The Psychology of a Toohey

[Myself]

A question that's always plagued me about The Fountainhead, is Toohey's psychological motivations. He knows, clearer than any other character, the nature of the good. He was not an evader - he knew through conscious deliberation the consequences and premises of every action he took.

The big question is: why? Why would someone who knows what is possible in life, decide to throw it away? To throw away happiness, pride, love, and friendship? What could possibly motivate such a person?

In my opinion there has never existed a true Ellsworth Toohey. There are evaders, there are people who momentarily choose evil, but never with such a conscious knowledge of what they were doing.

I've tried, but I can't untangle Toohey. Can you?

[EC]

From what I can tell he did what he did as a subtle form of control over others. He let others choose to become his slaves and pawns by default, and then used them imperceptibly over time to increase his own power. He wanted power over others and he used their own moral default to gain it.

Edited July 30, 2008 by EC

[Tenure]

I think the beginning of Toohey is when he realises that he's physically weak, and though smart, he isn't intelligent, like Roark is intelligent. He is a mental genius, he can masterfully manipulate ideas detached from reality, but he could never do anything of significance of reality. So what does he do? Well, he realises that he can twist people's fears and weaknesses towards his strength. Remember the issue with soaking the bully so his virtuous mother thinks highly of him, or the way he mentions to his Dad that this kid has a dad who owns his own business, playing on his father's own feelings of inadequacy. He realises that people can be manipulated by their emotions, if they do not have any strong, selfish, moral conviction.

So, I don't think he starts off recognising what is good and seeking to destroy it. He simply recognises that to make his way in life, he can rule other men. I think it is simply the fact that, the more he does this, the more distant he comes from his own ability to achieve his own good. As a result, he comes to really resent men of achievement, not just because he can't rule them, but because they don't have to survive off other men, but live in a radiant joy of their own making.

Basically, he chose the 'easy' way out, and just found it too easy to leave behind, until he started resenting the 'hard' way more and more. He's just like any man who, finding it so easy to just drift through life, resents anyone who makes him think about how he doesn't have to just drift. The only thing is, with Toohey, is his easy way isn't mere drifting, but is in ruling the drifters.

[Myself]

Basically, he chose the 'easy' way out, and just found it too easy to leave behind, until he started resenting the 'hard' way more and more. He's just like any man who, finding it so easy to just drift through life, resents anyone who makes him think about how he doesn't have to just drift. The only thing is, with Toohey, is his easy way isn't mere drifting, but is in ruling the drifters.

The thing is, I wouldn't describe Toohey's path as easy. Everything he did, from organizing countless "councils," to his book "Sermons in Stone," his radio broadcasts, newspaper columns, and practically full time job as a "spiritual guide" took enormous effort.

I like your analysis of Toohey's early life, but the problem is that the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. It's plausible that someone born with Toohey's traits might have ended up the way you describe him -- a manipulator, using people to get what he wants. But that is inconsistent with the way his adult self is portrayed in the book.

The adult Toohey is enormously intelligent -- much more perceptive than Roark, Dominique, or Wynand. He knows and understands each of them, and their own motivations better than they do. His goal isn't to manipulate people for his own benefit -- which is plausible. Instead, he manipulates people to service his overarching goal of creating a completely altruistic world -- in body and spirit.

Because his understanding is so complete, he must have, at some point, seen the nature of good and rejected it. It was attainable to him -- he had many talents at his disposal. He was a magnificent orator, writer, and thinker. He could have achieved in his own fields what Roark achieved in his. But he chose not to.

In my opinion, evil is caused by ignorance of the good or self-imposed ignorance by evasion. Toohey is an anomaly. An enigma. For someone to have seen (as you put it) "the radiant joy" possible to him, and then reject it is psychologically untenable.

The Toohey you described -- a simple manipulator -- would have ended up only a more capable Guy Francon or Peter Keating. It's his intelligence and understanding that make him what he is -- and should make him impossible to be what he is, at the same time.

That is the dillema.

Edited July 30, 2008 by Myself

[D'kian]

Toohey wants power over people, for no purpose other than to rule over them. That's all there is to him.

If he is hard to understand it's because his goal is so unproductive as to seem pointless. Also because he is a malicious person. He knows the nature of the good and rejects it, as has been said. Purposeful malice is a hard thing to understand. In a way you can consider it a compliment if you can't understand it.

