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摘 要

在美国通俗文化中，食人情节的描述不足为奇。不论是真实的食人事件还是隐喻上的食人描述,都已经是类型文学中很常见的题材了。换句话说,食人文学,作为一种类型文学,提供了一个截然不同的视角去重新思考美国文化。本课题拟以当代食人文学代表作家——托马斯·哈里斯及其代表作品为例，通过分析其小说代表人物——汉尼拔·莱克特的双重人格——野蛮与文明，并从该人物的独特性格出发，寻找该特殊性之于美国社会中的普遍性，从而审视中当代美国社会文化及其存在的普遍问题。

本文拟以托马斯·哈里斯的食人文学为例分析当代美国社会存在的问题。本文除了引言与结论共分为三个部分：第一部分综述前人对食人小说系列的研究，以及对美国社会问题的研究；第二部分从小说代表主人公——汉尼拔·莱克特的矛盾性——野蛮与文明为出发点，分析托马斯·哈里斯食人小说中反应的社会问题；第三部分分析了汉尼拔作为社会的特别个体，反映出的普遍大众的共同问题，揭示当代美国存在的社会问题。

关键词：冲突；野蛮与文明；食人小说

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Thomas Harris’s Cannibal Fictions 1

1.2 Cannibalism 3

2. Literature Review 5

3. Conflicts in Harris’s Typical Character 7

3.1 Civilization — A Silent Psychologist 7

3.2 Barbarism — A Cannibal Devil 8

4. Social Significances of Cannibalism 10

4.1The Universality and Particularity of Hannibal Lecter 10

4.2 Mental Illness among Americans 11

4.3 Social Problems in Modern America 13

5. Conclusion 16

Works Cited 18

1. Introduction

1.1 Thomas Harris’s Cannibal Fictions

Thomas Harris, a worldwide well-know American writer and playwright, is famous for his serial suspense fiction whose most famous character is the Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal is the hero of the “Hannibal Saga”: Red Dragon (1981), The Silence of the Lambs (1988), Hannibal (1999), and Hannibal Rising (2006), who is a very smart psychologist and a gentleman in normal days but a cold blooded murderer and a cannibal monster in dark nights. All of Harris’s fictions have been adapted for the screen. The Silence of the Lambs is the most outstanding one among them, which has won five significant awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay in the 64th Oscar in 1992, becoming the third film that embraced Oscars in these major awards. Meanwhile, it enjoyed the number one in the rank of both New York Times and Publishers Weekly for several weeks.

Harris enjoys his high reputation because of the successful films adapted from his suspense fiction. Washington Post criticized him that “The Best Suspense Fictionist that Still Writes Now”. So Thomas Harris undoubtedly acquires a high reputation in the field of modern suspense and thriller fictions. He has been the authority in this field.

In the story of Red Dragon, FBI profiler Will Graham interviews Lecter about one of his patients who was murdered by a serial killer, before realizing that Lecter is the culprit. Lecter realizes that Graham is on to him, creeps up behind him and stabs him, nearly disemboweling him. Graham survives, however, and is hospitalized. Lecter is charged with a series of nine murders, but is found not guilty by reason of insanity. He is institutionalized in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane under the care of Dr. Frederick Chilton, a pompous, incompetent psychologist whom Lecter despises. Some years later, Graham comes out of retirement and consults Lecter in order to catch another serial killer, Francis Dolarhyde, known by the nickname “The Tooth-Fairy”. Through the classifieds of a tabloid called The National Tattler, Lecter provides Dolarhyde with Graham’s home address, enabling Dolarhyde to disfigure Graham and attempt to kill his family. At the end of the novel, Lecter sends Graham a taunting note saying that he hopes Graham isn’t “too ugly”.

In the sequel The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter assists FBI agent-in-training Clarice Starling in catching a serial killer known as “Buffalo Bill”. Lecter is fascinated by Starling, and they form an unusual relationship in which he provides her with a profile of the killer in exchange for details about her unhappy childhood. Lecter had previously met Buffalo Bill, the former lover of his patient (and eventual victim) Benjamin Raspail. He does not reveal this information directly, instead giving Starling vague clues to help her figure it out for herself. In return for his assistance, Lecter is transferred to a lower security facility, from which he later escapes, killing and mutilating his guards and using the face of one of them as a mask to fool paramedics. While in hiding, he sends a letter to Starling wishing her well, and another to Chilton swearing gruesome revenge. Chilton disappears soon afterward.

