boys, fathers & fires

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Fire and the Father: symbolic enactment in arson attacks by young people

Abstract

Is there a link between the increase in arson as a social problem and the loss of father in modern society? Young people appear to set fire in public spaces which seems to provoke the response of fire-fighters. Fire-fighters, traditionally framed as an archetype of heroic male potency, seem more lately to bear the brunt of attack from young fire setters. This paper considers the arson attack as a provocation of an idealised surrogate father and explores the relationship between fire and the father. Significant changes in to the construction of male identity in the late millennium are correlated with the social veto of fire which deprives younger males of the opportunity for a healthy and normalising expression of learning to control fire under the watchful gaze of elders.

Background

This paper reconvenes discussions that have been held during an Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) funded seminar series examining the psychosocial aspects of malicious fire setting (see: www.winship.info). The series has brought together a number of stakeholders ranging from fire service staff working in the field of prevention, investigation and juvenile intervention, to practitioners working clinically with individuals who exhibit longer term pathological pre-occupation with fire starting. A common interest across disciplines has been to root out the filial allure of fire attempting to distinguish between a normalising interest and a more worrying pathological fixation.

In particular there has been a common concern about the devastation rent by arson attacks on public spaces and utilities, focused expressly on the problem of school fires. The latest figures from the Arson Prevention Bureau (APB) show there are, on average, 20 arson attacks on schools each week in England, costing an estimated £85m a year. Although the number of arson attacks on schools in England has remained stable from 1997 to 2007 (900 a year), over the past decade, the cost of these fires has increased by almost 140%. On top of the financial burden, more than 90,000 pupils have had their education disrupted following fire damage at their schools. The incurred costs of school fires are considerable and the disruption to education effects 90,000 - 100,000 schoolchildren each year. Perhaps more worrying is the fact that a third of these fires have occurred during school time (APB, 2004, May; APB, 2004, June). Another key concern alerted during the series has been the phenomena of attacks by young people on fire fighters who arrive at a scene of a fire. Barbara Keeley (2006), member of UK parliament, drew attention to this in a statement to the House of Commons: "Hon. Members will have read the articles and briefings cataloguing the increasingly severe nature of attacks on firefighters, involving, as we have heard today, many cases of arson and the setting of deliberate traps for fire crews." (Hansard source, 27th February, 2006).

The question as to who is setting these fires begins to inform us to the question as why? Around half of those guilty or cautioned for arson between 1996 and 2000 were found to be males below the age of 18 (ODPM, 2001). The report also found that 47% of all offenders found guilty of arson were aged between 15 and 19, again inculcating the over-representation of young offenders. Furthermore 65% of all offenders cautioned for arson were aged between 10 and 14 (APB, 2004, June), suggesting a younger spike than previously for youth offending. The gender split for young offenders has remained fairly consistent with about 80% of young offenders being male (Farrington, 1996; Rutter, Giller & Hagell, 1998). While not overlooking the Psychological characteristics of fire starting by females which has been the subject of some inquiry (Coid et al, 1999; Noblett & Nelson, 2001; O' Donohue et al, 1998), there is something pressing about making sense of what it is that drives young males to commit acts of arson.

Eloise Dodgson's (2006) 'Arson Survey of Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service' (HFRS) confirmed that FRS staff were correct to perceive that the majority of arson offenders that confronted them were male, aged between 10 and 17. Dodgson found that FRS staff believed young people had a range of motivations to set fires from acts of bravado, machismo and adventurousness to arson as a way of expressing frustration and boredom. Dodgson's FRS respondents believed that juvenile arsonists predominantly set fires whilst in the company of other juveniles, maybe as part of a gang activity. The staff were also aware of fire-setters sometimes staying to watch the ensuing events of their 'handiwork' and attributed this voyeurism to excitement, boredom, attention seeking, curiosity, empowerment and gaining a sense of importance. While not excluding theories of social control or boredom or the absence of educational opportunities for those young persons who maliciously set fires, if we try to unfold a psychological perspective on fire, Dogdson's research certainly points us in the direction of considering malicious fires as an expression of some developmental transitions or crises through childhood and adolescence unto young adulthood.

Many of the problems associated with adolescent emotional transition can be seen coalescing around the cluster of diagnoses of personality disorder (Johnson, et al 2000a; Johnson et al, 2000b; Crawford, 2004) and as a longitudinal study of 717 youths from upstate New York found, arson and vandalism are perhaps the most likely occurring delinquent act linked to a diagnosis of personality disorder (Johnson, et 2000b). There should be some critique about this study compressing vandalism and arson, but in as much as both events are seen to impact on the public domain, perhaps the researchers considered them in the same vein. Less problematically, the study noted that personality disorder during adolescence was associated with elevated risk for violent behaviour in early adulthood. It should be clear that if we are to raise consciousness about malicious fire starting, and then prevent it, we need to begin to make sense of the developmental dynamics and maturational conflicts that are prevalent in cases of fire starters, and male fire starters in particular.

