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Torturers often claim that they are trying to gain valuable information, in many cases, with the backing of the law. So, inevitably, they consider their “work” important and gain personal pleasure from that importance. Sooner or later, however, this pleasure becomes directly connected with the act of torture—and the sadistic psychopath is born. The use of torture stems at first from fear: fear of the victim and the threat that he or she represents. When this fear becomes the victim’s, the torturer feels contempt for him or her—although, deep down and never admitted, the contempt might well be for himself. This feeling of contempt can then be exploited to excuse the infliction of ever-increasing pain. Finally, another factor is the all-too-human instinct for revenge: punishment for “crimes” that the victim is known, or believed, to have committed. However unacceptable the use of torture may seem to us today, throughout much of history it remained a part of legal practice in most of the world. The earliest record tells how, when the Hittites were invading Egypt around 1300 B . C ., the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II ordered the torture of some prisoners of war in order to learn details of the enemy forces. In those days, prisoners of war were either killed at once or taken into slavery; as slaves, they were considered fit for torture.

The cruel rites of the Aztecs of ancient Mexico involved human sacrifice to the sun. Victims had their hearts cut out so that the blood flowed in streams.

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THE HISTORY OF TORTURE