In the third novel, Hannibal, Lecter lives in a palazzo in Florence, Italy, and works as a museum curator under the alias “Dr. Fell”. The novel reveals that one of Lecter’s victims survived: Mason Verger, a wealthy, sadistic pedophile whom Lecter had drugged and mutilated during a therapy session. Verger offers a huge reward for anyone who catches Lecter, whom he intends to feed to feral pigs specially bred for the purpose. Verger enlists the help of Rinaldo Pazzi, a disgraced Italian police inspector, and Paul Krendler, a corrupt Justice Department official and Starling’s boss. Lecter kills Pazzi and returns to the United States to escape Verger’s Sardinian henchmen, only to be captured. Starling follows them, intent on apprehending Lecter personally, but is instead also taken captive. After escaping the trap, Lecter convinces Verger’s sister Margot to kill her brother as revenge for the years of sexual abuse she suffered at his hands, and leaves a voice mail message taking responsibility for the crime. He then rescues the wounded Starling and takes her to his rented lake house to treat her. There he keeps her sedated, attempting to transform her into his dead sister Mischa through a regimen of classical conditioning and mind-altering drugs. One day, he invites her to a formal dinner where the guest and first course is Krendler. She joins him in eating the still-living Krendler’s brain, but refuses to allow Lecter to turn her into Mischa; she says that Mischa can instead live within him. She then offers Lecter her breast, and they become lovers. Three years later, Lecter’s former guard, Barney Matthews, sees them together in Argentina, and flees the country, fearing for his life.

1.2 Cannibalism

Historically shrouded in mystery, myth, symbolism, fear and speculation, cannibalism remains in most cultures one of the ultimate taboos. Cannibalism, in popular culture works, has been depicted as the cultural norm for a tribe or people group, normally located in South America. And owing to these early documents, cannibalism thus usually has been used as an expression of a tribe’s primitive savagery. Generally speaking, however, reasons for cannibalizing can be divided into three categories: (1) by necessity in the extreme situation of famine; (2) as sanctioned by a cultural norm; (3) and caused by insanity or mental dysfunction. And there will be a general illustration respectively.

Take the accounts of starvation for a start, some of researches claim that cannibalism is committed only by people who otherwise face death from starvation. Firstly, it is reported in the Bible during the siege of Samaria. Two hungry women made a treaty to eat their children; after the first mother cooked her child the second mother ate it but refused to reciprocate by cooking her own child. A similar story is reported by Flavius Josephus during the siege of Jerusalem by Rome in 70 C.E., and the population of Numantia during the Roman Siege of Numantia in the 2nd century BC was reduced for cannibalism and suicide. Then in the AD 1064-1072, cannibalism was documented in Egypt during a famine caused by the failure of the Nile to flood for eight years. Next, it occurred after the sinking of the Whaleship Essex of Nantucket by a whale, on November 20, 1820, (an important source event for Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, 1851) the survivors, in three small boats, resorted, by common consent, to cannibalize in order to survive.

Whereafter, in the US, there was another example of cannibalism to avoid starvation. The Donner party referred to a group of California-bound American emigrants caught up in the “Westward Movement” of the 1840s, but after becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846–1847, and some of them resorted to cannibalism.

Finally, in the so-called whole-civilized 20th century, the practice of cannibalism still prevails. There are disputed claims that cannibalism was widespread during the famine in Ukraine in the 1930s, during the Siege of Leningrad in World War II, and during the Chinese Civil War and the Great Leap Forward in China.

Apart from the cannibal practice out of starving motive, there are many forms of spiritual and ritualistic cannibalism worldwide, which sometimes are even sanctioned by certain cultural norms. According to Rachael Bell, spiritual and ritualistic cannibalism is not necessarily limited to groups. Many cases of the individual cannibalism incorporate spiritual and ritualistic aspects into their practice. “Some agree that the consumption of particular portions or organs was a ritual means by which certain qualities of the person eaten might be obtained or by which powers of witchcraft and sorcery might be exercised ” (Sanday, 1986: 27). In some cases, a small proportion of the dead person was ritually eaten by relatives. And headhunters sometimes consumed a little of the bodies or heads of deceased enemies. For example, the Aztecs apparently practiced cannibalism on a large scale as part of the ritual of human sacrifice. Besides in the modern world, cannibals such as Dahmer and Kemper claimed that when they consumed their victims, they believed that they spiritually became a part of them.

