In his book On Killing, Grossman explores the phenomenon of killing in war. He is the founder of a kind of scientific direction killology and in the book examines how, in the spirit of orthodox-religious America of the 1950s, they saw in the organically inherent human aversion to killing their own kind (Grossman, 2009). Grossman reveals how, based on Pavlov’s theory of conditioned reflex and Skinner’s operant conditioning, special training helps an American soldier overcome the fear of murder. Moreover, the fear of killing and the fear of being killed, according to American psychologists, were in a close dialectical relationship. Among the methods used to achieve increased kills, Grossman identifies desensitization, conditioning, and disabling defense mechanisms.
The desensitization was that American soldiers were taught that their duty was not to be brave or to fight well, but simply to kill as many people as possible. The technology was quite effective: as we can see, it allowed even in soft and sensitive people to sow the seeds of a thirst for murder. Conditioning consists in shooting training, the conditions of which are as close as possible to the realities of combat: a soldier fires in full at an anthropomorphic target. Then, following the theory of Skinner, the necessary skill is reinforced by the instructor’s praise, a badge for marksmanship or the addition of three days to vacation (Grossman, 2009). Disabling the protective mechanisms of the psyche is facilitated by the self-persuasion of a soldier as a result of repeatedly hitting targets in the form of a human figure that at the time of the murder he is only hitting another target.
According to Grossman, disabling protective mechanisms consists in the process of developing artificial contempt for the target person. This mental process, which is greatly facilitated by the spread of technological innovations on the battlefield, is consolidated and strengthened every time the shooter sends a bullet to the target (Grossman, 2009). In general, according to Grossman’s views in On Killing, the probability of acquiring PTSD is determined by the nature of a soldier’s training, liberating his instincts, removing the natural prohibition on killing, and the social reaction of society refusing to accept his victim. It can be stated that the provisions of killology set out in On Killing, despite some inaccuracies and particular contradictions, are quite often quoted in the West in studies on the problems of military psychology, PTSD, rehabilitation of combatants.
Reference
Grossman, C. (2009). On killing: The psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society. Back Bay Books.