But it's always good to know one's enemies, and better to be able to understand them. that said, Toohey is a fictional character. While there have been people like him, they have more of a goal than just to rule. To rule for some purpose, for example, be it establishing Socialism (Stalin), or ensuring the superiority of the master race (Hitler), even though such goals are irrational.

I've heard suggestions that Toohey was modeled on Hitler (short, smart, etc), but I think if he's modeled on anyone it is Napoleon. The French Emperor wanted power and wanted to rule vast masses of people. He was also a military genius with the means to conquer vast swatches of Europe. Yet his rule was more or less benign and he himself was not a tyrant. Toohey was a tyrant, of course, who would allow no Roarks ("Thinking men can't be ruled. We don't want any thinking men"), no great men at all. He wasn't benign, and neither would have been his rule, but he did keep his subjects in an illusion of happiness (for his own purposes).

I recommedn re-reading the lesson he gives to Peter Keating near the ending. It's as good a condensed primer on collectivist tyranny as you've ever read. Just try to read it as a stand-alone lesson not connceted to the novel. Focus on Toohey, not on how he affects Roark. All you need to know about the little prick is there.

[aequalsa]

A question that's always plagued me about The Fountainhead, is Toohey's psychological motivations. He knows, clearer than any other character, the nature of the good. He was not an evader - he knew through conscious deliberation the consequences and premises of every action he took.

The big question is: why? Why would someone who knows what is possible in life, decide to throw it away? To throw away happiness, pride, love, and friendship? What could possibly motivate such a person?

In my opinion there has never existed a true Ellsworth Toohey. There are evaders, there are people who momentarily choose evil, but never with such a conscious knowledge of what they were doing.

I've tried, but I can't untangle Toohey. Can you?

I met a young woman a couple days ago who was a less intelligent and more pathetic version of Toohey. In a discussion about productivity, she advocated "social justice." Apparently this consisted of making disparaging remarks about anyone who worked while idolizing those who can "get by for free"(A.K.A. Dumpster divers, welfare recipients, bums, government jobs like hers that require no work, etc) When I began pointing out the more obvious contradiction, that her heroes were all parasites living off of the work of the productive amongst us, she first tried to equivocate service industry jobs(doctors) with unproductive people since "nothing is produced." When this didn't work, she stormed off(ran away quickly) to "get chili cheese fries with her ill gotten gains." (which I'll add in an unashamedly, ad hominem way that she didn't need at all.)

Anyway, the point is that she understood the connection between her kind and my kind, explicitly. What I gathered to be the reason she chose evil was that she viewed it as more powerful. The rest of us were just stupid and weak for working rather then living off of others. It reminded me of that scene from Spaceballs; "Evil will always triumph because good is dumb."

In a nutshell, I would say that they understand the connection and the evaluation of morality, but they lack the full context which includes, most importantly, the psychological cost or benefit to yourself. Our chosen actions affect our opinions of ourselves, so with a damaged capacity for self-love, caused by of a life time of bad decisions, they seem to get to the point of being incapable of deriving happiness from its proper source. All they can get instead, is a sense of satisfaction from being better then others in some way. It doesn't work, of course, so they must augment their joy, such as it is, with a large basket of chili cheese fries.

[Myself]

Toohey wants power over people, for no purpose other than to rule over them. That's all there is to him.

I understand that Toohey is an abstraction. But he's also supposed to be a human character in a novel. That can't be all there is to him. No human being could want that. I don't mean that in a moralistic sense -- I mean it in the literal. As in, I could see no way a person could desire power for the sake of power with no other motivation.

It might be that he gains pleasure from controlling other people. But in that case his motivation would be personal pleasure -- which it isn't. He has a professed agenda that makes no sense. Even socialists and commmunists thought what they were doing would lead to some good for someone.

In his speech at the end, he admitted that he would gain nothing from achieving his goal. Absolutely nothing. Nothing for him, nothing for anyone. If he was insane, that might explain destruction for destruction's sake -- but he isn't.

If he is hard to understand it's because his goal is so unproductive as to seem pointless. Also because he is a malicious person. He knows the nature of the good and rejects it, as has been said.

The thing is, I don't see how someone could truly see and understand the good and then reject it.

In a nutshell, I would say that they understand the connection and the evaluation of morality, but they lack the full context which includes, most importantly, the psychological cost or benefit to yourself.

But that stems from a mixture of ignorance and evasion on her part. As you said, she didn't have the full context. Toohey did.

