Stanley Milgram Research Articles

A Secular Analysis of Evil

A Secular Analysis of Evil

Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiments: A Report Card 50 Years Later

Fifty years ago StanleyMilgram published the first report of his studies of obedience to authority. His work (1963) forged the mindset of how social scientists over the next two generations came to explain the participation of hundreds of thousands of Germans in the mass murder of European Jews during the Holocaust. Milgram’s model was Adolph Eichmann who was convicted and executed for his role in the deportation of European Jews to death camps created in Poland for their eradication. Eichmann’s legal defense, that he was ‘just following orders,’ suggested that the final solution to the ‘Jewish problem’ in Europe was engineered by desk murderers remotely positioned in hierarchies of authority across the Nazi bureaucracy. Submission was unquestioned because the decision to eradicate the Jews originated from the sovereign authority. Milgram’s murderers were loyal automatons. Milgram attracted his subjects from the wider community in New Haven and Bridgeport. He recruited an astounding 780 subjects. His work was identified by Roger Brown as ‘the most important psychological research’ done in his generation. Where Hannah Arendt speculated philosophically that the ranks of Holocaust perpetrators such as Eichmann were unremarkable non-entities, Milgram described in an experimental idiom the ease with which New Haven citizens could be transformed into brutal Nazis without much difficulty. Milgram’s work also provoked questions about the ethical treatment of human subjects in a way that helped to shape future policies for the treatment of volunteers in experimental studies. It alerted funding agencies to the necessity of risk assessment of those deliberately misled in studies premised on subject deception. Milgram also championed the proposition that grave questions of human morality could be examined following the experimental methods that proved to be so effective in the natural sciences. He also contributed to the dogma in social psychology that ‘the situation’ is one of the most, if not the most, important determinant of social behavior. His 1974 book was promoted widely in the popular press, and created a media storm. His scientific portrayal of ‘the banality of evil’ inspired an artistic outpouring of films, and plays, and remains a point of relevance in studies of holocaust history today. Stanley Milgram died in 1984 at the age of 51.

Rewriting Milgram Behind the Shock Machine The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments by Gina Perry New Press, New York, 2013. 351 pp. $26.95. ISBN 9781595589217. Scribe, Brunswick, Victoria, Australia, 2012. 432 pp. AU$32.95. ISBN 9781921844553.

Perry draws on interviews and archival research to examine the methodology and conclusions of Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiments.

“The last possible resort”: A forgotten prod and the in situ standardization of Stanley Milgram’s voice-feedback condition.

This article uses previously unpublished data from Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments to draw attention to a hitherto neglected procedural innovation of the voice-feedback condition. In 3 experimental sessions in this condition, the experimenter responded to a participant's attempted defiance by leaving the room, apparently to speak to the learner, before returning to assure the participant that the learner was willing or able to continue. This article documents the use of this tactic during the voice-feedback condition and highlights the negotiation surrounding the use of the tactic between Milgram and his confederate John Williams, who played the role of the experimenter. It is shown that the subsequent use of this tactic did not conform to the conditions for its use agreed by Milgram and Williams. Moreover, the tactic seems to have been dropped from both subsequent experimental conditions and Milgram's published accounts of his work. These observations are discussed in relation to historical work on experimentation in social psychology, research on standardization in the sociology of scientific knowledge, and in terms of their implications for theory and research on dis/obedience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

Les réseaux sociaux d'aujourd'hui

Dans une expérimentation devenue un classique, Stanley Milgram avait montré en 1969 qu’il suffisait en moyenne de 6 liaisons (transitant donc par 5 intermédiaires) pour relier deux inconnus aux États-Unis. Ces six degrés de séparation avaient été confirmés par d’autres études mais portant elles aussi sur des petits effectifs. L’avènement des réseaux sociaux sur l’Internet a récemment permis de se demander ce qu’il en était cette fois à très grande échelle. Or les études portant sur la messagerie instantanée de Microsoft , Twitter ou Facebook ont vérifié et même amplifié l’hypothèse du petit monde. Ainsi, en analysant les 69 milliards de liens entre les 721 millions d’individus s’étant connectés à Facebook en mai 2011, il apparaît qu’en moyenne la distance (ou nombre de degrés) séparant deux utilisateurs choisis au hasard sur la planète vaut 4,7. Différentes explications du petit monde sont examinées dans cet article (liens faibles entre clusters , présence de hubs selon une structure libre d’échelle) et apparaissent en fin de compte plutôt complémentaires.

