Althouse: "It gives us comfort to be able to say, 'He had Asperger’s, that’s why he did it...'"

May 28, 2014

"It gives us comfort to be able to say, 'He had Asperger’s, that’s why he did it...'"

"... 'I don’t have Asperger’s, therefore I am unlikely to be in this situation.'"

28 comments:

Anonymous said...: “After the Columbine shootings the Secret Service came up with a standard protocol for assessing individuals when there is a threat of mass violence. Why aren’t more law enforcement officials using that protocol?” said Dr. Forrest. “If the police knew of the YouTube videos when they visited the gunman’s home in April and were called in by mental health professionals, why wasn’t that sort of protocol followed to assess this threat?”

Also, even if the police had arrested Rodger after visiting his home, it is not clear what could have been done with him, Dr. Forrest said, highlighting how inadequately equipped the system is for such situations.

“An adult cannot be compelled into treatment,” Dr. Forrest said.

Why isn't Dr Forrest's attention attention focused on the kid's Therapists? He had been under the care of a shrink for years.

Lot's of hand wringing pyscho babble with no recommendations for a different outcome other than to either lock people up or ban all guns, knives and cars...; 5/28/14, 9:48 AM
MayBee said...: Well, I think most people don't need to comfort themselves that they won't go on a mass killing spree. They know they won't.

I do think we need to explore autism spectrum cases and what happens when they are paired up with other personality disorders.; 5/28/14, 9:51 AM
MayBee said...: Does Aspergers mask other personality disorders? Does it make something like narcissism even more dangerous?

Those are questions worth asking.; 5/28/14, 9:54 AM
MayBee said...: Other issues:

This kid with a narcissistic personality had literally nothing to do with his time but sit around and stew about perceived injustices. He had no job, no classes, no parents coming to check on him.

Sure, the mother called in a wellness check, but they didn't drive up to see him after the police said he was ok. I'm sure they were tired of dealing with him, but he had nothing to distract him from his murderous, jealous thoughts. When he broke his leg last Christmastime, he was put in a Woodland Hills hotel room with only an occasional life coach visit to keep him busy.

Maybe there is a mental health or care issue to learn there.; 5/28/14, 10:27 AM
Michael K said...: This behavior pattern is far more consistent with paranoid schizophrenia although one writer described him as a psychopath, also a good possibility. Asberger's individuals tend to be focused on complex tasks, like math or computer programming, not mass murder.; 5/28/14, 10:57 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: Who among us can honestly say they're not a single diagnosis away from offing a bunch of innocent bystanders?; 5/28/14, 10:59 AM
cubanbob said...: Eric the Fruit Bat said...
Who among us can honestly say they're not a single diagnosis away from offing a bunch of innocent bystanders?

5/28/14, 10:59 AM"

I don't know about the innocent bystanders but driving I95 in South Florida is enough provocation to have murderous thoughts. Makes wish I had a James Bond type car with rockets to blast the tailgating jerks, the beemers who always cut you off and a host of other miscreants the world would be better off without.; 5/28/14, 11:20 AM
richard mcenroe said...: "Blogger Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Who among us can honestly say they're not a single diagnosis away from offing a bunch of innocent bystanders?"

Um... *raises hand* When did this neurasthenic nonsense about everyone being ready to snap become so firmly esconced?; 5/28/14, 11:46 AM
Oclarki said...: Why didn't this get just call up an escort service? He could have ordered up anything he desired.; 5/28/14, 12:16 PM
Oclarki said...: Why didn't the kid just order up an escort if he felt so entitled to sex but couldn't find a willing partner?; 5/28/14, 12:17 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: Does Aspergers mask other personality disorders? Does it make something like narcissism even more dangerous?

I don't know if it makes narcissism more dangerous, but maybe more likely.

The problem here with ASDs, as I understand it, is that those with such tend to not be able to, or often can not, emphasize with other people. Which may mean that they see themselves as the center of their own little universe. Or, something like that. But, maybe the reason that more of those w/ASDs don't turn violent like (maybe) these two did, is that I think that they often realize that they don't know a lot of what is going on around them, esp. when it comes to human reactions.

If Asperger's is truly just part of the ASD, then possibly the reason that some with it turn into sociopaths is that they are closer to "normal", and can, with varying success, pass as such in normal society. Esp. when they are borderline. What you sometimes have instead of the obvious autistic, is someone who is extremely high functioning in their chosen field (which may be part of the explanation for James Eagan Holmes, the Aurora theater shooter). Imagine someone whose governor on their brain has been removed (from Baron-Cohen). They think much faster than the rest of us (and the one I know also has an eidetic memory). It is almost as if there were a fine line, where if you are on one side of it, you can excel at any mental activity, but are societally somewhat, or greatly incompetent, and on the other side of the line, you can understand other people enough to (almost) fit in, but will never reach those levels of performance. In engineering, I often seem to find some of the top performers barely fitting in socially. But, if they are successful, their idiosyncrasies are tolerated.