Edited July 30, 2008 by Myself

[D'kian]

I understand that Toohey is an abstraction. But he's also supposed to be a human character in a novel. That can't be all there is to him. No human being could want that. I don't mean that in a moralistic sense -- I mean it in the literal. As in, I could see no way a person could desire power for the sake of power with no other motivation.

I understand your disbelief in this matter, but that's all Toohey says he wants, and that is truly what he wants. As I said, it is pointless and unproductive. But there need not be a deeper meaning or purpose beneath.

I'm not saying I understand it. That is, I dont' see why anyone would want it, much lesa ctually try to get it. If you or I were offered absolute power oever everyone, or even over one person, we'd recoil from such an offer in disgust, and we'd know why, too. So Toohey is difficult to understand. But what he wants is perfectly clear.

In his speech at the end, he admitted that he would gain nothing from achieving his goal. Absolutely nothing. Nothing for him, nothing for anyone. If he was insane, that might explain destruction for destruction's sake -- but he isn't.

Not entirely. I don't recall the speech exactly, but near the end Toohey asks what would become of him, and a few others like him, and he says they'd get nothing, but they'd rule. He says, in reference to society, something like "One heart, pumped by hand --my hand and those of a few others."

The thing is, I don't see how someone could truly see and understand the good and then reject it.

Malice. I know that answer is unstatisfying, but it's the only one I can see.

It seems to me you'd understand Toohey if he wanted, say, to build a huge conquering army, or the adualtion of the masses, or even if he tooks ome kind of twisted pleasure from keeping people down. Perhaps he derives pleasure from ruling, perhaps not. In the end that is not why he does it, and it does make him harder to understand.

[aequalsa]

But that stems from a mixture of ignorance and evasion on her part. As you said, she didn't have the full context. Toohey did.

I would argue that you give him too much credit and that Toohey did not fully understand the context. That kind of world view grows slowly over time. I see him as the sort who began acting out of malice and revenge against the able through a sense of jealousy, without full conceptual understanding. Eventually that behavior is automated to the point that changing oneself becomes a somewhat overwhelming task. Later he developed a more complete understanding of what had gone on and decided that he could never experience the kind of happiness that producers experience. That decision shows me that he did not fully grasp the context since it is a denial of freewill. Everyone can change, but he chose not to. To chose not to live your life in the way most conducive to happiness requires an evasion or misunderstanding.

Most people do not consider psychological cost in their day to day actions. Try convincing someone that it will not benefit them to steal a $1,000,000. That all of the toys they buy, will not fill the hole left by their immorality. Even generally good people have extreme difficulty accepting it. A life time of these bad decisions shapes his outlook in such a way that, full understanding philosophically of cause and effect, of the consequences of his choices, is not as difficult or as frightful to accept, as the idea of changing his course. So instead he probably justifies his life in the Nietzschean, 'beyond good and evil' sense. That morality is a code to be followed by the weak for the benefit of the strong.

A very real life example of a Toohey that we are still feeling the effects of today, is the philosophical godfather of the neocon movement, Leo Strauss. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss

He'll provide a good example of the sort of mindset that makes this level of immorality possible.

[~Sophia~]

The big question is: why?

Power.

From TF:

Look back at history. Look at any great system of ethics. Didn't they all preach the sacrifice of personal joy? Under all the complications of verbiage, haven't they all had a single leitmotif: sacrifice, renunciation, self-denial? Haven't you been able to catch their theme song - 'Give up, give up, give up, give up'? Look at the moral atmosphere of today. Everything enjoyable from cigarettes to sex to ambition to the profit motive is considered depraved or sinful. Just prove that a thing makes men happy - & you've damned it. That's how far we've come. We've tied happiness to guilt. And we've got mankind by the throat. Throw your first-born into a sacrificial furnace - lie on a bed of nails - go into the desert to mortify the flesh - don't dance - don't go to the movies on Sunday - don't try to get rich - don't smoke - don't drink. The great line. Fools think that taboos of this nature are just nonsense. Something left-over, old-fashioned. But there's always a purpose in nonsense. Don't bother to examine a folly - ask yourself only what it accomplishes. Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into a world power & ruled millions of men.

(bold mine)

[Tenure]

aequalsa said more eloquently, precisely and essentially what I was trying to say: Toohey started off as a small time crook, looting off the emotions of other for some cheap thrills, but it became all he knew, till it became his psycho-epistemlogical method -- "How can I manipulate someone into doing what I want?" -- and eventually he identified the exact code of ethics this required. You asked for the psychological motivation, and in essence, psychology is the automisation of a consciously practised thought-process.