They also believed that their cannibalism allowed them to absorb some of their attributes, such as power. Nevertheless, there are still a group of scholars who question the credibility of reports of cannibalism and argue that “the description by one group of people regards another group of people as cannibals is a consistent and demonstrable ideological and rhetorical device to establish perceived cultural superiority” (Sanday, 1986: 88). William Arens, the author of The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy (1979), is one of the hard cores behind such kind of viewpoint. He concludes that “the available evidence does not permit the facile assumption that the act was or has ever been a prevalent cultural feature” (Arens, 1981: 165). But his argument does not dismiss the culturally embedded meaning of cannibalism; in fact, he contends that the idea of cannibalism is an “aspect of cultural-boundary construction and maintenance. This intellectual process is a part of the attempt by every society to create a conceptual order based on differences in a universe of often-competing communities” (Arens, 1981: 145).

Although Arens’s findings are controversial, they have been cited as an example of postcolonial revisionism. At any rate, the book ushered in an era of rigorous combing of the cannibalism literature. By Arens’s later admission, some cannibalism claims came up short, others were reinforced. Similarly, another record is that Japanese scholars (e.g. Kuwabara Jitsuzo) branded the Chinese culture as cannibalistic in certain propagandistic works — which served as ideological justification for the assumed superiority of the Japanese during World War II. In the end, the murder of a person or the use of a corpse for the purpose of consumption by another human in any situation, outside that of conditions of starvation and ritual, is considered to be a form of mental disorder, or even the criminal cannibalism. But the medical literature on the topic is relatively sparse, except that Cecil Adams ever discussed this in a 2004 edition in his popular newspaper column The Straight Dope headed “Eat or be eaten: Is cannibalism a pathology as listed in the DSM-IV? ”, however, in which the conclusion still held that routine cannibalism is myth.

2. Literature Review

Thomas Harris is not a productive writer, and except for the first novel Black Sunday published in 1975, such “Hannibal Saga” of 25-year working length is his only one to make a hit in literati. However, his “Saga” not only earned a high reputation in literati and readership, but also helped to shape and impact the current formula for cannibalism in mainstream fiction. Thomas Harris is one of those who manage successfully to bridge the lowbrow and the highbrow. As a controversial writer in contemporary America, Harris adheres to writing in the form of cannibal fiction, which is generally regarded as the popular literature. In fact, the paradox between the appeal of the popular literature to the audience and its awkward status as one of the despised lowbrow subgenres has been posing an amazing social phenomenon. As a result, along with the interest and study of mass culture in America after the Second World War, the academic study of popular literature has accumulated reasonable achievement. Therefore, as a major figure in contemporary popular literature, Harris attracts not only great general interest among his readers but also inevitably inspires debates over whether cannibal fiction can be great literature.

According to the investigation and study in the National Library of China, National Digital Library of China, Literature Resource Center of Gale, Amazon.com, Wikipedia.com and Google.com, there are no books that specialize on Harris and his novels. But there are a series of articles and sections of books on Harris’s writings. In general, studies abroad on Harris and his novels are much richer than those of the domestic academic circle. Most of these articles and sections, however, are book review, or focus on the study of plot design, theme, film adaption, criticism about the last two of “Saga”, and the comparison among the four books. And there is a general list including some of the representative studies.