Revisiting the agentic shift: Weakening personal control increases susceptibility to social influence

AbstractWhat happens when people experience a reduced sense of personal control? Among the various strategies to defend against a perception of randomness, people may show an increased acceptance of external sources of control. Indeed, in one of the most classic studies in social psychology, Stanley Milgram referred to an “agentic shift”—the tendency to relinquish personal control to an external agent—to explain his dramatic obedience effects. We propose that his account is a specific manifestation of a more general phenomenon: the tendency for increased susceptibility to various forms of external social influence when perceived personal control is reduced. In a series of (lab and field) studies using a variety of perceived control manipulations, we demonstrate that a reduction in the sense of personal control increases people's vulnerability to the bystander effect, promotes obedience to authority and fosters compliance with behavioral requests. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Wrongful Obedience and the Professional Practice of Law

Occasionally, brand new attorneys engage in unprofessional or unethical conduct. This article explores the probable impact of one theory, grounded in social psychology, that may help explain egregious conduct in a new lawyer wrongful obedience. The article begins by discussing the seminal studies on obedience conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s, which were recently partially replicated. While almost no one thinks they would engage in wrongful obedience, Milgram s experiments and recent replications suggest that 2/3 of us would wrongfully obey. Applying what we know about obedience to the professional practice of law presents an interesting dichotomy: every lawyer, even a brand new lawyer, has, at a minimum, an individual, autonomous professional obligation to practice law ethically and professionally. Yet, attorneys work in groups, often in hierarchies that exist within established office cultures, and new attorneys face overwhelming pressures to conform to the perceived group ethic. The fact that every new lawyer knows about her independent professional obligations does not appear to weaken an attorney s desire to obey a supervising authority. While rule changes might help facilitate defiance against wrongful directives and encourage attorney whistleblowing, my thesis is that revising statutes and rules of professional conduct will not go far enough to ward off a new attorney s tendency to obey attorneys simply will not actively resist their own wrongful obedience, and indeed may not even recognize it as such, unless the culture of their immediate work environment encourages them to exercise autonomous independent judgment in the face of conformance pressures. This conclusion finds recent support within the tragic circumstances of the long time child sexual abuse committed by Pennsylvania State University football coach Gerald Sandusky and the conclusions of the Special Investigative Counsel, as found in the recent report known as the Freeh Report. In the last section of this paper, I draw parallels to Milgram s conclusions as well as to recent efforts within and outside of law, including the Freeh Report s recommendations to universities, to offer suggestions for managing and supervising lawyers within legal organizations to guard against wrongful obedience and ensure that conformance pressures do not override autonomous professional judgment in the legal workplace.

Human Conflict: Pacifists at Heart

The breadth and depth of the Human Conflict issue (18 May, p. [818][1]) brings to mind Otto Rank's observation in Psychology and the Soul ([ 1 ][2]) that we still have primitive beliefs about death—for example, that heroic, spectacular, or sacrificial death conveys immortality, and that killing an enemy is killing death itself. After centuries of analyzing war, with its heroics and pathos, we have recently learned that most humans are like other social animals, which fight but instinctively stop short of intraspecies killing ([ 2 ][3]). Cited in 3 of the 11 special section Reviews and Perspectives, D. Grossman ([ 2 ][3]) found that most people, including soldiers, would sooner die than kill a person at close range. About 2% lack such inhibition ([ 2 ][3]); that characteristic is often expressed in military heroics. In civilian circumstances, the same characteristic is associated with tendencies toward antisocial behavior, including violent crime. This atypical group receives disproportionate attention in history and fiction, news and entertainment. Those in the pacifist majority can be disinhibited if ordered by an authority and supervised, confirming Stanley Milgram's findings that most of us will comply with orders that violate some of our principles ([ 3 ][4]). Modern psychological conditioning of U.S. troops has contributed to an increased shoot-to-kill percentage, from only 20% in World War II to 90% in Vietnam ([ 2 ][3]), but evidently at high cost. As S. Maguen reports (p. [843][5]), soldiers who have killed suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at higher rates. Veterans Administration psychologists recently coined the term “moral injury” ([ 4 ][6]), which relates to Maguen's point. The optimistic essay on PTSD by R. J. McNally (p. [872][7]) omits mention of suicide, which has reached alarming levels among U.S. troops and veterans ([ 5 ][8]). 1. [↵][9]1. O. Rank , Psychology and the Soul (Franz Deuticke, Lepzig, Germany, 1930); translated by G. C. Richter (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, MD, 1998). 2. [↵][10] , On Killing (Hachette Book Group, New York, 1995; revised and updated, 2009). 3. [↵][11]1. S. Milgram , The Perils of Obedience (Harpers, New York, 1973). 4. [↵][12]1. K. D. Drescher , Traumatology 17, 8 (2011). [OpenUrl][13][CrossRef][14] 5. [↵][15]1. T. Williams , “Suicides outpacing war deaths for troops,” The New York Times (9 June 2012), p. A10; [www.nytimes.com/2012/06/09/us/suicides-eclipse-war-deaths-for-us-troops.html][16]. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.336.6083.818 [2]: #ref-1 [3]: #ref-2 [4]: #ref-3 [5]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.336.6083.842 [6]: #ref-4 [7]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1222069 [8]: #ref-5 [9]: #xref-ref-1-1 View reference 1 in text [10]: #xref-ref-2-1 View reference 2 in text [11]: #xref-ref-3-1 View reference 3 in text [12]: #xref-ref-4-1 View reference 4 in text [13]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DTraumatology%26rft.volume%253D17%26rft.spage%253D8%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Adoi%252F10.1177%252F1534765610395615%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [14]: /lookup/external-ref?access_num=10.1177/1534765610395615&link_type=DOI [15]: #xref-ref-5-1 View reference 5 in text [16]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/09/us/suicides-eclipse-war-deaths-for-us-troops.html

