truth-versus-lies/ch2-2e.md

CHAPTER II

My mother, my brother, and the media have portrayed me as socially isolated to an abnormal degree from earliest childhood. For example, shortly after my arrest, Time reported: "Investigators were told that in childhood Ted seemed to avoid human contact." ¹

According to Investigator #1's interview with my mother,

"As he grew older (age 2-4) Wanda spent a great deal of time attempting to get Ted to play with other kids, mostly without success. Friends and relatives always told her Ted was too clingy, so she attempted to encourage his interaction with other children. She would invite children from the neighborhood over to play, only to have Ted leave the group and go to his room to play alone. She said he always managed to have one friend at a time, but would rebuff the attempts of friendship from all other children. Wanda also took Ted to a play school for children for an hour or so each week so that he could play with other kids. Ted didn't mind going, but would play alongside the other children instead of with them. Ted would get angry if another child tried to join or interfered with what he was doing. Ted went to preschool and kindergarten, and seemed to enjoy it. The teachers did not complain about his behavior, but did mention Ted always wanted to work on projects alone, and did not interact with other children." ²

The Washington Post told a similar tale on the basis of an interview with my mother. ³

Here again the documentary evidence shows that my mother is lying. I will not try the reader's patience by addressing all of her false statements, but will stick to the essential point, that my interaction with other children was normal until, at about the age of 11, I began to have serious social problems for reasons that will be made clear later.

According to the pediatricians who examined me:

"April 4, 1945... Plays well with other children. ..."

"May 18, 1950... Healthy boy. Well adjusted. ..."

"May 8, 1951... Plays well with children in school and neighborhood. Very happy." ⁴

The doctors could have obtained this information about my social adjustment only from my mother. It was always she, and not my father, who took me to my examinations at the University of Chicago clinics.

Thus, statements of my mother's that were recorded during my childhood clearly contradict her recent statements concerning my early social development. If she wasn't lying then, she is lying now. Either way, the record shows her to be a liar.

What then is the truth concerning my social adjustment in early childhood? My mother's reports to doctors carry little weight because, as we will show later, she often did lie in order to present a favorable picture of me to persons outside the immediate family. But since the Baby Book was private there is no particular reason to doubt the statements she made there that show that I was not socially withdrawn.

It's true that at one point in the Baby Book my mother indicated I was somewhat shy, ⁵ as noted in Chapter I, and I myself have a vague memory of being a little shy up to the age of five or so. Furthermore, I wrote in my 1959 autobiography:

"As far as I can remember, I have always been socially reserved, and used to be rather unpleasantly conscious of the fact. For example, I remember that when I was very little, 3 or 4 years old, I was very concerned over the fact that when my mother bought me an ice cream cone, I was always afraid to take it directly from the lady's hand; my mother had to take it from her and give it to me. Eventually I overcame this. ...

"I learned to whistle and to swim later than most of my companions,[text unknown] did learn to skate. And it often bothered me that I was less socially active than the rest of the boys, which I think was partly due to shyness and partly due to a certain lack of interest in some of their activities. I've always kept to myself a lot." ⁶

The second paragraph of this passage evidently applies not to my earliest years but to a much later period when I did indeed have social problems. As a result of these problems I began to take a perverse pride in being unsocial, and this is probably what led me to imply (as I did in the first paragraph above) that I was "socially reserved" even in my earliest years.

But even if that first paragraph is taken at face value, there is plenty of evidence to show that my social interaction with other children was easily within the normal range until my real problems began in early adolescence. As we saw in Chapter I, my mother indicated in the Baby Book that at the age of one year I was consistently friendly to other children:

"Is he usually shy or friendly with strange women? either men? either children? friendly... ." ⁵

From age one to three I developed a close friendship with Adam Ks., a boy about eight months older than I was. The attachment left a long-lasting impression on both of us. He was the son of the couple who occupied the first floor of the house of which my parents and I had the second story; when we moved to another house I was separated from him. ⁷

In the new house we again occupied the second story, and with the little girl downstairs, Barbara P., I formed another strong attachment, ⁸ though it was not as strong as my attachment to Adam. During this same period (age 3 to 4) I had at least one other frequent playmate, whose name, if I remember correctly, was Jackie. ⁹