Cannibal Fictions (1993) by Jeff Berglund offers an analysis of Harris’s themes; “Thomas Harris: Overview” by Grella George gives an all-round commentary on the four books, including the virtues and deficiencies; and, “Senseless evil: Thomas Harris’s thrillers promise to explain the most grotesque crimes committed by their serial killers. In real life, it’s not quite so simple (2007) by Will Self , “I READ THE BOOK—‘Hannibal’: Nearly undigestible” (2001) by Alleva Richard, and “First Course” (2006) by Rafferty Terrence specially pass criticism on the last two novels of “Saga” for their over-inauthenticity and indigestbility; “The kindest cut of all: adapting Thomas Harris’s Hannibal” (2007) by Schmid David, and “Dr. Lecter, I Presume” (2004) by McDonald Neil , and “Taboos and Totems: Cultural Meanings of The Silence of the Lambs” (1993) by Staiger Janet respectively make a comparison between the novels and their film adoptions. However, there is no such a complete book as dedicated to the study of Thomas Harris and his cannibal “Saga”.

At present, in China, out of the conservative tradition in politics, religion, ideology and etc., there is a very few of studies on the cannibalism and cannibal fictions at home, much less those on the “Hannibal Saga” that was born in America. Although with the introduction and popularity of the films adapted from “Saga”, more and more scholars start studies on him, nearly all of them are film reviews, which lead lots of needs to go back to their origins, the books themselves. Therefore, it is a piece of good news because it means a large space of blank waiting to be filled; it is a challenge because without many predecessors’ guidance, the present author of the thesis is afraid he would fight with his own shadow in the end. Anyway, this is the starting point. The present author will try to analyze conflicts inside of the Doctor Lecter as displayed in “Hannibal Saga”, so that it might be of a little help to the students and researchers who are interested in Harris and his cannibal “Saga”.

3. Conflicts in Harris’s Typical Character

We usually put barbarism and civilization in a contrary position, and we always think that barbarism should be replaced by civilization. With the development of the society, the degree of the civilization will be higher and higher. Our history must develop following the rule that civilization replaces barbarism. However, it is not so clear on the relation between them.

3.1 Civilization — A Silent Psychologist

Doctor Lecter appears to portray him as an intellectually brilliant, cultured and sophisticated gentleman, with refined tastes in art, music and cuisine. He is well-educated and able to speak several languages. He is deeply offended by rudeness, and frequently kills people who have bad manners. In Hannibal, he performs plastic surgery on his own face on several occasions, and removes his extra digit. Lecter’s eyes are a shade of maroon, and reflect the light in “pinpoints of red”. His hair is as smooth as otter. His brown eyes seem to see through anyone’s back. He has an arrogant hawk nose, and he always walks quietly with a perfume of a kind of first-class woolen cloth. Lecter can speak medieval Italian and Latin and he has an outstanding memory.

Hannibal lived in the Lecter Castle of Lithuania. He received an aristocratic education when he was a little boy, and he owned a high level of artistic characteristics. Both of his parents have a blue blood. His father is a baron and the owner of a big manor, and his mother was born in a viscount family. Hannibal enjoys a high level of attainments both in art and psychology. In art, he can easily become the curator of the Florence Library; in psychology, he is able to not only guide psychology students but also contribute to publishing psychological essays of psychologists. Meanwhile, Hannibal has the ability to make his patients willing to commit suicide or destruct themselves with his psychology knowledge. Hannibal owns a kind of strange charm to everything. Criminal act is a kind of art for Doctor Lecter.

In the Trilogy of Doctor Lecter, the most impressive and attractive part is not the thriller scene of eating brain but the elegant manner of Hannibal and his pursuit for grace. Doctor Lecter is a wine expert. He is a considerate gentleman. In his friend’s birthday party, he always prepares a bottle of his love, whose reserved date is the same as his friend’s birthday. Doctor Lecter has a specific preference on classical music and instruments. He collected a Flanders cembalo of the late 18th century and the electronic organ and clavichord which made by Professor Leon Theremin in 1930s. He is also good at playing the piano. He loves the Mozart and Bach. He furnished his dimly-lit house with dignified furniture and small bronze statues. He drives a 30-year-old black Cougar; he wears Givenchy; he reads A Brief History of Time by Prof Hawking.

Hannibal pays a particular attention to tableware and food materials. He loves silver sets of Tiffany and Christophe. There is a rattail pattern on the Paris-style spoon. He matches the glasses with brocaded paper, which has a little scarlet rose on the corner. He even puts the cuisine in a graceful box which is tied with two silk ribbons, although he is running away from the police. It contained a piece of French goose liver and fresh Anatolia figs, as well as a half bottle of wine.