Programmed Violence: On the Object of Media Studies

Each “new technology” inflicts “new violence” on its subjects. Following Marshall McLuhan's argument, this article outlines a theoretical frame for thinking about the relationship between violence and the media. Focusing on Stanley Milgram's experiment mentioned by McLuhan in his essay “The Violence of the Media,” it argues that violence not only is conveyed or represented by that medium but resides in the medium itself. Media add violence to our already violent culture not only by their content but by the very fact of their facticity. This raises the political question of the positioning of subjects toward, as well as by, the media and the epistemological question of what the object of media studies is.

Imago/American Imago: 1912–2012 Preface

Imago/American Imago: 1912–2012 Preface Louis Rose The first issue of Imago, under the editorial direction of Sigmund Freud and co-edited by Otto Rank and Hanns Sachs, appeared in Vienna in March 1912. The journal continued to appear during the First World War and remained active until 1938, when the Anschluss between Nazi Germany and Austria made it impossible to go further as a Viennese publication. In that same year, Sachs recommended to Freud that Imago be revived within the psychoanalytic émigré community in the United States and that Freud serve as one of its editors. Although Freud initially hoped that Imago in exile would remain a German-language publication, he eventually agreed with Sachs’ idea for an English-language journal and suggested that it be called American Imago (Sachs, 1944, pp. 182–183). Freud died before the initial issue of the transplanted journal appeared, but Sachs successfully put their project into effect. Now, with the current March 2012 issue, Imago/American Imago has reached its 100th anniversary. Throughout its 100 years, the journal has published the work of analysts and authors across the fields of the humanities, arts, and social sciences. It has also published across boundaries determined by war and exile, demonstrating a recurring awareness of the crisis conditions in which it was born and had to exist, and keeping a steady focus on the future of the psychoanalytic movement. The breadth of both its mission and concerns appeared in Imago’s first issues, in which Freud published the four essays that became Totem and Taboo (1913 [1912–13]). Those essays directed the attention of the psychoanalytic movement to moments of crisis in history and specifically to the psychological and social meaning of authority, obedience, and revolt at such moments, the question from Totem and Taboo that Stanley Milgram identified as directly relevant to his own seminal study [End Page 1] of obedience to authority (1974, p. 113). But those same four essays also confronted the question of loss and reflected upon the mortal obstacles and vicissitudes—internal and external—that attached to humanity’s deepest personal and social strivings. Fittingly, having published Totem and Taboo in Imago in the journal’s earliest years, Freud revisited the work’s central themes in the opening two essays of Moses and Monotheism (1939 [1934–38]), which he published in the journal in 1937, during the last year of its Viennese existence, before he was forced to find refuge in London. Imago came into existence only two years before the outbreak of the First World War. It was present at the collapse of the centuries-old European continental empires. And it experienced the hope-filled creations and troubled lives of the new Central European republics, Austria and Germany chief among them. In Vienna, an author of the constitution of Austria’s First Republic and member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, Hans Kelsen (1922), published a social psychological theory of state formation in Imago, and Erich Fromm (1931) published a psychological and social analysis of crime and punishment in the postwar world. Outlining future directions for psychoanalytic theory and practice, Melanie Klein’s works on child analysis (1923 and 1926) and Erik Erikson’s early contribution on traumatic configurations in children’s play (1937) appeared in the Viennese Imago. There too the art historian and psychoanalyst Ernst Kris—also an editor of the journal—moved psychoanalysis into the academic fields of art history and image studies through the project on caricature that he pursued with his friend and colleague E. H. Gombrich (1934). Such directions, however, became swept up by the events that surrounded the analysts in Europe, and as the decade of the 1930s reached its deepest moment of crisis, Thomas Mann (1936) published his somber contemplation of Freud and the future in Imago’s pages. In the United States at the start of the Second World War, in one of the first issues of American Imago, the German émigré analyst and Marxian thinker Otto Fenichel (1939/1940) interpreted the nature of the political anti-Semitism that had undermined the new European republics, contributed to the rise of fascism, and forced psychoanalysts into exile. Yet, even in [End...