Shortly before my fifth birthday we moved to a house on Carpenter Street (the first house that my parents owned), ¹⁰ and from that time until I entered Harvard I always had several friends. My friends on Carpenter Street included Johnny Kr., Bobby Th., Freddie Do., Jimmy Bu., Larry La., and Mary Kay Fy. ¹¹ As long as we lived on Carpenter Street, I attended Sherman School, a unit of the Chicago public-school system. All of my friends on Carpenter Street either attended the Catholic school or were a year older than I was, so that they were in a different grade. Consequently my school friends were not the same as those with whom I played near home. My school friends included Frank Ho., Terry La C., Rosario (an Italian kid whose last name I do not remember) and Peter Ma. ¹²

I not only had friends but, on a few occasions, exercised leadership. For example, I once came up with the idea of putting on a "carnival," as we called it. I persuaded Johnny Kr. and Bobby Th. to help me arrange games and simple entertainments, and after advertising the event by word of mouth for several days we made up tickets by hand, sold them to neighborhood kids, and made a modest profit. ¹³

Thus there is no truth in my mother's portrayal of me as abnormally solitary from early childhood. There was no need for her to "invite children from the neighborhood over to play," ¹⁴ nor did she ever do so during these years as far as I can remember.

The first indication of any significant social difficulties on my part came when I was perhaps eight or nine years old, ¹⁵ and it very likely resulted from the fact that our family was different from its neighbors. My father worked with his hands all his life; my mother, apart from teaching high school English for two years during her fifties, never did anything more demanding than lower-level secretarial work; and our family always lived among working-class and lower-middle class people. Yet my parents always regarded themselves as a cut above their neighbors. They had intellectual pretensions, and though their own intellectual attainments were extremely modest, to say the least, they - especially my mother - looked down on their neighbors as "ignorant." (But they were usually careful not to reveal their snobbish attitudes outside the family.) ¹⁶

Our block of Carpenter Street was part of a working-class neighborhood that was just one step above the slums. As my playmates grew older, some of them began engaging in behavior that approached or crossed the line dividing acceptable childhood mischief from delinquency. ¹⁷ For example, two of them got into trouble for trying to set fire to someone's garage. ¹⁵ I had been trained to a much more exacting standard of behavior and wouldn't participate in the other kids' mischief. ¹⁸ Once, for instance, I was with a bunch of neighborhood kids who waited in ambush for an old rag-picker, pelted him with garbage when he came past, and then ran away. I stood back in the rear and refused to participate, and immediately afterward I went home and told my mother what had happened, because I was shocked at such disrespect being shown to an adult - even if he was only a rag-picker. ¹⁹

So it may be that the reason why I ceased to be fully accepted by my Carpenter-Street playmates at around the age of eight or nine was that they saw me as too much of a "good boy." In any case they did seem to lose interest in my companionship - I was no longer one of the bunch. ²⁰ I continued to get along well with the kids in school. ²¹ Unlike the kids on my block they showed no tendency to serious mischief, either because they were better-behaved kids or because the supervised environment of school left few opportunities for misbehavior.

My parents noticed the fact that I was becoming isolated from my Carpenter-Street friends, and they repeatedly expressed to me their concern that there might be something wrong with me because I was not social enough. ¹⁵ To me it was acutely humiliating to be pushed out to the fringe by these kids with whom I had formerly associated on an equal basis, and I was too ashamed to tell my parents what was really happening, or even to admit it to myself until many years later. My mother invented an explanation for my isolation that was consistent with her intellectual pretensions: I wasn't playing with the other kids because I was so much smarter than they were that they bored me. This was absurd. I was bored with the other kids when (as often happened) they moped around aimlessly rather than pursuing some activity, but there can be no doubt that I wanted to continue playing with them and was deeply hurt by the fact that I was no longer fully accepted. Yet, because my mother's explanation soothed my vanity, I half-believed it myself. In a very brief (one and a quarter-page) autobiographical sketch that I wrote at the age of fifteen, I said:

