Twenty years ago I was confronted by a patient who dressed in battle fatigues with a German flag sewn onto his sleeve — not a healthy sign, I thought. He had never been in the army, nor was he about to volunteer for it; he was, if anything, inclined to pudginess rather than to martial muscularity; his struggle was not with the enemies of his country but with daily life, and he sweated profusely from a deep and inextinguishable inner anxiety.
Far from being violent, he told me, he was a pacifist. Indeed, he was so pacifist that he was a firm vegetarian. Violence and cruelty to animals appalled him utterly; indeed, he felt so strongly about it, he said between gritted teeth, that he sometimes felt like going into his nearest supermarket (where I too shopped) and shooting everyone at the meat counter. I did not find it altogether reassuring that he had recently joined a gun club; but he had never so far been in trouble with the police.
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