen King novel. Fritzl built and concealed a secret room inside a basement under his property, protected by eight doors, five of which were locking basement doors including two protected by electronic codes and one two feet wide, barely over three feet high and weighing 650 pounds. Inside this purgatory he fathered seven children with his daughter Elisabeth, who in turn was one of seven children he begat with his wife Rosemarie in the rooms above. His wife, other children and neighbors didn’t have a clue about the nightmare occurring literally right underneath them.
Fritzl reportedly began abusing Elisabeth when she was 11. When she was 18, in August, 1984, Fritzl lured her into the basement where he drugged, handcuffed and kept her imprisoned for the next 24 years. He explained that she had “stopped doing what she was told. She just did not follow any of my rules any more. She would go out all night in local bars and come back stinking of alcohol and smoke.”After running away several times and hanging out with “persons of questionable moral standards,”Fritzl decided to keep her away “from the bad influences of the outside world.”He defended himself over having fathered seven children with her by explaining to investigators, “I am not a man that has sex with little children. I only had sex with her later, much later.”Well, not that much later”Elisabeth was pregnant by the spring of 1985.
There is little doubt that psychologists will be analyzing Fritzl’s horrific behaviors for years if not decades. They may point to his apparent mother-fixation, which arose after his father, whom he called a “waster [who] never took responsibility and was just a loser that always cheated on my mother,”was kicked out when Fritzl was four. He described his mother as a “strong woman; she taught me discipline and control and the values of hard work…she was the best woman in the world.”Asked by his lawyer if he had ever fantasized about a relationship with his mother, he responded, “Yes, probably. But I was a very strong man…and as a result I was [able to keep] my desires under control.â€
Yet he couldn’t restrain those same desires with his daughter. He also couldn’t control himself in 1967 when, having had four children with Rosemarie (whom he described as “the best mother in the worldâ€) he spent 18 months in jail after being convicted of climbing into a young nurse’s flat and raping her. He appears confused over his own behavior in a way that Jeffrey Dahmer sounded in a prison interview four years after his conviction for serial murder and cannibalization, saying “I do not know what drove me to do that.”He would probably give the same response if he had been convicted for another attempted rape and indecent exposure that same year and for a rape and murder almost 20 years later, both of which have remained unsolved and for which he is a suspect.
The pattern of criminal behavior and self-justification for those behaviors in which Fritzl has engaged for decades is consistent with a diagnosis of alcoholism. The Survival Games he has played (described on pp. 266-270 of “Drunks, Drugs & Debits”) are consistent with a Keirseyan Temperament of Artisan (Myers-Briggs “SP,”probably ISTP). This theory, from Eve Delunas’ extraordinary “Survival Games Personalities Play”*, postulates that if Artisans are unable to follow their impulses (which dramatically increase when under the influence) they will begin playing Games as a means of “masking inadequacy or to put others in a one-down position”(Delunas, p. 21, cited in “Drunks, Drugs & Debits,” p. 267). This is a subconscious ego-inflating tool used to control relationships while denying taking such control, with the goal of protecting what little sense of self-worth they have. As pointed out in “Drunks,” this sounds remarkably similar to the addict with zero self-esteem (favorable view of self) who perseveres in attempts at inflating the ego (wielding power over others).
Delunas refers to the most dangerous games the Artisan plays as “Blackmail,”a variation of which is “Delinquency,”in which a player who lies, cheats and steals denies it all if caught, or blames others for his or her behavior (“I stole the car because the owner left it unlocked, so it was his faultâ€). This is euphoric recall in which every unconscionable action is distorted in some self-favoring way. Psychologists may call it Sociopathy, but if we work backwards from the euphoric recall at which alcoholics excel, we can see the behaviors are usually rooted in alcoholic survival game-playing. And recovering alcoholics admit to having done everything required in “Delinquency:”lying, cheating, stealing and blaming everyone else for all their problems.
In response to a reporter asking if he wanted to die, Fritzl, who is 73, said, “No. I only want one thing now”to pay for what I did.”Such remorse, combined with confusion, is consistent with early-stage recovery from alcoholism, which in a study by Terence Gorski resulted in the percentage of alcoholics who could be diagnosed as Sociopathic plummeting from 90% to less than 10% with as little as a month in recovery. The behaviors and genes”likely alcoholism in both his father and at least the one daughter, Elisabeth”support a diagnosis of alcoholism. Even Poe and King, both with booze-soaked brains, would have been hard-pressed to concoct this scheme in their wildest fantasies. While Fritzl might be a repentant sociopath without benefit of chemistry, the odds favor alcoholism as the underlying cause of his behaviors.
* Delunas’ work is based on David Kiersey’s work, which includes the best book extant for understanding healthy human behaviors, “Please Understand Me.”