[Marty McFly]

so basically everyone thinks that in one way or another Toohey was getting pleasure from controlling others.

I disagree.

Toohey is the perfect example of a myrter. he is the ultimate myrter. I think he did whatever he did for some weird idea of his that he should be a sacrificial animal. he wanted to be a sacrifice. and he hated anyone who didn't see him as the biggest hero. It was usually the "dangerous" people with good ethics who saw him as pathetic (Roark:'I don't think of you' Wynand: telling Dominique not to worry about him distroying the paper)

Now I have another question: I understand Toohey's motivation. He said it to that nun or preist in chuch school. "can I become spiritually rich if I collect souls?" he wanted to be spritually rich. as part of his own weird idea and wanted everyone to be the same.

my question is what is really the difference between Toohey and Wynand?

is iit that Gail really did want the power for selfish reasons while Elzie did it just because?

is it that Gail was less smart than Toohey, and he really did belileve there would be something to gain by controlling others? maybe the fact that he was less smart and didn't try to break people for no reason at all but because he was actually getting some sort of pleasure from it?

[EC]

my question is what is really the difference between Toohey and Wynand?

is iit that Gail really did want the power for selfish reasons while Elzie did it just because?

is it that Gail was less smart than Toohey, and he really did belileve there would be something to gain by controlling others? maybe the fact that he was less smart and didn't try to break people for no reason at all but because he was actually getting some sort of pleasure from it?

Wynand recognized the good, but thought most people were too stupid to try to achieve it, so he only wanted it for himself, like Dominique. He figured he would use everyone else's ignorance of the good to achieve power so that he could enjoy what he thought essentially he could see.

Toohey recognized the good, and hated it for being the good. He knew that he wasn't good, so he didn't want anyone to be or acknowledge the good. Instead he wanted to use his awareness of the good to have power over others just for the sake of having power.

[Tenure]

so basically everyone thinks that in one way or another Toohey was getting pleasure from controlling others.

I wasn't suggesting he gets pleasure from it. I was stating that it is his method of survival.

Edited July 31, 2008 by Tenure

[Moebius]

The adult Toohey is enormously intelligent -- much more perceptive than Roark, Dominique, or Wynand. He knows and understands each of them, and their own motivations better than they do. His goal isn't to manipulate people for his own benefit -- which is plausible. Instead, he manipulates people to service his overarching goal of creating a completely altruistic world -- in body and spirit.

Because his understanding is so complete, he must have, at some point, seen the nature of good and rejected it. It was attainable to him -- he had many talents at his disposal. He was a magnificent orator, writer, and thinker. He could have achieved in his own fields what Roark achieved in his. But he chose not to.

Actually I agree with your assessment. Toohey had a PERFECT understanding of the nature of "good" --an understanding that he reached through sheer intellectual prowess--, whereas Roark simply internalized it from the get-go and both Dominique and Wynand with only a partial understanding of it (pre-Roark) . This implies that Toohey knew exactly what it would take for him to have a truly happy life, and has all the tools to achieve this happiness, yet inexplicably decided to reject it. He made an explicit and completely irrational choice at some point to reject good --and therefore his own happiness in life-- despite the fact that he has been consistently rational, hyper-intelligent, perceptive, and goal-oriented in every other aspect of his life.

The only possible explanation would be, as you said, that Toohey is an anomaly. He is somehow wired differently as a spiritual sadomasochist that chooses evil just because, and also happens to be a convenient literary anti-Christ that serves as a foil to Roark's physical-embodiment-of-Objectivist-virtues-Superman.

[FrolicsomeQuipster]

The thing is, I don't see how someone could truly see and understand the good and then reject it.

And a Toohey could not see the path which would lead to power and then reject it.

In the land of the blind the one eyed kant is king.

Edited August 26, 2008 by FrolicsomeQuipster

[SkyTrooper]

The thing is, I don't see how someone could truly see and understand the good and then reject it.

For good people, evil is hard to fathom.

As Ayn Rand wrote in The Anti-Industrial Revolution, "As an American, you are likely to be very benevolent and enormously innocent about the nature of evil. You are unable to believe that some people can advocate man's destruction for the sake of man's destruction-- and when you hear them, you think they don't mean it. But they do."

