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jinglejangle
Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Location: Far far far away.
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 Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 8:25 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Yeah, but Boy Scout troup leader, in the leadership of his church for over three decades, and president of his church council by election?
That's a lot of people for a sociopath to fool, and for an awful long time, isn't it? |
Someone may correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe a great many serial killers have been quite highly thought of by their acquaintances/communities.
Granted, this guy seems to be a new extreme.
Ya-Ta
I would say that what you are saying is true enough in one sense. Most people have obsessions and compulsions, but unless they have a negative /disfunctional impact on your life or the life of those around you they are not considered a disorder.
For example I check my alarm clock about four times before I am comfortable enough to sleep on a weeknight, and I check the locks as well. In my case, this compulsion, while completely unnecessary actually has a beneficial effect, and is only at all disruptive if I'm sleeping with someone else, in which case I just make sure I don't have to reach over them to check my four different alarms.
But what I am saying, perhaps groundlessly, is that the simple fact that there is nothing apparently abnormal about this guy is going to need to be explained away.
You're right, normal people don't torture mutilate and kill without some reason, but to call him a psychopath/sociopath is to define the symptom and not the cause.
To say that only one in a million people acts like him will not change the fact that other otherwise normal people might turn out like him.
And to say that only an insane person can act this way is fallacious I feel. Soldiers in combat zones start doing messed up stuff all the time, almost regardless of nationality. Of course you could still argue that they are insane as a result of their enviornment, but you could also make the arguement that cases like this guy are on the rise, and that the US environment is at a state which is tending to bring out a lot more of this sort of thing.
I might be wrong of course, but that is as far as my reasoning goes tonight. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 3:43 pm Post subject: |
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But what I am saying, perhaps groundlessly, is that the simple fact that there is nothing apparently abnormal about this guy is going to need to be explained away.
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It's creepy when someone talks like this guy did. I've seen a few other clips of other people. I think in psych that lack of emotion is called 'flattened affect'. I don't know why some people have it. Some shrinks say it's because they don't have consciences, but that doesn't explain why they don't have consciences.
BTW, have you checked with a shrink about that 4 alarm clock action you have going on? Precursor, boy. Precursor.  |
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desultude
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: Dangling my toes in the Persian Gulf
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| Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 4:27 pm Post subject: |
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My understanding is that there was a sexual dymanic to what he was doing. He described feeling empathy for one victim who was really scared, so he soothed her and gave her some water. Then he strangled her to death. That's really interesting- he seems to feel some empathy, but not remorse. He was not lacking in human feeling- these feelings seem to be seriously confused and twisted.
I hope he is the subject of a lot of study. He seems to be fairly clear and articulate- he could reveal a lot.
One point about human desire: We can all agree that we should not allow sexual desire to drive us to murder people or to violate people's integrity- physical or otherwise. But we all allow our desires to harm others daily. We will buy things from dubious companies, use way more than our fair share of resources, promote ourselves over the interests of others, etc. The person who dies in a bad factory in China is equally dead as the persons killed by this guy. Please, I am not making a moral equivalent here, simple pointing out that the costs and the victims of our desires are numerous and mundane, but usually far enough away as to be abstractions.
It strikes me that this guy was able to put enough psychic space between himself and the victims, objective them, rationalize his actions, that he lost his fellow feeling for them. He reduced them to abstractions. I can imagine that he had real fellowship with those at his church and in the Boy Scouts.
I have meant for a long time to read that Foucault book- now it is on my list. |
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jinglejangle
Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Location: Far far far away.
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| Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:07 pm Post subject: |
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| desultude wrote: |
It strikes me that this guy was able to put enough psychic space between himself and the victims, objective them, rationalize his actions, that he lost his fellow feeling for them. He reduced them to abstractions. I can imagine that he had real fellowship with those at his church and in the Boy Scouts.
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Now that is a very interesting thought Desi. This might relate to that a bit.
Ya-ta,
I've undergone that flattening to a degree back in my troubled youth when I got caught out and wound up being interrogated by authourities, a bit more often than I like to admit.