Maybe I have rambled off into the weeds. But, one thing that that Aspie I know has taught me, is that their lives are often not that easy. This one has had more near-death experiences than most, and a lot of that is a direct result of lacking fundamental empathy, and therefore the natural ability to know whom to trust and when to trust them.; 5/28/14, 12:20 PM
Big Mike said...: Does Aspergers mask other personality disorders?

No. Aspergers is a syndrome where the sufferer has trouble looking at things from other people's perspectives. A fairly standard test for Aspergers is to show a sequence of pictures where person A puts an item in a drawer, then leaves. Person B enters the room, opens that drawer, moves the item to a different drawer and leaves. Person A reenters the room. The question for the patient is where Person A should look for the item. We would say that Person A should look in the original drawer because that's where she put it. But an Aspergers would say that she will look in the drawer where Person B placed it -- the Aspergers patient knows it's there so everybody must know it's there. Related to the above, a person with Aspergers has trouble reading body language and may not grasp precisely why "hey, lady, let's f**k is not a good pickup line."

So Aspergers is not an excuse for this kid's behavior. If it was, then we'd lock up Bill Gates (probably) and nearly every licensed psychiatrist in the US (certainly), not to mention half the engineers in Silicon Valley.; 5/28/14, 1:02 PM
Jaq said...: I'm just curious, in his note did he complain about lack of reparations from pretty girls?; 5/28/14, 1:34 PM
grackle said...: “An adult cannot be compelled into treatment,” Dr. Forrest said. “There really isn't any place for people to go who don’t necessarily need hospitalization but do need ongoing supervision. What would they have done with Rodger?”

Presently, there is no legal mechanism that could have institutionalized the killer.

Advocacy movements in support of mental health have emerged. These movements focus on reducing stigma and discrimination and increasing support groups and awareness. The consumer or ex-patient movement, began as protests in the 1970s, forming groups such as Liberation of Mental Patients, Project Release, Insane Liberation Front, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

A nugget of reality embedded in a Wiki entry filled with inaccuracies.

http://tinyurl.com/n6bhf9y

A Carter-appointed commission put the government's stamp of approval on the free-the-crazies movement.

Deinstitutionalization was based on the principle that severe mental illness should be treated in the least restrictive setting. As further defined by President Jimmy Carter's Commission on Mental Health, this ideology rested on "the objective of maintaining the greatest degree of freedom, self-determination, autonomy, dignity, and integrity of body, mind, and spirit for the individual while he or she participates in treatment or receives services."

http://tinyurl.com/2f9osq

Before deinstitutionalization dangerous people could be placed out of harm's way – their harm AND our harm. Nowadays even the family cannot have them institutionalized. There're on the streets or, in the case of the well-to-do they drive sports cars and live in nice apartments.; 5/28/14, 1:55 PM
Big Mike said...: other than to either lock people up or ban all guns ...

The young man in question was wealthy. How do you propose to stop someone who's rich from acquiring a gun? You might make it illegal, but why would they care? Money finds a way.

Just consider the case of Carl Rowan; 5/28/14, 2:22 PM
DomeSite said...: Amy Bishop, Cho Seung-Hui, Adam Lanza and Elliott Rodgers all seemingly had aspergers, but let's not delve any further into that because we already know that the Real Problem(tm) is the NRA/Hollywood Bro Comedy Culture/Video Games/America's Military-industrial complex. Focusing on this one thing that all these mass killers had in common despite otherwise widely different socio-economic and geographic backgrounds is just a way to convince people that they won't one day become mass killers, which is not true because of the daily effects of the Real Problem(tm).; 5/28/14, 2:58 PM
SGT Ted said...: Not being egomaniacally insane makes it far more unlikely to be is "this situation".

The focus on single details and other minutae in order to try and fit it into an observable pattern to explain or predict such things is very human.

But, the shootings don't happen with enough frequency to really truly predict or diagnose anything, much less on simple behaviors after the fact.; 5/28/14, 3:30 PM
Anonymous said...: There have been enough of these lone male killing sprees that we should be looking for some regularities. But that means every political scribbler will be nominating their own political hobbyhorse -- gun control, suppression of violent videogames and mean people in movies, more pre-school. I mean, surely "Mean Girls" glorified thoughtless cruelty of some women and led to misogyny... no? Let's just slander any group even casually associated with young men of this kind -- Aspies, loners, video gamers, PUAs, Red Pillers, small men, white men, Asian men...

The error of guilt by association: http://jebkinnison.com/2014/05/28/madmen-red-pill-and-social-justice-wars/; 5/28/14, 4:16 PM
Darrell said...: I am now forming a different take on this whole thing--Elliot Rodger had no concept of reality given the environment he was raised in. He, in effect, created his own little crappy movie script and made himself a character in it. It was performance art, but he wasn't aware of that. Women--in fact all human beings--meant nothing to him. His family meant nothing to him--apparently he had mentioned killing all of them at one time or another in his life. That obsession with women was just something in his script, something he thought he should have because we put so much importance on sexuality at this time. Stories have appeared about when he had the opportunity to be with a prostitute he declined. Said it was too short or not the same as having someone at your beck and call. We'll probably find out that he turned down the opportunity to be with normal girls his age when they tried to befriend him, as the stories come out over time. He had to be a victim in his little script.