[~Rosemary~]

"As an American, you are likely to be very benevolent and enormously innocent about the nature of evil. You are unable to believe that some people can advocate man's destruction for the sake of man's destruction-- and when you hear them, you think they don't mean it. But they do."

Maybe I'm being naive, but isn't the longing for power, or destruction, or anything like that a means to an end? I would assume that people want power because they think it would them happiness (or at least that they would enjoy it) and anyone advocating destruction would feel some twisted pleasure. Even selflessness is usually justified as being in ones ultimate self interest, whether by providing "true" happiness or as a ticket to heaven. That clearly isn't the explanation for Toohey's altruism, but I can't conceive of him having no motive other than power.

When reading The Fountainhead, I got the impression that he enjoyed what he did, especially when he got to talk about it with Dominique and Keating. I know that Toohey said that he was not destined for happiness (or something like that), but I think he must have felt some form of pleasure.

[~Sophia~]

Maybe I'm being naive, but isn't the longing for power, or destruction, or anything like that a means to an end? I would assume that people want power because they think it would them happiness (or at least that they would enjoy it) and anyone advocating destruction would feel some twisted pleasure. Even selflessness is usually justified as being in ones ultimate self interest, whether by providing "true" happiness or as a ticket to heaven. That clearly isn't the explanation for Toohey's altruism, but I can't conceive of him having no motive other than power.

When reading The Fountainhead, I got the impression that he enjoyed what he did, especially when he got to talk about it with Dominique and Keating. I know that Toohey said that he was not destined for happiness (or something like that), but I think he must have felt some form of pleasure.

Usually it is a second handish compensation for low self esteem, unimportance, inferiority, weakness, mediocrity. It is a search for importance.

An individualist of self esteem does not want to be a slave nor a master of other men.

[Alethiometry]

I'd wager that Toohey's course of action is easier than acting virtuously.

What's easier, writing a bunch of manipulative tripe or designing a truly great building?

Having a woman like Dagny Taggart or a series of giggling manicurists?

I think his decisions are easier and more comfortable for him than acting virtuously. Power over others can be a very potent drug. Toohey probably thinks he's a badass manipulating a bunch of schmucks, and that gives him some sense of superiority and self-esteem.

[Ifat Glassman]

A question that's always plagued me about The Fountainhead, is Toohey's psychological motivations. He knows, clearer than any other character, the nature of the good. He was not an evader - he knew through conscious deliberation the consequences and premises of every action he took.

The big question is: why? Why would someone who knows what is possible in life, decide to throw it away? To throw away happiness, pride, love, and friendship? What could possibly motivate such a person?

In my opinion there has never existed a true Ellsworth Toohey. There are evaders, there are people who momentarily choose evil, but never with such a conscious knowledge of what they were doing.

I've tried, but I can't untangle Toohey. Can you?

You can read The Journals of Ayn Rand, it gives great insight into the characters, their motivation, emotions and development through the novel.

According to how I understand it, Toohey understood as a kid that he can never be as smart or handsome as other kids. As a kid he was weak and ill looking. He realized that he could never match Johny (a healthy, smart kid) and so decided to destroy Johny and others like him.

The best way for him to do it was through "self sacrifice". One example is that he sprayed Johny with water and ruined his Sunday suit, using the excuse that Johny is a bad boy who beats up other kids and deserves a punishment. Toohey was willing to humbly bare any punishment and so became a saint in the eyes of others. The truth is that this was a good position for him to punish Johny for being smart, beautiful and healthy, while disarming others (because he appeared as a self-sacrificing "saint").

Later on in his life he improves his methods of enslavement and destruction. He wants to "collect souls" (power lust) and to use this power to destroy the good and independent.

When he first sees his niece Kathy, he sees a happy expression on her face and immediately decides that he has to destroy it. (and by the end of the novel he succeeds. Remember what happens to her through all the lessons he gives her about how to be selfless. Eventually she becomes a bitter social worker that treats everything of significance about her life as a stale joke). He just hates the good, because he cannot have it. The reason he understands it so well, is because he needs this knowledge, this understanding, to achieve his goal.

But I agree that such level of conscious evil-doing is hard to imagine. I once had an envious friend, and sure that side of her was ugly, but if she ever tried to destroy what she envied, she would at least evade the nature of her actions (because on some level she knew that it is bad, and so could hurt her self esteem). An envious person who is fully aware of the acts of destruction and takes pleasure in them... yeah, that's a whole new league of evilness.

Edited October 23, 2008 by ifatart