Consequently, we can say “taste wine like Hannibal”, “enjoy music like Hannibal”, and “to be a gastronome of Hannibal style”. Hannibal may have a tough childhood, but what we are curious about is how this boy can become such an elegant and eating-people gentleman, instead of a problem child.

On the one hand, Hannibal is definitely a perfect man. He owns a remarkable gentility, an acute observation, a rich imagination and unique connoisseurship for everything. He is so wit and elegant that he will be even considerate to a stranger. On the other hand, Doctor Lecter is as cold as marble and he ignores morality and the bottom of humanity.

3.2 Barbarism — A Cannibal Devil

Red Dragon firmly states that Lecter does not fit any known psychological profile. In The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter’s keeper, Dr. Frederick Chilton, claims that Lecter is a “pure sociopath” (“pure psychopath” in the film adaptation). In the Red Dragon, protagonist Will Graham says that Lecter tortured animals as a child, but in later fiction Lecter has an affinity towards animals: this is an example of Lecter misleading profilers with false information, with the latter explanation being more in tune with his character. Lecter’s pathology is explored in greater detail in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising, which explain that he was traumatized as a child in Lithuania in 1944 when he witnessed the murder and cannibalism of his beloved younger sister, Mischa, by Lithuanian Hilfswillige. One of the Hilfswillige members claimed that Lecter unwittingly ate his sister as well. Hannibal has been tortured by this through his childhood, and he kept silent in later eight years.

The image of Hannibal is gradually built up by several researchers—Hannibal the Cannibal. It makes him an object of research that each scholar desire to study for his psychological analysis and abnormal behaviors. However, his extremely high IQ humiliates the scholars. From the Hannibal Rising we can know the reason he is bloodthirsty is that he witnessed his beloved sister killed and eaten by the army deserters. When he grew up, he started to plan his revenge. Hannibal determined to abuse them, killed them and even ate them. This revenge had become the instinct of instinct — the darkest one that eager to destroy lives. It is definitely a fatal instinct.

He is frequently depicted preparing gourmet meals from his victims’ flesh, the most famous example being his admission in the film adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs that he once ate a census inspector’s liver “with some fava beans and a nice Chianti” (a “big Amarone” in the novel). It impressed me most that he fried the brain dilatorily and then fed this to the victim. It is not a crime scene but an elegant feast. At the end of The Silence of the Lambs, a lovely boy was curious about the fried brain. Hannibal smiled and devoted his “tasty cuisine” to this innocent boy.

His parents died a grim death and his sister was tortured and eaten. He is hostile to the whole world for his loss of his family. In terms of this, he is same as Buffalo Bill. He thinks all the people that he killed deserve more than death. So he regards himself as an envoy of redeemer. When he escaped from prison, he leisurely hanged the prison guard on the cage presenting a cruciform. It apparently indicated that he is the Savior.

Hannibal’s powerful collapsing force suggests that the ego has lost control of the inner self. However, he possesses a supreme Composure and superhigh intelligence. It shows us that he has become accustomed to the social disciplines and also, he had a perfect moderation. His superego is defined by the perfectionism of himself. This kind of definition is unconscious, but it is in contraction with normal perfectionism.

Hannibal has no guilty conscience and burden for his victims because of his narcissistic criterion of good and evil — egocentric criterion. His smile makes our hairs stand on end. Hannibal is very strong on the inner self, ego and superego. It results in his personality locked in a dilemma of fanaticism and composure. Doctor Lecter has been trapped in an extremely Split Personality Disorder.

4. Social Significances of Cannibalism

Nowadays, the mental health has been a hot topic through the world with the growth in the living standard. The United States, as the leader in economy, science and medical treatment, still has severe problems in mental health. The Reuters reported that about 20 percent of Americans were suffering from a sort of mental illness in 2010.

4.1The Universality and Particularity of Hannibal Lecter

The modern America has severe social problems, such as income disparity, juvenile crime, guns problem, drug abuse, rape, murder and so on. It is like a Pandora’s Box. All of the problems are eroding the “democratic” and “prosperous” root of American capitalism. It is the result of the American typical capital system and the values derived from this. The United States emphasizes the “individualism”. They pose as the leader of the world. This “advanced” social system makes this superpower go down with an “American Disease” which is hard to get rid of.