Fathers & Fires

Freud's rudimentary proposition in Civilisation & Its Discontents, albeit in a footnote, is that there is a psychological relationship between fire and father (Freud, 1932). His conjecture begins with an assertion that the control of fire is an inchoate step in the creation of civilization (Freud, 1930). He cites the stories of Gulliver in Swift's tale of Lilliput and Rabelais' Gargantua, as examples of the drama of giants micturating on fire. In the story of Gulliver the royal palace is accidentally set on fire and the empress is trapped inside. Gulliver's quick resourcefulness in urinating on the fire in order to save the palace and the empress, is not taken as an act of bravery by the emperor, he is infuriated by Gulliver's vulgarity. Revenge is metered out and Gulliver is convicted on account of treason and condemned to be shot in the eyes with poisoned arrows.

Freud (1932) returns later to the theme of urination and fire in a more explicit account the psychological roots man's desire to control fire. He refers to the universal act of "pissing on the ashes" (Freud, 1932; p289) by which a fire is extinguished. Freud refers to fire as a libidinal symbol of passion and in an unusually romantic tone he refers to the "glow of love" in a fire and then the more suggestive idea that we refer to 'flames licking' and finally the redoubtable flame as a phallus in action. The act of extinguishing a fire is therefore seen to be an enactment of control sexual urges. The idea of fire as a sexual motif that is of course a theme that appears in any number of popular songs ("baby you can light my fire", as Jim Morrison put it), and is used immeasurably as a metaphoric literary device for passion, love and libido. Freud makes further in-roads to the sexual motif in the Promethean legend where he interprets that the fennel stalk that Prometheus uses, might be seen as a 'penis tube' (p289). Freud sees the theft, for which Prometheus is punished by Zeus, as revivifying a figurative Oedipus complex dynamic inasmuch as Prometheus ownership of fire is a symbol of sexual potency, of manhood and of overthrowing the father god Zeus.

Although it has been a cliché for some in regards to the underlying pathological sexual dynamics of fire starting and the joke of a fireman's hose as a iconographic symbol of phallic potency, there is a sharp degree of machismo generally associated with fire starting. It should be noted that the Fire & Rescue Services have attempted to address the phallocentric notion of the term 'fireman' by replacing this with the term fire-fighter which rightly conveys the fact that there are female fire fighters. Nonetheless, there would seem to be some leverage in extracting elements of the phallocentric nature of fire and men from Freud's speculations, and in particular fire and father. As Gaston Bachelard (1932) pointed out, there is a normalising adolescent rite of passage where the control of fire signals the onset of manhood; "I still take special pride in the art of kindling I learned from my father. I think I would rather fail to teach a good philosophy lesson than fail to light my fire in the morning" (Bachelard, 1932; p7). Like others, I too can recall a time when my father allowed me to set a bonfire for the first time. In an age of clean air acts, the loss of the traditional coal hearth in the house, and the increase in anxious prohibition on domestic fireworks, there would seem to be a significant loss of opportunities for adolescent boys to learn the triumph of functional fire-setting. The advent of barbeque man might at least have filled in some gaps in the normalising role fire setting between sons and fathers. We might say compost man has been replaced by barbeque man.

So if fire has served some purpose in marking the emergence of boyhood to manhood, what happens when this normalising adolescent transition goes awry? AS Neill (1960), in his narrative of experiences of working with disturbed youngsters at Summerhill School, offers an account of his 'cure' for arson with one pupil noting the very Freudian notion of the father, the phallus and the fire:

"A boy of eleven who came to Summerhill had the habit of incendiarism, among other habits. He had been thrashed by his father and by his teachers. Worse still, he had been taught the narrow religion of hell-fire and an angry God. Soon after coming to Summerhill, he took a bottle of petrol and poured it into a vat of paint and turpentine. The he set for to the mixture. The house was only saved by the energy of two servants.

I took him to my room. 'What is fire?' I asked.

'It burns' he said.

'What sort of a fire do you think of now?' I continued.

'Hell,' he said.

'And the bottle?' (with the petrol in it).

'A long thing with a hole in the end of it' he answered. Long pause.

'Tell me more about this long thing with a hole in the end' I said.

'My peter' he said awkwardly, 'has a hole at the end'.

'Tell me about your peter,' I said kindly. 'Do you ever touch it?'

'Not now, I used to, but I don't now'.

'Why not?'

'Because Mr X' (his last school master) told me it was the greatest sin in the world'.

I concluded that his fire making was a substituted act for masturbation. I told him that Mr X was quite wrong, that his peter was no better and no worse than his nose or his ear. From that day his interest in fire went away" (Neill; p198-199).