“Torture at Yale”: Experimental subjects, laboratory torment and the “rehabilitation” of Milgram’s “Obedience to Authority”

Stanley Milgram’s experiments on “Obedience to Authority” are among the most criticized in all of psychology. However, over the past 20 years, there has been a gradual rehabilitation of Milgram’s work and reputation, a reconsideration that is in turn closely linked to a contemporary “revival” of his Obedience experiments. This paper provides a critical counterpoint to this “Milgram revival” by drawing on archival material from participants in the Obedience study and Milgram himself. This material indicates that Milgram misrepresented (a) the extent of his debriefing procedures, (b) the risk posed by the experiment, and (c) the harm done to his participants. The archival record also indicates that Milgram had doubts about the scientific value of the experiment, thereby compromising his principal ethical justification for employing such extreme methods. The article ends with a consideration of the implications of these historical revelations for contemporary efforts to revive the Milgram paradigm.

“Shocking” Masculinity: Stanley Milgram, “Obedience to Authority,” and the “Crisis of Manhood” in Cold War America

Stanley Milgram's study of "obedience to authority" is one of the best-known psychological experiments of the twentieth century. This essay examines the study's special charisma through a detailed consideration of the intellectual, cultural, and gender contexts of Cold War America. It suggests that Milgram presented not a "timeless" experiment on "human nature" but, rather, a historically contingent, scientifically sanctioned "performance" of American masculinity at a time of heightened male anxiety. The essay argues that this gendered context invested the obedience experiments with an extraordinary plausibility, immediacy, and relevance. Immersed in a discourse of masculinity besieged, many Americans read the obedience experiments not as a fanciful study of laboratory brutality but as confirmation of their worst fears. Milgram's extraordinary success thus lay not in his "discovery" of the fragility of individual conscience but in his theatrical flair for staging culturally relevant masculine performances.

Milgram's obedience to authority experiments: Origins and early evolution

Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority experiments remain one of the most inspired contributions in the field of social psychology. Although Milgram undertook more than 20 experimental variations, his most (in)famous result was the first official trial run - the remote condition and its 65% completion rate. Drawing on many unpublished documents from Milgram's personal archive at Yale University, this article traces the historical origins and early evolution of the obedience experiments. Part 1 presents the previous experiences that led to Milgram's conception of his rudimentary research idea and then details the role of his intuition in its refinement. Part 2 traces the conversion of Milgram's evolving idea into a reality, paying particular attention to his application of the exploratory method of discovery during several pilot studies. Both parts illuminate Milgram's ad hoc introduction of various manipulative techniques and subtle tension-resolving refinements. The procedural adjustments continued until Milgram was confident that the first official experiment would produce a high completion rate, a result contrary to expectations of people's behaviour. Showing how Milgram conceived of, then arrived at, this first official result is important because the insights gained may help others to determine theoretically why so many participants completed this experiment.

The social context of informal commuting: Slugs, strangers and structuration

Despite considerable interest in the role of social interactions and social context on transportation, there have been very few attempts to explore specific cases of social interaction influencing transportation systems. This paper explores the social practice of slugging, an informal system of carpooling in the Washington, DC area. Slugging emerged in response to the establishment of Virginia’s High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes in the early 1970s, as single drivers picked up riders alongside the road (slugs) in order to meet the requirements for driving in the less congested HOV lanes. Drawing on the work of sociologist Anthony Giddens, as well as the sociological insights of Georg Simmel and Stanley Milgram, we suggest that the practice of slugging highlights the processes of institutionalization and structuration. This paper details how the region’s mass transportation policies and urban culture have combined to result in an institutionalized practice with particular norms and logics of behavior. We conclude that looking at specific cases where social context has affected transportation, like slugging, could provide useful insights on the impact of social context on transportation policies and systems.