"Beginning in the second or third grade I began to become somewhat unsocial, keeping to myself and seeking the companionship of my comrades less often. This was probably due, in part, to the level of education and culture in my old neighborhood, where no one was interested in science, art, or books." ²²

Actually, I wasn't so terribly interested in science, art, or books myself. The autobiographical sketch was part of an application for admission to Harvard and therefore was written under the close supervision of my mother. Rereading it now I feel almost certain that the first paragraph of it was actually composed by her. That paragraph is written in a kind of language that I rarely use now and that I can hardly imagine myself having used at the age of fifteen; but it's just the sort of thing that my mother would write. ²³

I'm quite sure that my partial isolation from the Carpenter-Street kids did not begin before I was eight, at the earliest, and that I had no serious problems with the kids in school at the time. Yet the sketch refers to "the second or third grade," which would make me seven or eight years old. Possibly my mother's hand is seen here too.

Notwithstanding all of the foregoing, I think my parents had an inkling of the fact that the bad behavior of the other kids had something to do with my isolation. Not long after my tenth birthday we moved to Evergreen Park, a suburb of Chicago, and my mother told me many years later that she and my father had decided to move mainly so that I "would have some decent kids to play with." Though my mother is hardly a reliable source of information, her statement is probably true in part; yet it's likely that there were also other reasons for the move. Not far from where we lived, a case of "block-busting" ²⁴ gave rise to some very serious race-riots that were essentially territorial conflicts between the black and the white working class. All white householders in the area were put under pressure to place in their windows a small sign saying, "This property is not for sale," which was intended as a show of white solidarity against black "intrusion." My parents had very liberal attitudes about race and felt that it was against their principles to put up such a sign. But they received a threat, and, fearing that I might be attacked on my way to school, they gave in and placed the sign. ²⁵ This was extremely upsetting to them and it must have contributed to their decision to move out to the suburbs.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, when I was a bit less than seven-and-a-half years old, I had acquired a baby brother. My brother David for many years has argued that I unconsciously hate him because the attention that my parents devoted to him on his arrival made me feel deprived of their affection. ²⁶

The New York Times quoted my aunt Josephine Manney, née Kaczynski, as follows:

" 'Before David was born, Teddy was different,' the aunt said. 'When they'd visit he'd snuggle up to me. Then, when David was born, something must have happened. He changed immediately. Maybe we paid too much attention to the new baby.' " ²⁷

Little did my aunt Josephine know the real reason why I stopped snuggling up to her! I'll explain in a moment. But first let me make it clear that I'd never heard anything of this sort from Josephine before I read the New York Times article, and it's evident that my brother never heard it either, since, in our discussions of his theory about my reaction to his birth, he never mentioned any such statement on the part of our aunt; nor did he ever cite any other rational evidence in support of his theory. The theory, apparently, grew entirely out of his own imagination.

As to the real reason why I stopped snuggling up to my aunt: Josephine was a good-looking woman; though she was over forty at the time of my brother's birth, she'd kept herself in shape and was still attractive. I don't know whether it was normal or precocious, but by the age of about seven I already had a fairly strong interest in the female body. ²⁸ Not long after my brother's birth, my family and I visited the apartment where Josephine lived with her mother (my paternal grandmother). My aunt and I were sitting on a couch, and, attracted by her breasts, I slid over against her, put my arm over her shoulder, and said, "Let's play girlfriend." Josephine laughed and put her arm around me, and I had the decided satisfaction of feeling her breast against my body. My aunt just thought it was cute, but my mother was sharp enough to see what was really going on. After a short interval she said, "I think I'll go to the store and get some ice cream" (or maybe it was candy or something else), and she invited me to come with her. I declined, but she insisted that I should come. As soon as she got me out of the house she gave me a tongue-lashing and a lecture on appropriate behavior with ladies. It will not surprise the reader that, from then on, I kept my distance from Josephine.