Now, it wasn't a lack of conscience. It was sort of like tuning myself off. I no longer see anyway out of the situation, and it isn't pleasant at all, so I might as well withdraw and cooperate. It let me relax, and it left my mind free to process things logically, ie. lie or shade the truth where necessary and/or keep both eyes open for an opening to escape.
Much stronger than that however was the greatly related emotional state for commiting nefarious deeds. As someone with a strong moral upbringing, I would always have to rationalize what I was doing. --It's OK to rob her because she screwed me over in the past. -- It's ok to take that because WorldMart is a giant evil corperation.-- that kind of thing.
But to actually overcome the fear of being caught, the guilt of what I was doing, et al. I had to turn my mind off. Or rather I had to turn my self off and let my mind function as a machine. When you do that you can do anything. It may not be reflective of a perfectly sound mind, but I've heard o similar stuff often enough to think it's somewhat normal.
Police for example have a common problem once shooting starts; they shut down their conscious mind and react based on the training they have recieved. For a soldier this is ideal, but with police it can result in excessive violence. The animal or machine mind is falling back on it's training to perforate a target quickly and accurately. The self which might regulate action based on moral compunction or "policy" tends to recede into the background.
Often officers recall firing only a few shots at someone but find that there magazine is empty or nearly so.
Dunno, perhaps it's related to what you say Desi. Perhaps not. |
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desultude
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: Dangling my toes in the Persian Gulf
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| Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2005 3:37 am Post subject: |
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| jinglejangle wrote: |
| desultude wrote: |
It strikes me that this guy was able to put enough psychic space between himself and the victims, objective them, rationalize his actions, that he lost his fellow feeling for them. He reduced them to abstractions. I can imagine that he had real fellowship with those at his church and in the Boy Scouts.
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Now that is a very interesting thought Desi. This might relate to that a bit.
Ya-ta,
I've undergone that flattening to a degree back in my troubled youth when I got caught out and wound up being interrogated by authourities, a bit more often than I like to admit.
Now, it wasn't a lack of conscience. It was sort of like tuning myself off. I no longer see anyway out of the situation, and it isn't pleasant at all, so I might as well withdraw and cooperate. It let me relax, and it left my mind free to process things logically, ie. lie or shade the truth where necessary and/or keep both eyes open for an opening to escape.
Much stronger than that however was the greatly related emotional state for commiting nefarious deeds. As someone with a strong moral upbringing, I would always have to rationalize what I was doing. --It's OK to rob her because she screwed me over in the past. -- It's ok to take that because WorldMart is a giant evil corperation.-- that kind of thing.
But to actually overcome the fear of being caught, the guilt of what I was doing, et al. I had to turn my mind off. Or rather I had to turn my self off and let my mind function as a machine. When you do that you can do anything. It may not be reflective of a perfectly sound mind, but I've heard o similar stuff often enough to think it's somewhat normal.
Police for example have a common problem once shooting starts; they shut down their conscious mind and react based on the training they have recieved. For a soldier this is ideal, but with police it can result in excessive violence. The animal or machine mind is falling back on it's training to perforate a target quickly and accurately. The self which might regulate action based on moral compunction or "policy" tends to recede into the background.
Often officers recall firing only a few shots at someone but find that there magazine is empty or nearly so.
Dunno, perhaps it's related to what you say Desi. Perhaps not. |
Pretty much. It's not so much an on off switch, but a matter of degrees. If we were ever present to the pain and turmoil around us, we would need to be a monk to not go crazy. We all compartmentalize and shut down to varying degrees.
I can imagine a case where someone experienced something so incredibly traumatic as a child that they shut down their empathy and fellow feeling entirely.
With soldiers it is difficult but necessary to teach them to objectify the enemy (gook, slant eye, towel head, communist, terrorist) in order for them to kill and not fall apart. This takes pretty constant reinforcement. When it is really effective you get Abu Graib (sp?), when it fails you get totally screwed up vets. I'm of the generation of Viet Nam vets, and a lot of them never got over what they did.
It will be interesting to know this guy's story. I would guess some serious abuse in the past, but maybe it is something else. It could even be organic. |
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