"We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to do"
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Menninger’s line scalps the comforting fantasy that criminals are simply “them” and the rest of us are clean. He treats crime less as an alien infection than as a social utility: the offender becomes a designated vessel for urges that polite life won’t permit us to own. The phrasing is surgical. “Need” isn’t moral panic; it’s dependency. “Identify,” “envy,” “punish” is a three-beat rhythm of projection: we recognize ourselves in the transgressor, resent their freedom, then convert that resentment into righteous discipline. Punishment, in this view, doesn’t just protect society; it launders desire into virtue.
The subtext is nastier than simple hypocrisy. Menninger suggests the criminal functions as a psychic pressure valve and a communal bonding ritual. By staging someone else as the one who “does the forbidden,” we get the thrill of proximity without the risk, then the pleasure of condemnation without confronting what we’re condemning in ourselves. “Stoutly punish” has a faintly ironic, almost Victorian heft: punishment as posture, as muscular performance.
Context matters: Menninger wrote as a mid-century psychiatrist when American culture was building large, confident institutions - prisons, hospitals, courts - to manage deviance. His critique cuts against the era’s faith in moral certainty and punitive order. Read now, it lands as a diagnosis of why carceral politics sells: not because it’s effective, but because it flatters the public’s self-image while giving it an outlet for fear, envy, and craving. The criminal becomes our dark mirror, then our alibi.
The subtext is nastier than simple hypocrisy. Menninger suggests the criminal functions as a psychic pressure valve and a communal bonding ritual. By staging someone else as the one who “does the forbidden,” we get the thrill of proximity without the risk, then the pleasure of condemnation without confronting what we’re condemning in ourselves. “Stoutly punish” has a faintly ironic, almost Victorian heft: punishment as posture, as muscular performance.
Context matters: Menninger wrote as a mid-century psychiatrist when American culture was building large, confident institutions - prisons, hospitals, courts - to manage deviance. His critique cuts against the era’s faith in moral certainty and punitive order. Read now, it lands as a diagnosis of why carceral politics sells: not because it’s effective, but because it flatters the public’s self-image while giving it an outlet for fear, envy, and craving. The criminal becomes our dark mirror, then our alibi.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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