To return to my brother's theory that I resented his arrival in the family: He first indicated his suspicion that I unconsciously hated him in a letter to me written some time during the summer of 1982. That letter has not been preserved, but there is a reference to it in a letter that I sent to my brother in 1986. I wrote: "I recall that a few years ago you said you had feared that I had (as you put it) a hatred for you so great that even I was unable to acknowledge it." ²⁹

In a letter that he wrote to me in 1986, my brother expounded his theory as follows:

"You should have hated me, in that as a new baby in the family, the new locus of affection, I should have awakened your fears of abandonment. [My brother is referring here to the alleged "fear of abandonment" that I was supposed to have as a result of "that hospital experience."] The parents tell me that just the opposite was true, that you were extremely affectionate toward me and that you didn't show any jealousy whatsoever. I have thought of a way to fit this in, by recourse to the Freudian theory of 'Denial.' When you saw the murdered babies in the Nazi camp, it might have awakened your horror as a secret wish fulfillment in respect to me. [My brother is referring here to a dream that I once had about him, concerning which I will have more to say shortly.] When you vowed to protect me at the expense of your own life, perhaps the one you vowed to protect me from was yourself, I have no idea how much or little truth there may be in this interpretation." ³⁰

The disclaimer in the last sentence is perhaps disingenuous, as my brother has clung to the theory persistently over the years. According to the New York Times, "David said his mother told him that she gradually encouraged Ted to hold him and that 'from that time forward, he showed a great deal of gentleness toward me.' " ³¹ The implication, that I had resented him at first, is contradicted by my brother's own statement, quoted above, that "[t]he parents tell me that... you were extremely affectionate toward me and that you didn't show any jealousy whatsoever." It is also contradicted by a statement of my mother's: "Ted seemed to easily accept having a brother in the house, and liked to hold David when he was a baby." ²

As I remember it, prior to my brother's birth my parents told me repeatedly that the new baby, when it came, would require a great deal of care and attention, and that I must not feel that my parents loved me any less because they were devoting so much time to the baby. When David was born I wondered why my parents had put so much emphasis on this point, because I by no means felt left out or deprived of attention. As I wrote in my 1979 autobiography:

"My brother David was born when I was 7½. I considered this a pleasant event. I was interested in the baby and enjoyed being allowed to hold it. ...

"One reads much about 'sibling rivalry' - the older child supposedly resents the new baby because he feels it has robbed him of his parents' affection. I do not recall ever having had any such feeling about my baby brother. ... I think my parents were aware of the problem of 'sibling rivalry' and made a conscious effort to avoid this problem when the new baby came ." ³²

In those years my parents and I got all our medical care at the University of Chicago teaching hospitals, which were among the finest in America, and the doctors no doubt had talked to my parents about the way to handle my relationship with my new brother.

Why then does my brother think that I have an intense, unconscious hatred for him? People often attribute their own motives and impulses (including unconscious ones) to other people. Further on in this book we will show that my brother has a hatred for me that he has not acknowledged - probably not even to himself. At the same time he has a strong affection for me, and it appears that he has never faced up to the profound conflict between his love and his hatred. My brother habitually retreats from conflicts rather than struggling with them.

My feelings toward my brother in his infancy are well illustrated by a dream that I described to him in a letter that I sent him during the summer of 1982. After making some highly critical comments about his character, I wrote:

"I am going to open to you the window to my soul as I would not open it to anyone else, by telling you two dreams that I've had about you. The first dream is simple. It is one I had more than thirty years ago, when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old and you were still a baby in your crib. Some time before, I had seen pictures of starving children in Europe taken shortly after world war II - they were emaciated, with arms like sticks, ribs protruding, and guts hanging out. Well, I dreamed that there was a war in America and I saw you as one of these children, emaciated and starving. It affected me strongly and when I woke up I made up my mind that if there was ever a war in America I would do everything I possibly could to protect you. This illustrates the semi-maternal tenderness that I've often felt for you." ³³

In reply to the foregoing letter my brother wrote to me expressing his gratitude for the affection I had expressed, and for the fact that I "cared for [him] more than anyone else ever had." He then added the remark mentioned earlier - that until then he had feared that I had a hatred for him so great that I could not acknowledge it. ³⁴

I referred to this letter of my brother's in a note that I wrote him in September, 1982:

"I received your last letter and note that it shows your usual generosity of character. Instead of being sore over the negative parts of my attitude toward you, you were favorably impressed by the positive parts." ³⁵

My brother does have a good deal of generosity in his character, but I now think that the nature of his reaction to my letter was less a result of generosity than of his tendency to retreat from conflict.