Summerhill is not everyone's cup of tea and of course these days, a teacher taking an eleven year old boy aside to talk about masturbation would be sure to create all sorts of anxieties. Neill's is perhaps a special case of its time. We might see that A S Neill's input, charged with the residential task of a boarding school and the role of loco-parentis therein, required an unusual degree of intimacy. And in this case, the rapid case analysis was something of survival, the problem needed to be tackled or the school would be burned down. It does often seem that psychoanalysis is invoked in the worst case scenario. What we might take from Neill's anecdote is that arson, at least in this case, permeates from internal imagos of hostile, abusive and neglectful father figures (hell-fire god, thrashing father and puritanical teacher) and that the psychosexual urgency of an imminent adolescence may dangerously lose its way. Albeit fictitious, Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire tracks the psychosocial development of one of the most closely followed case studies of our generation. In the novel we are treated to actual fire only on a few occasions, the fire in the goblet itself to the fire of the dragon who competitors have to defeat to claim an egg, but throughout we feel the fire burning symbolically. Harry, lurches towards the confusions of adolescence and the narrative of the Goblet of Fire seems increasingly testosterone fuelled. The fire seems an apt motif for the burning emergence of a number of romances; Fleur wows the boys and leads Ron to the unspeakable act of actually asking her for a date at the prom, Harry tries to impress Cho but is frustrated because Cedric Diggory is their first and Hermione comes of an age with a date and romance with the vigorous Victor Krum. And there is a suggestive scene when Harry has the ghost of Moaning Myrtle making comments about Harry's manhood (in the film it is only bubbles which protect Harry's pride). We already know that Harry's 'Firebolt' broomstick means he has the most powerful stick between his legs in the school, but in the Goblet of Fire, his wand at last produces; "a milky white charm called a 'patronus' which produces a stag". Harry is not quite sure if the Patronus is his or his fathers and for a while Harry believes that his father has somehow returned from the dead to save him, only to discover that it is something of his internalised father that saves himself.

The Japanese writer Yukio Mishima is probably even more pre-occupied with fire than JK Rowling and in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, the story is also about an adolescent boy and an absent father. Mishima is renowned for his pre-occupation with fire-starting as a theme or a symbol in all of his major works. But it is not just Mishima's patent talent and popularity that means his work merits investigation, it is the co-factor of Misima's own turbulent life and dramatic ritualistic suicide (with the assistance of his students) that suggest Mishima was more near-sighted about the violent source of arson activity than most. Mishima was in the first place inspired by the destruction of the 'Temple of the Golden Pavilion' in 1950 when a young student priest in Kyoto deliberately set fire to it and burned it to the ground. The Temple had been a masterpiece of Buddhist architecture had been revered as a national treasure for more than five hundred years. Apparently the young priest had been obsessed with envy of the beauty of the Golden Temple, which he saw in contrast to the perception of himself as stuttering and ugly. At the trial of the young priest a psychiatrist said he had arrived at a diagnosis 'psychopathy of the schizoid type'. Mishima took the dramatic events of the destruction of the temple, and the story of the young priest, as a basis for his first novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956) in which he speculated about the priest's violent motivation which was deemed to be the consequence of the young priest having observed his mother having sexual intercourse with his uncle.

While The Temple of the Golden Pavilion would seem to merit serious arson investigation, it is in a subsequent novel, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1963), where some of the most powerful fire imagery is exacted. The tale is of a 12 year old boy called Noboru who lives with his widowed mother. Noboru's mother has taken to locking him in his room to prevent him mixing with a gang he has joined. But it is not without guilt that she takes such drastic action; she thinks: "What would happen if there were a fire-if the door warped in the heat or paint clogged the keyhole, and the door could not be opened?". While locked in his room Noboru discovers that in the bottom drawer of a built-in dresser in his room, there is a small hole through which he can see into his mother's bedroom. He begins to spy on her, watching her undressing. When Noboru's mother comes home one evening with a sailor from one of the merchant ships, Noboru watches them having intercourse; "…her delicate finger tips, stealthy now and reluctant, would quicken into tongues of flame…they clutched at each other and collided in frenzied, awkward movements like beasts in the forest lunging at a ring of fire." (p43-44).

Noboru's gang are united in their hatred of fathers who are said by the gang leader to be: "filthy, lecherous flies who broadcast to the world that they've screwed with our mothers." As part of Norubu's initiation he kills a kitten which the gang then dissects. As Noboru watches the glistening viscera escapes from the belly of the kitten, he thinks of the nakedness of the sailor and his mother in sexual embrace. Noboru's mother's relationship with the sailor intensifies and Norobu is annoyed that the sailor seems to be telling tales of danger at sea to Norobu's mother increasing her desire for him to stay and not return to sea. After recounting how the hull became damaged and flooded on a recent voyage the sailor says: "I'll tell you one thing, no matter how long you've been on a ship, you never get used to storms. I mean you're sure every time you run into one that your number is up. Anyway, the day before this last hurricane the sunset looked too much like a big fire and the red in the sky was kind of murky and the water was as quiet as a lake. I had sort of a feeling that something was coming". (p125).