According to the statistics of International Review, the crime rate in each 10 thousand people is the four or five times as the west Europe. The figure of rape crime is seven times and the robbery is four or five times. The proportion of the prisoners ranks the top of the world, ahead of South Africa with 46%. Recently, what is reported frequently is the school shooting. A single student can claim 33 lives. What’s worse, he regards it a funny game. It is the typical distortion of human nature. It is the evidence of the sick society.

No wander does this terrible horror fiction be so salable, as well as its adaption film. It means that lots of psychopaths are hidden among Americans. They are eager to seek a kind of respect and satisfy from it. They are constantly looking for their similarities. Finally, they get affirmation in this Thomas Harris’s cannibal fiction. They see the fiction as their precious jewelry and the Doctor Lecter as their hero. The severe social problems show us that the “American Disease” is incurable.

The capitalist class led us to self-interest, egotism and hedonism via promoting the values of “ego” and “freedom”. It harmed the system itself in the end. Certainly, the bourgeoisie has been afraid of the menaces to social stability. However, the disaster caused by this Pandora’s Box is irreversible. As a result, the US inevitably needs to come across a sort of contradictory.

Schopenhauer once said that whether new or old documents make us believe that humans’ ruthlessness is not less than rats or aardwolves. Whatever and wherever, if the law and the social order are replaced by anarchy, it may show its true features.

In specific environment, everyone has a metamorphic face. Although we defined us senior animals, it is only a kind of animal after all. Any beasts have teeth so they can eat people. Also we human beings have teeth too, so we can eat animals, even human beings. We are just restricted by the so-called civilization. In any case, someone cannot take a good control of his emotion. He will open his bloody mouth to us. Now, it is not hard for us to understand the “distorted” human nature.

The Trilogy of the Doctor Lecter leads us into a symbolic subconscious world. It discovers mental disease of characters with the psychological analysis of him. It is not meant to show us a morbid criminal world. It reveals the root of the horror of anxious and threatened Americans.

4.2 Mental Illness among Americans

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, 1999 defines mental disorders as “health conditions that are characterized by alterations in thinking, mood, or behavior associated with distress and/or impaired functioning”. The report distinguishes mental disorders from mental problems, describing the signs and symptoms of mental health problems as less intense and of shorter duration than those of mental health disorders. However, it acknowledges that both mental health disorders and problems may be distressing and disabling.

Mental health may be measured in terms of an individual’s abilities to think and communicate clearly, learn and grow emotionally, deal productively and realistically with change and stress, and form and maintain fulfilling relationships with others. Mental health is a principal component of wellness—self-esteem, resilience, and the ability to cope with adversity influence how people feel about themselves and whether they choose lifestyles and behaviors that promote or jeopardize their health.

The notion of mental illness derives its main support from such phenomenon as syphilis of the brain or delirious conditions—intoxications, for instance—in which persons may manifest certain disorders of thinking and behavior. Correctly speaking, however, these are diseases of the brain, not of the mind. According to one school of thought, all so-called mental illness is of this type. The assumption is made that some neurological defects, perhaps very subtle ones, will ultimately be found to explain all disorders of thinking and behavior.

The symptoms of mental disorders differ one type of problems from another; however, the symptoms of mental illness vary far more widely in both type and intensity than do the symptoms of most physical illnesses. In general, people usually are considered mentally healthy if they are able to maintain their mental and emotional balance in times of crisis and stress and cope effectively with the problems of daily life. When coping ability is lost, then there is some degree of mental dysfunction. The goals of diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders are to recognize and understand the conditions, reduce their underlying causes, and work toward regaining mental and emotional equilibrium.

It is complicated to determine how many people suffer from mental illness because of changing definitions of mental illness and difficulties classifying, diagnosing, and reporting mental disorders. There are social stigmas attached to mental illness, such as being labeled “crazy”, being treated as a danger to others, and being denied jobs or health insurance coverage, that keep some sufferers from seeking help, and many of those in treatment do not reveal it on surveys. Some patients do not realize that their symptoms are caused by mental disorders. Because knowledge about the way the brain works is relatively narrow, mental health professionals must continually reassess how mental illnesses are defined and diagnosed. In addition, what might be considered, for example, delusional thinking in one culture may well be widely accepted in another; the symptoms of mental illness are notoriously fluid, and diagnosis may be skewed by cultural differences or other bias on the part of both patient and practitioner.

