For Freudian psychoanalysts, "it seems like a textbook illustration of the death drive—are we not all, on some level, self-sabotaging scorpions?" The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, by contrast, saw the scorpion not as a character structure but as a fictional character made a victim of circumstance: "his desire becomes fatal destiny owing to an unfortunate combination of contingent factors." To a social psychologist, the fable may present a dispositionist view of human nature because it seems to reject the idea that people behave rationally according to circumstances. The French sociologist Jean-Claude Passeron saw the scorpion as a metaphor for Machiavellian politicians who delude themselves by their unconscious tendency to rationalize their ill-conceived plans, and thereby lead themselves and their followers to ruin.