CHARLES MANSON ON SOCIETY

"You made your children what they are.... These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.... You can project it back at me, but I am only what lives inside each and every one of you. My father is your system.... I am only what you made me. I am a reflection of you. You made your children what they are.... These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.... You can project it back at me, but I am only what lives inside each and every one of you. My father is your system.... I am only what you made me. I am a reflection of you." Charles Manson

Manson despite his renown for being a genuine schizophrenic makes a very real and valid point in this statement. The practice of continuously imprisoning criminals together only serves to further alienate them from society and further educates them in how to further manipulate and hate the society that they are supposed to be being rehabilitated to fit into.

It is a commonly known fact that most serial killers have had previous criminal run-ins prior to their first murders and that they usually are also a product of a broken home setting. They are also usually a product of some form of sexual abuse and bullying during their adolescent years which is the time in most of our lives when people are developing their places in society.

In the case of Manson he spent the majority of his life in and out of what he refers to as the system. His mother made it clear at a very young age that he was an unwanted child begin sent way to various relatives to live while she, still a child of 16 herself pursued her life of prostitution and drug usage. His relatives abused him both physically and emotionally until he was arrested at age 9 and sent to a boys home where he was bullied and sodomized by the other boys. He reported the abuse but was not believed. This may well have been the source of his eventual venomous hatred of the Criminal Justice system. It was also during his time at a juvenile home he began to learn of religion which also would eventually become a deep-seated influence in his later life.

Manson went on to spend the majority of his life in and out of prison by stealing cars, committing fraud, and burglary. Manson has spent the majority of his life incarcerated in various prisons, spending only two short stints of life free where he managed to get married and father a child. When he refers to prison as “My father”, from a psychological approach, he is not far off in his evaluation. He once said that he didn’t know how to act “outside”. He explained that all he knew was prison life; he preferred its structured behaviors and clearly defined rules. To him it was safe where society was chaos in his opinion. It was also during him time in prison that he developed an ear and desire to play music. He learned to play steel guitar and began an obsessive path on becoming a famous musician. Yet another influence gained during his life of imprisionment. So once can begin to see how he comes to see prison as a Father like influence, while people in society look to their parents for safety, guidance and to learn life skills and hobbies from Manson’s resource for these influences was prison.
It is also a common occurrence for people who are institutionalized for extended periods of time to suffer from institutional syndrome, a mental illness that makes the person suffering from the illness lose the ability to function in regular society. People who suffer from this illness often cannot deal with the responsibilities of the demands of everyday society. They also cannot function as an individual due to the very way a prison is set up to remove individualization to control prisoner and patients to prevent rioting and violence among inmates and patients.

This phenomenon can also be attributed to the behaviors we see in Manson. He was raised in an institution were individuality and self thought was discouraged, it is honestly a surprise that he emerged with the ability to develop any individual original thoughts at all. This atmosphere is what he recreates with his “Family”.

The family that Manson develops is an attempt to recreate the security he felt in prison and to play as a surrogate for the family he so desperately wanted to have. His life in prison again helped him in this task due to the fact that in prison in order to survive you have to become likeable and manipulative in order to get what you want and prevent yourself from becoming a victim. These were lessons that Manson had over twenty years to master and when he finally put them to use did so with the art of a master. He used the tools that society had given him drugs and the hippie movement as well as the growing influence of music in the lives of society’s youth proved to be a volatile cocktail of manipulation easily controlled by Manson.

Today, Manson has become complacent in his prison life. He creates music, writes and communicates with groups of followers. Despite his life in prison he still maintains influence with the outside world. His superstar status as a household name has afforded him much influence over the world outside of prison. In essence, he has achieved the ultimate manipulation in that he has made an enterprise of being a criminal by using the very system designed to discourage criminal actions; the ultimate slap in the face of society.