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It could also be related with OCD thoughts... It could also be related with OCD thoughts...
Although it doesn't say he had OCD, I wonder about that...for the vast majority of OCD sufferers, these thoughts torment them the most...but OCD can implant violent/sick thoughts into someone's brains, unintentionally. Like I said before, if society labels something as 'sick' or 'evil', the innately insecure person with OCD will imbibe all of this and then start getting obsessive about being 'evil', since they fear being an outcast. Of course there's nothing more that can be said about OCD since there's nothing to say that Lanza did suffer from it.
You misunderstand negative OCD thoughts.
People who suffer from these thoughts are the least likely to commit the acts. All people have these types of thoughts float briefly through their minds. Most brush it off. People with OCD are horrified by a thought that others quickly dismiss. They have these thoughts because they are repulsed by them. They are so shocked to have a horrible thought in their mind that they obsess over the horror of the thought.
An example. A person with OCD who has the thought/fear of running someone over with a car is the least likely to run someone over with a car. They will drive super careful or stop driving entirely. The rest of us know there is a chance we can run someone over with a car. Accidents happen. It doesn't horrify us. We acknowledge it's unlikely and we drive our cars normally.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopes
You misunderstand negative OCD thoughts.
People who suffer from these thoughts are the least likely to commit the acts. All people have these types of thoughts float briefly through their minds. Most brush it off. People with OCD are horrified by a thought that others quickly dismiss. They have these thoughts because they are repulsed by them. They are so shocked to have a horrible thought in their mind that they obsess over the horror of the thought.
An example. A person with OCD who has the thought/fear of running someone over with a car is the least likely to run someone over with a car. They will drive super careful or stop driving entirely. The rest of us know there is a chance we can run someone over with a car. Accidents happen. It doesn't horrify us. We acknowledge it's unlikely and we drive our cars normally.
You have a point, I suffer from some OCD thoughts myself so I know exactly what you're talking about.
This is all speculation on my part, so I could be completely wrong. I think he was highly intelligent and aware. And he felt isolated and outcast, and had no real support network or social outlets. So all this anger and frustration just kept building up til he held nothing but contempt and resentment for a world that he felt invisible to. So he decided to force the world to see him.
One thing that really worries me about this whole episode is the demonization of the mentally ill. As a whole, they are already marginalized, and there's a huge stigma attached to being mentally ill. I worry this will make things worse for them. As someone who has very close relatives with mental illness, and knowing they are fully functional and productive and loving, I fear that the public may stereotype and lump all mentally ill as psychopathic. I really hope we as society approach this in a productive way, and not one out of knee-jerk reactions or fear of mental illness.
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^ Very good point. The more people believe they are psychopaths, the more likely they will actually listen to those 'voices in their head' (not literal voices).
And on a slightly different note, WHY so many kids with autism-asperger's..? And again, why overwhelmingly male..? What is going on here, in our society..?
Something is affecting our brains- (of males mostly)- and clearly, we have no clue what it is...
There are so many kids with "autism-aspergers" now because of over diagnosis and non-professional diagnosis. A parent reads an article about autism and decides their kid has some of the symptoms and from then on their child is autistic. I know parents like this and the kids they are calling autistic seem perfectly normal to me. I have a feeling the number of kids with true autism-aspergers is much lower. JMO.
I believe that the stigma, the cost of healthcare and the intolerance of any form of weakness here (particularly in relation to males) is just as much a part of the problem as the guns themselves. That's why to reduce the risk of future mass shootings, both issues need to be addressed, though I don't see enough "change" happening due to the powerful gun and pro-"for profit" healthcare lobbies here.
I know it's all speculation, so don't take what I say too seriously. This is based on the very very little information I know, but here's my brief take on it:
Some of you have heard of the 'Lucifer Effect' by Phillip Zimbardo. He was involved in psychological experiments in the 60s and 70s that had some disturbing results: most of us had the capability to be 'evil', in the sense of causing malice because of blindly following orders. It only really relates to Lanza as much as I want to say that I believe 'evil' exists as a potential in all of us, and perhaps we shouldn't think of it as just another crazy kid doing something crazy, too crazy for us to understand. Perhaps he was a young man driven to do what he did by extreme circumstances.
I also wanted to raise this idea of 'evil' and how it in itself becomes seductive. Think about video games that compete to be as gory as possible, or young lads going out hunting and behaving in a sadistic manner. The gladiatorial contests of Roman times or bear-fighting in Medieval times and Bullfighting or even UFC today show that bloodlust is an inherent part of our brutal animal makeup. Lanza might've been SEDUCED by the idea of serial killers, by the notoriety of previous killers. I wonder if he was indeed obsessed with violence to a point where he became detached from reality. Being quiet and seeming like a nice, bright kid counts for squat: nobody probably knew what really want on in his brain, and they only see the face he presented to the world. He was clearly a very secretive person and all that idle time alone provided an ample breeding ground for dark, morbid and macabre thoughts to fester.