A most human enterprise: controversies in the social sciences

Chapter 1. Granberg and Galliher Find their Way into Ethical Issues Chapter 2. Stanley Milgram's Behavioral Study of Obedience Chapter 3. Philip Zimbardo's Prison Simulation Study Chapter 4. David Rosenhan's Pseudo-patient Study of Psychiatric Hospitals Chapter 5. The Short, Tumultuous Career of Project Camelot Chapter 6. Laud Humphreys and Tearoom Trade: A Pioneering Study of Male Homosexuality Chapter 7. The Strange Career of Cyril Burt Chapter 8. Cyril Burt and Margaret Mead: The Conflict Between Biological Determinants and Cultural Determinants Chapter 9. Once a Rising Star: The Rise and Fall of Karen Ruggiero Chapter 10. Plagiarism by Thin Editing Chapter 11. Plagiarism and Punishment Texas A&M Style: Victim Blaming and Golden Parachutes Chapter 12. Controversy over Five Dimensions of Religiosity Chapter 13. The Clark-Hatfield Study of Gender Differences in Receptivity to Sexual Offers Chapter 14. Allegations of Homosexual Arousal Chapter 15. An Interference with Breathing Study Chapter 16. Simulated Crash Landing Chapter 17. Henry Murray Directs Verbal Attacks on Harvard University Undergraduates Chapter 18. Putney and Cadwaller's Simulation of the Beginning of A Nuclear War Chapter 19. Recent Adventures in Crime Fighting Chapter 20. Conclusions

What Experimentalism Means in Ethics

What Experimentalism Means in Ethics Eric Thomas Weber The factors which have brought society to its present pass and impasse contain forces which, when released and constructively utilized, form the positive basis of an educational philosophy and practice that will recover and will develop our original national ideals. The basic principle in that philosophy and practice is that we should use that method of experimental action called natural science to form a disposition which puts a supreme faith in the experimental use of intelligence in all situations of life. —John Dewey and John Childs, "The Social-Economic Situation and Education" (1933) In the past, ethical theories have been presented as self-sufficient and holistic. Philosophers have historically been either deontologists, consequentialists, virtue ethicists, divine command theorists, or some other particular theorist to the exclusion of other points of view. In John Dewey's American Pragmatism we see a shift that has gone underappreciated in moral theory, one that I will defend in this essay. Dewey was an experimentalist. In this essay, I will show what I take experimentalism to mean in moral theory. This is important to do, since the very idea of undertaking moral experiments sounds a bit unnerving. The reason one might have this [End Page 98] feeling is due to the history of unethical experimental practices that have become famous, such as in the Tuskegee syphilis experiments or Stanley Milgram's well-known psychological studies.1 To allay fears about the experimentalist's approach to ethics, I will begin with a description of experimentalism's basis in good scientific practice. Surely there have been scientists who have done wrong, but good science learns from the mistakes that others have made and follows a set of important rules for inquiry. Next, I will discuss some of the ways in which experimentalism is an outlook and spirit that America profoundly values in its history and government—the American experiment. Then, I will offer an example of the theoretical flexibility necessary for experimentalism as we find it in one of John Rawls's early writings and in the ethical tradition generally. In "Two Concepts of Rules," Rawls presents a sobering defense of utilitarianism in the legislative rule-establishing task.2 He offers a way to see utilitarianism's consistency with a deontological outlook on punishment and the adherence to rules that we set for utilitarian reasons. Finally, I will conclude with some examples of the ways in which American public policy can be approached with the experimentalist method that so many industries adopt already. For when industry wants to maximize profits responsibly and carefully, businesses find test markets, set up realizable experiments, and perform careful science with profit as their incentive. When a test market does well in one region, similar tests are undergone elsewhere to see whether widespread implementation of products or services would be a good idea. Similarly, in public policy, we frequently bring to other states and sometimes to the federal government those practices and programs that are extremely successful at a particular local level. What will drive inquiry into the best decisions for public policy will not be the profit motive, however, but the noble goal of moral growth. I. Experimentalism's Origin in Scientific Practice To understand the meaning and value of experimentalism in moral theory, it is important to see why experimentalism in the sciences is as successful as it is. As Dewey put it, "Experimentalism is the cause of the victories won by science in the physical field, while the social field is kept as a preserve sacred from the free use of experimental procedure. The result is unbalance, distortion, and misuse of the physical fruits of science."3 To make [End Page 99] use of the greatest lessons of the sciences, we must recognize some key scientific attitudes and approaches. In an essay called "The Development of American Pragmatism," Dewey notes that the father of the experimentalist pragmatic movement, Charles Sanders Peirce, came to his remarkable idea given his own scientific background.4 Scientists, even of the highly theoretical kinds, must explain their hypotheses in terms of conceivable future testing. Without the process of the confirmation of hypotheses, science can only make...