* * * * *

Not long after my brother's birth my mother's personality began to change. The cause may have been post-partum depression, a hormonal imbalance brought about by her pregnancy, or something else, but, whatever the reason, she began to grow increasingly irritable. ³⁶ The symptoms were relatively mild at first, but they worsened over the next several years so that, by the time I reached my teens, she was having frequent outbursts of rage that express themselves as unrestrained verbal aggression, sometimes accompanied by minor physical aggression ³⁷ (though never enough of the latter to do any physical harm).

The change in my mother's personality affected my father and brought about a gradual deterioration of the family atmosphere. I described this in a 1986 letter to my brother:

"You don't realize that the atmosphere in our home was quite different during the first few years of my life than it was later. You know how it was during my teens - people always squabbling, mother crabby and irritable, Dad morosely passive. Too much ice cream, candy, and treats, parents fat and self-indulgent. A generally low-morale atmosphere. But it was very different up to the time when I was, say, 8 or 9 years old. Until then, the home atmosphere was cheerful, there was hardly any quarrelling, and there was a generally high-morale atmosphere. Ice cream and candy were relatively infrequent treats and were consumed in moderation ... . Our parents were more alive and energetic. When punishment was necessary it was given with little or no anger and was used as a more-or-less rational means of training; whereas during my teens, when I was punished it was commonly an expression of anger or irritation on the part of our parents. Consequently this punishment was humiliating. The more-or-less rational punishment of the early years was not humiliating." ³⁸

NOTES TO CHAPTER II

1. (Hg) Time, April 22, 1996, p. 46.

2. (Ka) Interview of Wanda by Investigator #1, p. 2.

3. (Hb) Washington Post, June 16, 1996.

4. (Ea) Med Records of TJK, U. Chi.; April 4, 1945, p. 26; May 18, 1950, p. 51; May 8, 1951, p. 51.

5. (Bc) Baby Book, p. 122.

6. (Ab) Autobiog of TJK 1959, p. 2.

7. (Bc) Baby Book, pp. 113, 115; (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, pp. 1, 2. In (Qb) Written Investigator Report #68, Adam Ks. himself confirms the strength of this friendship. However, much of the information he gives is incorrect.

8. (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, p. 3.

9. Jackie was the four-year-old boy referred to on p. 1 of (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979.

10. (Ab) Autobiog of TJK 1959, p. 2; (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, p. 5; (Ga) Deed #1.

11. (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, pp. 5, 6, 10, 11, mentions all these friends by name.

12. (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, pp. 6-8 describes my relations with Frank Ho., Terry La C., and Rosario. My friendship with Peter Ma. is not documented.

13. (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, pp. 10, 11.

14. (Ka) Interview of Wanda by Investigator #1, p. 2.

15. (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, p. 12.

16. (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, pp. 17, 24, 79; (Na) FBI 302 number 2, p. 6.

17. (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, pp. 12, 194.

18. (Ab) Autobiog of TJK 1959, p. 3; (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, pp. 12-14, 16, 17, 194; (Ca) FL#458, letter from me to my mother, July 5, 1991, pp. 9, 10.

19. (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, p. 194; (Ca) FL#458, letter from me to my mother, July 5, 1991, pp. 9, 10. "Rag-pickers" were very poor people who made their living, such as it was, by picking through trash to find anything that could be sold as scrap.

20. (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, p. 12; (Ca) FL#458, letter from me to my mother, July 5, 1991, p. 9.

21. (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, p. 12; (Ca) FL#458, letter from me to my mother, July 5, 1991, p. 10.

22. (Aa) Autobiog of TJK 1958. When, in (Ab) Autobiog of TJK 1959, p. 2, I wrote, "I was less socially active than the rest of the boys,... partly due to shyness and partly due to a certain lack of interest in their activities," I probably was still under the influence of my mother's theory that I was bored with other kids because I was smarter.

23. The first paragraph of this document ((Aa) Autobiog of TJK 1958) reads:

    "My first vague memories are of a golden age of blessed irresponsibility. But the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and I suppose at that time I looked forward to the unbounded joys of growing up."