So he probably had Asperger's syndrome. I was diagnosed with the same condition at age 14, although I've had mixed opinions since then and I think I'm very borderline. I also know many people with Asperger's syndromes, some of whom are my closest friends. They are some of the most humane, gentle, caring people I know and would literally not hurt a fly. HOWEVER, I'm not saying someone with AS COULD NOT have done what Lanza did: sure, people with AS exhibit the gamut of human personality traits, both good and bad. From what I've read Lanza had violent fits of rage - anger problems can be a problem with some people with AS, because of pent-up frustrations over 'strange' things (like being forced to do something they're not used to doing) but I'm not aware of it in itself causing someone to commit such a violent crime. Anyway, no, Asperger's alone doesn't cause people to be mass murderers, I think there were other psychological and environmental factors at play.
Some news articles have portrayed his mother Nancy as a bit crazy too, because she owned the weapons she did, took her sons shooting and apparently 'exposed them to violent video games/movies.' Firstly, most males aged about 13 and above are exposed to violence: from video games, to movies, to the daily news. We know so little about Nancy, that I'm not even going to speculate. One possibility I did think of, however, was that Adam was somehow jealous of the students and resented Nancy for some reason...maybe he was incapable of DISPLAYING affection, but could've been experiencing some pretty extreme emotions related to his mother, some deep-seated pain and hostility. Not excusable of course, but that could be the key. This was mostly because of the fact he killed his own mother too.
There's also the POSSIBILITY of abuse, perhaps psychological, but there's no hard evidence for that. It would be another possible motive for the killing, perhaps again with the jealousy thing, or simply a deep-seated hatred for his mother and all that she represented. There's also the POSSIBILITY of abuse, perhaps psychological, but there's no hard evidence for that. Nancy Lanza was reported as being ‘loving’, although even if she was we don’t know the frustrations she might’ve experienced and if she took them out on her son… It would be another possible motive for the killing, perhaps again with the jealousy thing, or simply a deep-seated hatred for his mother and all that she represented. It could also be related with OCD thoughts... It could also be related with OCD thoughts...
Although it doesn't say he had OCD, I wonder about that...for the vast majority of OCD sufferers, these thoughts torment them the most...but OCD can implant violent/sick thoughts into someone's brains, unintentionally. Like I said before, if society labels something as 'sick' or 'evil', the innately insecure person with OCD will imbibe all of this and then start getting obsessive about being 'evil', since they fear being an outcast. Of course there's nothing more that can be said about OCD since there's nothing to say that Lanza did suffer from it.
Some might think of him as just an emotionless psychopath, but i think it's sort of misleading when they say things like that. For one, I believe it's impossible to truly have no or even little emotion and commit what he did. The acts sound like something that was done out of malice, hostility and hatred. For instance, the amount of rounds he fired into some of the students. I think for whatever reason, hard for us to comprehend, he HATED those he killed. Maybe it wasn't directed specifically at them, maybe he was just misanthropic and he felt the world cared nothing for him, so he was going to do the most heinous thing possible in the most sensational manner towards 'society', and those it valued most, it's children. Maybe he lacked emotional maturity, but I think he experienced TOO MUCH emotion and simply could not contain it anymore, like somebody in a blind rage. I can't fathom why someone would do it unless he got some emotional high from it - perhaps it wasn't rage per se, but in a sick way he got some other kind of pleasure from killing, sexual or otherwise.
Perhaps a combination of emotional immaturity/social stuntedness, a fascination with violence and aiming to be as 'notorious' and evil as possible, with a lack of control or an explosion of emotion led to the tragic events of last week. We'll never know the full story, but I think it is important to at least try to figure out the possibilities, in order to better understand mass murderers and their general motives, even if we don't know the specific motives for specific crimes.
Do you have any thoughts/theories/ideas? Is there anything you agree/disagree with about my analysis/speculation? It's just speculation, so it may be way off base, but I just wanted to sort of brainstorm possible ideas out there to start a discussion from a psychological POV.
Why can't people just accept the fact the kid was off his rocker and has been for a very long time?
What "explanation" are you looking for? His asperger's had nothing to do with it. He was just a deranged nutcase and everyone knew about it. The mother pulled him out of school, because she didn't like the "direction" the school wanted to take with him. Whatever that means.
