"SYNDROME E" MAY LEAD TO ATROCITIES

NEW YORK (Reuters) Can social conditioning trigger changes within the
brain which lead otherwise decent people to commit monstrous acts? One
neurologist believes the horrors of Auschwitz, Bosnia, and Rwanda might be
blamed, at least in part, on what he calls "Syndrome E."

"These events would not have happened without a distinct transformation in
the behavior of individuals," according to Dr. Itzhak Fried of The Brain
Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Fried, writing in this
week's issue of The Lancet, says he believes "the uniformity and repeating
nature of this transformation suggests a common syndrome."

The cold, systemic extermination of specific groups of individuals requires
a group of psychologicallyprimed oppressors, most of whom have ceased to
respond to murder, torture, and suffering with any of the 'traditional'
reactions of revulsion or shame.

Fried says that, throughout human history, the psychological profiles of
individuals bent on genocide follow similar patterns, including:

the need for "repetitive acts of violence." The systematic, sparenoone
approach of Nazi Germany's "final solution" is a classic example of this
need for repetition. Fried notes that these acts differ from the "sporadic"
violence found on the battlefield, and may require different conditioning.

an obsession with a set of beliefs. Fried says the closed thinking and
paranoia of fascist regimes mimics the patterns of obsessivecompulsive
disorder. He points out that even the repeated handwashing of some
obsessivecompulsives finds its echo in the widespread replacement of the
word "genocide" with "cleansing."

emotional detachment. Although the killing of women and children may at
first, be psychologically difficult, Fried says their murderers quickly
become 'habituated' to these acts, 'compartmentalizing' their lives into
alternating periods of brutal terror and cozy domesticity.

group reinforcement. Left alone, many individuals would never condone
most of these merciless acts of cruelty. But Fried says "the responses of
individuals in the group serves as stimuli for (the acts of) other
individuals."

He believes that examination of the brains of those inclined to genocidal
acts might reveal the neurological patterns that occur after such
'brainwashing'.

Fried believes that Syndrome E may be linked to what he calls a
neurological "cognitive fracture," wherein those parts of the brain
previously responsible for the proper regulation of emotion cease to react
to events that might have previously triggered responses such as empathy or
compassion.

He says some of these neurological changes might be picked out during tests
on American gang members, many of whom, even today, express the hatreds
which can so easily lead to genocide. SOURCE: The Lancet
(1997;350:18451847)