Last century, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), an Austria great psychoanalyst, published his theories. There are some essential issues among his theory. First, the childhood is the most important period during one’s life. It has a bad effect on the later development if that one had a certain mental injury in childhood. So when we were a child, we should free ourselves for happiness, instead of being excessively depressed.

Second, each human contains the Id, ego and superego at the same time. The ego helps people to pursue happiness. Finally, the superego is in contraction with ego. The superego is restrained by social morality and law. It decides that ego cannot pursue happiness as its will. The Silence of the Lambs is the improvement of psychoanalysis theory.

4.3 Social Problems in Modern America

Unlike most other peoples, Americans are primarily a nation of immigrants. The citizens or their ancestors immigrated from many parts of the global — some as refugees from religious and political persecution, some as adventurers from the Old World seeking a better life, some fleeing a hopeless economic situation or natural disaster, some wanting greater educational opportunities, and some as captives brought to America against their own will to be sold into slavery. Though people all share a common American culture, the nation contains many racial and ethnic subcultures with their own distinctive characteristics. These differences might seem trivial or irrelevant to outside observers, but they have contributed to racial conflicts that have been a persistent social problem to US society.

The United States was found on the principle of human equality, but in practice, the nation has fallen far short of that ideal. American society is a stratified one, in which power, wealth, and prestige are unequally distributed among the population. This inequality is not simply a matter of distinctions between gender and social classes; it tends to follow racial and ethnic lines as well. With the result that class divisions often parallel racial divisions. The first male settlers from “Anglo-Saxon” northwestern Europe quickly took control of economic assets and political power in the United States, and they have maintained this control, to a greater or lesser degree, ever since.

Race relation between black and white still leaves much to be desired, although there is unmistakable evidence of some improvements in attitudes. However, there is a sharp divergence between the races on the question of how much progress has been made in ending discrimination. The majority of whites believe that half of the black felt that there has not been much real change. Only less than 20% of the whites believe that many blacks miss on jobs and promotion in their city because of discrimination. Many blacks are still pessimistic about progress in race relations. A Pew Research Center study published on January 12, 2010, however, indicates that just over half of non-Hispanic blacks do not think discrimination is responsible for keeping blacks from getting ahead in society.

Drug abuse refers to the excessive, addictive use of drugs for nonmedical purposes despite social, psychological, and physical problems that may arise from such use. According to the statistics from the U.N., globally speaking, among every 100 people, there will be at least one drug user. And among all countries, the United States is most severely harassed by the drug issue. Drug abuse is an increasingly serious problem facing American society, and is regarded as a most challenging social problem in the country.

Drugs have been the focal point of the crime problem in the United States in many years. And drugs and crime in the country are related in multiple ways.

Most directly, it is a crime to use, possess, or sell drugs classified as having a potential for abuse (such as cocaine, heroin, morphine and amphetamines). Furthermore, drug addiction is associated with crime as many drug addicts must steal or even rob in order to raise large sums of money needed t fund their habit of drug taking. In 2002 about a quarter of convicted property and drug offenders in local jails had committed their crimes to get money for drugs, compared to 5% of violent and public order offenders. Among State prisoners in 2004 the pattern was similar, with property and drug offenders more likely to commit their crimes for drug money than violent and public-order offenders. In that same year, 18% of Federal inmates said they committed their current offense to obtain money for drugs.

There are also crimes that result from individuals who commit crimes as a result of the effects the drugs have on their thought and behavior. Psychopharmacological killings are those caused by drug or alcohol intoxication, as when a person gets high and acts out in a violent fashion. What’s more, a person under the influence of drugs also has less respect for the welfare of self and others.

Drugs are also related to crimes as drug manufacture and drug trafficking — lucrative business in the illegal market — are often controlled by organized criminal networks. As a matter of fact, only a small percentage of drug-related crimes fit the economic compulsive model or are psychopharmacological in nature. By contrast, the bulk of all drug-related crimes are systematic in nature. Crime results from the structure of the drug system.

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