Spinning an Organizational “Web of Obligation”? Moral Choice in Stanley Milgram’s “Obedience” Experiments

Drawing on unpublished documents from his personal archive at Yale University, this article explains how social psychologist and political scientist Stanley Milgram’s new baseline procedure both coerced and tempted most participants into completing his so-called Obedience to Authority (OTA) experiment. This procedure relies cumulatively on a range of manipulative and seductive psychological techniques that progressively and systematically induced most participants to pursue what they sensed to be a morally reprehensible course of action. The article examines a variety of influences at work in Milgram’s controlled laboratory that help understand how functionaries may resolve an moral dilemma in a bureaucratically organized work situation. In doing so, the article also provides an alternative explanation for Milgram’s new baseline findings, one that is more consistent with Bandura’s concept of “moral disengagement” and Barnard’s concept of an organizational “zone of indifference.” It concludes that Milgram’s experiments have less to do with obedience to authority per se and more to do with how people resolve moral dilemmas confronting them in a structured organizational setting.

Network science [Guest Editorial

Network science is relatively new, but its roots go all the way back to Leonhard Euler and the Bridges of Königsberg problem of 1735. Euler showed that it was impossible to parade through town crossing each of its seven bridges only once without repeating a crossing, and established a new field of mathematical research called graph theory [1]. Graph theory remained the providence of mathematicians for 200 years until sociologist Stanley Milgram used it to explain social networks called small worlds. Milgram’s experiment startled the world by showing, experimentally, that any two people in the United States are separated by a relatively small number of intermediaries. His experiment established the now-famous “six degrees of separation” and stimulated renewed interest in application of graph theory to real problems. Then in the 1990s a small group of physicists became interested in graph theory as it pertained to Ising, percolation theory, and phase transition. Their contribution became known as the “new science of networks,” and emphasized topological structure rather than graph algorithms. Their work attempted to justify the age-old paradigm “function follows form.”

Obedience and Evil: From Milgram and Kampuchea to Normal Organizations

Obedience: a simple term. Stanley Milgram, the famous experimental social psychologist, shocked the world with theory about it. Another man, Pol Pot, the infamous leader of the Khmer Rouge, showed how far the desire for obedience could go in human societies. Milgram conducted his experiments in the controlled environment of the US psychology laboratory of the 1960s. Pol Pot experimented with Utopia in the totalitarian Kampuchea of the 1970s. In this article, we discuss the process through which the Khmer Rouge regime created an army of unquestioningly obedient soldiers – including child soldiers. Based on these two cases, we advance a framework on how obedience can be grown or countered.

The Great Art of Living Together

Marie-Louise von Franz’s final lecture in November 1986 has revolutionary political implications because the more we manage to differentiate our feelings, the more we will be able to differentiate good from evil decisively. This is essential if we are to practice the great art of living together (a phrase from Bertolt Brecht). The first step in differentiating our feelings is to recognize that we live between the opposites and that we must often make painful choices between them. Even more important, however, a point on which both Jung and von Franz laid particular stress, is to recognize and accept the presence of living religion, that is, the numinous. Without that acceptance and without some “getting” of religion, evil is bound to triumph. Although we need to accept the numinous, archetypal dimension in our life, engaging as many of our functions in resisting what Esther Harding calls the “threat” from the unconscious is also most important. Particularly egregious in our scientific times is the triumph of undifferentiated thinking values in the everyday world of power politics and obedience to authority. The notorious 1961 obedience experiments of Stanley Milgram stand out as a particularly interesting portrayal of this trend. We are called upon to practice the politics of differentiated feeling in many ways, from deciding whether to accompany a group of friends when we really want to do something different, all the way to deciding if and how we might resist tyrannies such as Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. Finally, the great art of living together concerns the difficult task of learning to love our individual fellow human beings consciously, as Rilke conceived it, and this we need to do, one relationship at a time.