A person who has been tortured and humiliated in his formative years carries with him a wound that may be temporarily concealed but festers throughout his life. It is a wound that cries out for revenge -- not necessarily on the parties that inflicted the wound but on others who can serve as psychological proxies for those responsible for the early trauma. The behavior of such people is often erratic, subject to extreme mood swings, ostensibly docile and gentle, then suddenly and inexplicably violent and vengeful. He is a man who often feels surrounded by enemies because, at some point in his life, he was brutally punished by them. To such a person, the world is full of threats and therefore the defensiveness needed to combat them remains fierce, albeit suppressed. We can all put on the false smiles demanded by social intercourse, but in some cases, the mask slips.
John McCain, who was captured, imprisoned, and tortured in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, is a textbook example of this personality type. Gentle, clever, ostensibly compassionate and concerned about people and their well-being, he is often short-tempered, explosive, angry, and unpredictable. It is as if the hatred he felt for his captors and his pitiful situation is always in the forefront of his mind and capable of instantaneous recall. This is not merely the temperament of a person who occasionally gives vent to minor irritations; more like a reflex action deeply rooted in the wounds that were inflicted during those difficult years of imprisonment.
A person with such a caste of mind is always on the alert for a rekindling of the humiliation that was beaten into him as a Prisoner of War. Such a person views conflicts, be they wars, acts of terrorism, or threats to himself and his country's safety, in battle terms. This is a person who thinks in terms of victory or defeat and is always ready, at the drop of a helmet, to engage forces he believes are out to do him, or his country, harm. This is the temperament of a zealot, a fighter, a protagonist; a man for whom it is more important to engage the enemy than risk being humiliated by him either in dialogue or, by what might appear to be, a show of weakness. To avoid that "show of weakness," his conscience orders him to strike first and strike hard; to repel those who threaten his well-being and that of his country.
To cope with these belligerent impulses, it is important to take refuge in shows of rationality, empathy, and reserve. To bottle up the rage and paste on labels of temperance to conceal the blood that is often boiling. The more the aggressiveness stirs in his soul, the greater the effort to conceal it. It is not a matter of being a fraud. The need to project sincerity and compassion is a kind of anodyne that helps smother the fury that it conceals, but the motivating agent is the suppressed belligerence that acts as a cover for the aggression. In a crisis, the first thing that comes to hand is a bludgeon -- not a measured contemplation of rights and wrongs. (Is Russia getting uppity? Let's give it a whack!) The superego may be beautifully fitted out but it is the id that is in control. Weighty decisions about war or peace, punishment or forgiveness, caution or impulsiveness are thrown to the wind. The irrational demon that fears new punishment and clings to defensiveness cannot be deterred by reason because reason has been routed by irrational anger.
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http://www.swans.com/library/art14/cmarow118.html
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