24. "Block-busting" was a practice whereby unscrupulous realtors would contrive to sell to black people a house on a white-occupied block near black territory. White householders on the block, fearing that they would be left isolated in the midst of a black neighborhood, sold off their property as quickly as possible. Thus the realtors were able to buy houses from whites at reduced prices and sell them again to black families at inflated prices.

25. This account of the placement of the sign is based in part on what I myself observed at the time, but also in part on what my mother told me many years later. Given my mother's unreliability, it cannot be assumed that the account is strictly accurate.

26. (Ha) NY Times Nat., May 26, 1996, p. 22, column 3; (Ca) FL #330, letter from David Kaczynski to me, March or April, 1986, p. 14; (Ca) FL#331, letter from me to David Kaczynski, April 16, 1986, pp. 3, 4.

27. (Ha) NY Times Nat., May 26, 1996, p. 22, column 3. The Times quoted only an "aunt" who preferred to remain anonymous, but the aunt in question is obviously Josephine. I have just four living aunts: Sylvia, Madeline (aunts by marriage), Freda, and Josephine. Sylvia married my uncle Benny when I was in my teens, and I'd never met her before that time; I was never chummy enough with Madeline to "snuggle up" to her; and Freda informed me in (Cb) FL Supplementary item #6, letter from Freda Tuominen to me, July 20, 1996, that she was not the unnamed aunt quoted by the Times (which I already knew from the content of the quotations). So that leaves Josephine.

28. (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, pp. 11, 20.

29. (Ca) FL #331, letter from me to David Kaczynski, April 16, 1986, p. 4.

30. (Ca) FL #330, letter from David Kaczynski to the author, March or April, 1986, p. 14.

31. (Ha) NY Times Nat., May 26, 1996, p. 22, column 3. In this same column we find:

    "David said his parents told him about how his father, grandmother and Teddy had gone to the hospital after his birth. ... 'So my father and grandmother left Ted in the lobby and went up to visit me,' he said, 'When they all went down to the lobby... he was sitting there alone in tears and very deeply upset.'" I don't remember any such incident, and I doubt that it happened. My brother is very prone to get his facts garbled.

32. (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, pp. 17,18.

33. (Ca) FL #266, letter from me to David Kaczynski, Summer, 1982, pp. 5, 6. I described the dream in nearly identical terms in (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, pp. 17, 18, and added that "I felt a sense of pity and love toward my brother... ."

    Characteristically, my brother got the dream garbled in the 1986 letter of his that we quoted a few pages back: "When you saw the murdered babies in the Nazi camp... When you vowed to protect me at the expense of your own life... ." (See Note 30 above.) Compare this with the correct account of the dream. Later we will see other instances in which my brother has gotten his facts garbled.

34. This letter has not been preserved, and I am relying here on memory and on the 1986 letter in which I mentioned the remark about "great hatred." See Note 29 above.

35. (Ca) FL #271, letter from me to David Kaczynski, September, 1982, p. 2.

36. (Ca) FL #458, letter from me to my mother, July 5, 1991, p. 9. (Ca) FL #423, letter from me to my mother, January 15, 1991, pp. 4, 5: "I always felt you were a good mother to me during my early years. It was when I was around 8 years old that your behavior and the family atmosphere began to deteriorate, and it was during my teens that I was subjected to constant, cutting insults such as imputations of immaturity or mental illness." My Xerox copy of the copy of this letter that I mailed to my mother is illegible in places. Therefore, for one line of the foregoing quotation I had to refer to p. 2 of the copy of this letter that I kept in my cabin.

37. Example of minor physical aggression is given in (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, p. 47 (throwing saucepan).

38. (Ca) FL #339, letter from me to David Kaczynski, May, 1986, pp. 3, 4. A similar account is given in (Ac) Autobiog of TJK 1979, pp. 38, 39. For confirmation see (Ca) FL#458, letter from me to my mother, July 5, 1991, p. 9. (Ab) Autobiog of TJK 1959, p. 5, has: "My relationship with my parents used to be generally affectionate, but the last few years it has deteriorated considerably... ."