Does anyone else find it strange that NO ONE has a decent and clear pic of this woman? They keep showing the same one over and over. I still can't figure out what she looks like, because it's so hazy.
His father gave the ex $200,000 a month to take care of him. His father KNOWS his son was a major danger to the world and so does his brother. Everybody is playing "stupid" like they don't know why or "OMG! How could this happen?"
They said the same thing about the Batman shooter. He came from a "good" family, so he must have "mental issues". No way an "all american" young man from a "fine" home could do such a thing. Why the hell NOT?
Is this behavior only relegated to people of lower economic and educational circumstances?
You never read about poor kids shooting up their classmates and teachers and by right, they SHOULD be the ones miserable enough to do it, but they're not. It's the kids from the "nice homes" that are mass killing everyone.
Let's also not forget the asian guy that shot up his university either. Another loner crazy that's been getting all types of sympathy too.
And the crazy Arizona fool whose had mental issues for the longest time too.
What I'd like to know is what is going on within the "fine upstanding" families of America who are breeding these psycho monsters?
Why can't people just accept the fact the kid was off his rocker and has been for a very long time?
What "explanation" are you looking for? His asperger's had nothing to do with it. He was just a deranged nutcase and everyone knew about it. The mother pulled him out of school, because she didn't like the "direction" the school wanted to take with him. Whatever that means.
Does anyone else find it strange that NO ONE has a decent and clear pic of this woman? They keep showing the same one over and over. I still can't figure out what she looks like, because it's so hazy.
His father gave the ex $200,000 a month to take care of him. His father KNOWS his son was a major danger to the world and so does his brother. Everybody is playing "stupid" like they don't know why or "OMG! How could this happen?"
They said the same thing about the Batman shooter. He came from a "good" family, so he must have "mental issues". No way an "all american" young man from a "fine" home could do such a thing. Why the hell NOT?
Is this behavior only relegated to people of lower economic and educational circumstances?
You never read about poor kids shooting up their classmates and teachers and by right, they SHOULD be the ones miserable enough to do it, but they're not. It's the kids from the "nice homes" that are mass killing everyone.
Let's also not forget the asian guy that shot up his university either. Another loner crazy that's been getting all types of sympathy too.
And the crazy Arizona fool whose had mental issues for the longest time too.
What I'd like to know is what is going on within the "fine upstanding" families of America who are breeding these psycho monsters?
Can anyone tell me?
Good questions, Marilyn220.
Society has much to answer for.
Violent video games are designed by and marketed to white middle to upper class males. Rape and gun and stabbings are popular themes. WHY?
At the time 9-11 hit, our young people signed up to go fight the bad guys. I watched some of the military training videos. The young men said that they got plenty of training for hand to eye coordination and plotting coordinate bomb drops from playing video games. "It's the same skill, but only now, we are plotting to send real bombs..."
Our society is out of control.
Many times it takes a balance of medical teams to evaluate a person's medical/ mental health. Neurology plays a big part in what goes on, so does diet, excercise, as well as mental health. A balanced approach to all-over health is important. That seems to be missing in the Lanza family.
Why can't people just accept the fact the kid was off his rocker and has been for a very long time?
This is the psychology forum. People who are into psychology like to dig deeper than that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marilyn220
His father gave the ex $200,000 a month to take care of him.
That was her alimony, not child support.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marilyn220
They said the same thing about the Batman shooter. He came from a "good" family, so he must have "mental issues". No way an "all american" young man from a "fine" home could do such a thing. Why the hell NOT?
You're contradicting yourself here. First you say "the kid must be off his rocker" and then you are sarcastic about people saying someone has mental issues.
Violent video games are designed by and marketed to white middle to upper class males. Rape and gun and stabbings are popular themes. WHY?
At the time 9-11 hit, our young people signed up to go fight the bad guys. I watched some of the military training videos. The young men said that they got plenty of training for hand to eye coordination and plotting coordinate bomb drops from playing video games. "It's the same skill, but only now, we are plotting to send real bombs..."
Video games are not responsible. Billions of people play video games without killing people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by taulery
Our society is out of control.
No, it's not. This is nothing new. School shootings have been happening since the 1700s. Every decade in the 1900s has had multiple school shootings. That's over 100 years of school shootings. It hasn't gotten worse.
Many times it takes a balance of medical teams to evaluate a person's medical/ mental health. Neurology plays a big part in what goes on, so does diet, excercise, as well as mental health. A balanced approach to all-over health is important. That seems to be missing in the Lanza family.
What seems to be missing? We know that Mrs. Lanza picked up take out dinner salads three times a week. That's a healthier diet than most Americans. You know nothing about their exercise habits. You know nothing about their medical and mental health histories. And you won't because of HIPPA.
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