He needed to be taken to a remote cabin somewhere where he was forced to grow his own food, cut firewood, repair the cabin, draw and heat water, etc. Basic survival reality. With somebody who lived there and forced him to do it. Left to his own devices he would have been found starved and frozen otherwise.; 5/28/14, 4:59 PM
holdfast said...: A lot of Aspie's get very focussed on rules - it's often a much bigger part of how they learn than it is for the neurotypical (yes, that's the current term for "normal"), so they get upset when others break the rules and get VERY upset when others win by breaking the rules. Assume that his dad was often away working (i.e. on film locations) and boy was mostly raised by Mom, who is from a foreign culture where studiousness and other similar traits are more highly valued, and now boy is seeing all these other Bro-type guys scoring by "being jerks" and breaking all the "rules". And it's just not FAIR!

Combine that with one or more other latent personality disorders, and there you go.

Of course, this is all just slightly-informed conjecture.; 5/28/14, 5:15 PM
Unknown said...: Why is a person who stabbed as many (more?) people to death as he shot called a gunman? Why is he used to degrade "whiteness" when his mother is Indonesian? For the life of me I can't imagine the answers.; 5/28/14, 5:36 PM
khesanh0802 said...: I am happy to see a discussion of mental health issues because I believe that they are at the root of better than 80% of these killings.

What I don't understand is how Rodger was legally ( if he was ) able to buy handguns. If CA law is similar to that in most states, the sheriff's office is responsible for issuing a "permit to buy" a handgun. I have read that he purchased the guns prior to the "health check" or whatever it was. However, at the very least, there should have been a file in the sheriff's office indicating that Rodger had applied for a purchase permit. Someone should have checked the records. If he applied the after the health check there is no way he should have been issued a permit. Of course if he bought the guns illegally nothing could have stopped him.

The laws on the books are ample to protect against law abiding, but unqualified, citizens from obtaining a handgun. Martinez's father in his grief was striking at the wrong target.; 5/28/14, 6:07 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: This kid may have had Asperger's, but I don't think that was his problem. His problem was malignant narcissism.

As for several of these shooters being labeled Asperger's, I wonder if those labels are all accurate or if Asperger's is the new catchall diagnosis for people with social problems, like ADHD is for people academic problems.; 5/28/14, 7:12 PM
wildswan said...: If the police had searched the apartment and found all those guns and also those videos then they would have known Rodgers was dangerous. They could have done something.

We aren't all "one diagnosis" away from being like that guy because we don't all sit around obsessing, we aren't imagining shooting people, we aren't making videos about plans to shoot people, we aren't buying guns to carry out our plans to shoot people. These killers think about it all for a long time, slowly separating off from humanity.

Rule 1. If you notice you are planning to shoot a lot of people, something is wrong with you, not with them.; 5/28/14, 9:15 PM
holdfast said...: Actually, Asperger's isn't even an official diagnosis any more - it's just part of Autism Spectrum now (at the high-functioning end).; 5/28/14, 9:56 PM
Simon Danger said...: “I would have to agree with the father of one of the victims who said if we couldn’t do something after Newtown, then what is wrong with us?”

This thinking is puzzling to me. It seems to suggest an impossibly-obtainable standard for humans, and is circular in its logic, that we all must be flawed if we cannot prevent the flaws in some of us. At what universities is it taught that all of life's problems, pains and losses are merely there but for the effort of man to intervene?; 5/29/14, 7:34 AM
Brando said...: We overdiagnose people these days. Some people are weird, usually a harmless or even lovable form of weird. Others are dangerous and will do awful things. The problem is there's no surefire way to determine who will fit into the latter category.

It's depressing, but there it is. Some will slip through the cracks and do stuff like this. Not everything can be forseen and stopped.; 5/29/14, 1:52 PM
Brando said...: "This thinking is puzzling to me. It seems to suggest an impossibly-obtainable standard for humans, and is circular in its logic, that we all must be flawed if we cannot prevent the flaws in some of us. At what universities is it taught that all of life's problems, pains and losses are merely there but for the effort of man to intervene?"

It's a standard impulse--sort of like the recent Onion article that implies that we're ridiculous for acting like there's nothing that can stop these shootings even though these things are apparently rare in other advanced countries. Cute, but misleading because we're different from other countries in far more respects than just our gun ownership (as well as the fact that we're the largest advanced country by far, and other advanced countries are not as nonviolent as we'd like to think, anyway).

But we like to think tragedies are avoidable, and problems are solvable, if only we have the will. This line of thinking seems to ignore the tradeoffs necessary (think of the fable of the king who devoted all resources of his kingdom to fighting fires, only to find out that his kingdom couldn't do anything else as a result).

We also just don't like to admit that we may be powerless to stop some things. Not every mass killer can be identified ahead of time and stopped. And the thought of that I suppose is worse for many people than the idea that we could prevent these tragedies if only we do A, B or C.; 5/29/14, 2:12 PM