“Some Causes of Self-immolation“

   Essay (4,290 words); written on December 13, 1931. First published in Marginalia;rpt. MW This curious essay on psychology, written as by “L.Theobald, Jun., N.G., A.S.S.,” begins with a potted history of theories of human behavior from the Greeks through Descartes and Hobbes to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and modern psychologists and philosophers. It identifies eleven “instincts” (nutrition, flight, repulsion, etc.) and their corresponding emotions (hunger, fear, disgust, etc.). (The list is taken from William McDougall’s Introduction to Social Psychology [1908].) HPL then adds one of his own, symmetry. Various motives for human behavior are then discussed. That HPL may have written the essay as a parody of psychological obscurantism is indicated by its subtitle (“Motives for Voluntary Self-Subjugation to Unpleasant Conditions by Human Beings”) and by the fact that L.Theobald, Jun. is cited as “Professor of Satanism of Applied Irreverence in Philistine University, Chorazin, Nebraska; Mencken Lecturer on Theology in Holy Roller College, Hoke’s Four Corners, Tennessee.”