Shortly after the mother and the sailor decide to marry, they discover that Noboru has been peeping at them through the hole in his dresser. Noboru's mother is, for the first time, beside herself with fury and wants the sailor to beat Noboru. However, the sailor is reconciliatory and calms the situation, but in Noburu's ears; "Every word burned like fire" (p158). The gang now decides to have a sacrifice of human blood-and the sailor is the designated victim. Noboru leads him to the gang's hiding place and serves the sailor tea which has been drugged. In anticipation of what they intend to do, the boys begin to tease the sailor. They grab his cap which is described as an "exorbitant firebrand, lighting the way to eternity." (p159). The sailor begins to lose consciousness, as the gang leader begins to put on rubber gloves and prepare for the ritual murder and dissection.

Reflections

Mishima's offers some uncomfortable psychological insights that seem to resonate with the Freudian thesis of fathers and fire. In this case the narrative of the lost father, and the rage against the surrogate father, necessarily resonate with some of the foregoing strands of fire fighters as surrogate fathers that are attacked. In Norubu's case it is the desire for sole possession of the mother that accumulates in the hatred of the sailor interloper. The drama bears many of the hall marks of the Oedipus story (where the son kills the father to marry his mother), and we see in Mishima the re-affirmation of the dramatic tension that is prised from male adolescent transitions, from the onset of puberty, the booming confused urges of sexuality, and the burgeoning challenges of social affiliation, in Norubu's case, affiliation with a gang.

Mishima's central formulation, that of the attack on the surrogate father who might have otherwise been construed as a romantic and heroic figure for the boy is ultimately subject to a vicious attack. Like the attacks on fire service staff, there is something anomalous here. We might have expected Norubu to have been impressed by the heroic sailor. The vilification of the fire fighter in the UK is something of an antithesis to the iconography of the New York fire fighters who, in the devastation of the 9/11 attacks, became the epitome of the heroic public servant. The antagonism expressed towards fire fighters in the UK by some groups of young people may be symptomatic of a crisis of paternity in the UK, that prompts us to appraise the cultural location of the fathers today. As something of an association, there is one image that comes to mind from the fathers for justice campaign, where a number of men dressed as superheroes have publicly protested by climbing to dangerous places. And notably have needed, on more than one occasion, fire service staff to rescue them. Some fathers feel so under attack that they are prompted to recycle the protests of suffragettes in the early twentieth century in an appeal for their rights.

I might advance a provisional formulation here that there is a crisis of masculinity manifest in the event of malicious fire starting, that is to say, what it is to become a man, what it is to be a son and father, have become problematic in the late twentieth century. In these times of fracture where much has been made of the increase in divorce rates and the more complex networks of family systems, might we see arson as one the symptoms of the crisis. To summarise then, I am led to wonder if pathological arson in adolescence emerges from a crisis in the family, especially the crisis of fatherhood. The absence of the father and the absence of the rites of passage of adolescence have disrupted, with more frequency, the age old traditions of father-son negotiations, of what it is to become a man. Malicious fire starting provokes the fire fighter in a surrogate parental role and perhaps most especially surrogate father. Fire fighters and fire men especially are idealised as potent heroes and therefore subject to a form of ritual engagement - a game of hide and seek, attack and retribution, triumph and defeat - with fire services. The young male arsonist is torn between wanting to be controlled by the 'good' fire father and at the same time wanting to beat him.

Practical follow through of this reasoning is not entirely straightforward other than to say that if we begin from a reasoning that arson and malicious fire starting emerge from a deep swell of interweaving psychosocial and developmental tendencies, the arson prevention work done in schools practically focusing on the danger rent by fire, might be overlooking the more sequestered interpersonal dynamics of fire starting. Most fire service staff working in the field of prevention and juvenile intervention seem to understand the complexity of their task. Some of the most innovative and perhaps most effective work in the field of arson prevention seems to take into account the network of peer relations where the young person is embedded and there seems to be useful purchase made of the fact that acts of delinquency are usually committed in the company of other children (Rutter et al, 1998). Delinquency is deeply related to peer-group pressure and there may be some value added understanding of the problem when we apply a more specific consideration of adolescent transitions. Herein the exploration of father-son dynamics (the presence or absence of father, what it means to be a man and so on) may exert influence on the act of fire starting than a practical programme of prevention through aversion. A consciousness raising model of the symbol of fire offers a potential avenue from which to build a programme of intervention, where the focus of arson prevention is shifted from the fear or allure of fire to the problem of father.

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