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LadyEllen -> RE: Amish School Shooting (10/5/2006 5:08:17 PM)
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Hi jess
I still wont excuse what he did, for there is no excuse, but thank you for that. Without it seeming like one has to have had a psych education or been through the hell that others can perpetrate on a person, it seems there are two main camps on this thread, only one of which attempts to provide an insight into the whys.
To the "hang 'em high" people, the situation seems clear; the guy was evil. Its only those who have studied how the mind works when its not functioning normally, whether at first hand or through education and experience, who seem to see the lessons in these kinds of incidents. As well as the college level general psychology I studied, and a perhaps unhealthy interest in sexual psychology and psychopathology, I had an episode of clinical depression myself a few years back, including a suicide attempt.
The key factor in bringing me, a happy, healthy, confident, educated professional person to those depths was not some lack of personal strength or some character fault, but the absolute shit (no other word) I was put through at my last job, due to changes in management which sent me from being in charge to being a secretary to less qualified, less experienced and less successful men, and their intense dislike for me as a female who they knew could and did outdo them previously. I was treated as an enemy for twelve months, by the end of which I cracked. Its not possible to put up with that sort of stress forever, and looking back I think I did quite well to last as long as I did. Their hatred continues today - I left the company and started up in competition and am more successful - they have tried no less than three times to sabotage my business so far, the last time nearly destroying it. But nowadays I am not surrounded by them for fortyfive hours a week, so it doesnt get to me, in fact I find it quite gratifying that they are so scared of me!
The point being, exactly what you said. Those who have not experienced problems, find it difficult to understand the viewpoint of those who have, and this is odd when the majority of people have experienced or will experience problems, that there seems to be so little will to understand. Everyone has experienced something in their lives which made them resentful, angry and hateful towards another or a group of others. Some of those people will experience problems and resolve them and move on as I did. A minority will never resolve them and go on to release their anger in damaging ways, such as this guy did.
Ultimately, unless we are all prepared to take an interest in one another's welfare - avoiding hurt, which can range from physical harm through to humiliations - and helping one another when we see someone who is hurting, even a stranger, then we can only expect that some people will have problems, and of those people, some will not be able to resolve them and then go on to unleash cataclysmic anger. If we are not prepared to drop the ridiculous attitudes we have to mental illness, then those who are having problems will do all they can to struggle on alone, when they need help, for fear of the social stigma. If someone has the flu, they tell people and they get treatment without a second thought. If someone's arm gets broken, they see a doctor and get it fixed, without a second thought. If someone's mind is ill or their thinking processes are broken, they are reluctant to tell anyone or get treatment, because it is seen as a moral character flaw. We can see if someone has flu or has a broken arm - but its not so easy to see an ill or broken mind, especially when its being concealed with the fervour of fear of ostracisation.
One could argue that in this case, the guy was a paedophile from birth - although that ignores the comparative ages of him and his victims at the time (they were all children really), and also ignores that we have no idea whether he like many paedos had been abused himself, and was repeating behaviour he had learned. The interesting thing in this case though, is that this guy knew he was a paedo, and he knew it was wrong and he struggled to deal with that - but could not have sought help in our society, where even paediatricians receive death threats. Seeking help would have been more or less his death at the hands of others, or total social death in life.
As I see it, the guy hated that girls made him feel this way, having resolved it pathologically within himself that he was good and it was the girls who were temptresses, and hated God for allowing him to be as he was and to be in such turmoil, and for placing girls in his path to tempt him. The Amish were thus not only an easy target, but probably also represented to him people of the God towards whom he felt such anger. Thus if he exacted revenge against the girls of the people of God, then he was taking his revenge not only on the "worst" of the "temptresses" (those who appeared most pure and chaste) but also on the God by whom he felt accursed.
None of this is to excuse the crime. The Amish have apparently forgiven him, though I do not understand how as that is beyond me. But I do think its important to try to understand the nature of how some people get into real problems, which if left unresolved can explode. Not because its interesting, but because its important that we know as much as possible, so that we can try to do all we can to avoid those explosions. To my belief, even this guy was not evil, however evil his crime was; he was a seriously mentally ill person who was frightened to come forward for help because of the stigma our society attaches to mental illness of all kinds, and especially to the mental illness of paedophilia.
I have two children and I fully understand and even embrace the same feelings of fear and hatred for what paedos do - if anyone touched my children, I'd kill them pure and simple, but if we could produce a situation where we could identify these people and produce an environment where they feel able to seek treatment rather than hide themselves, then I would hope we could reduce the incidence of their crimes in a somewhat better way than we do now, where we wait until they have run up scores of victims before anything is done.
As for treatment, it seems there is little which is reliably effective in terms of psychological counselling and nothing as far as I am aware in terms of psychiatric medicine. However they are now trialling chemical castration in France to deal with this problem, and so far this seems to be working well. If we could offer self presented paedos who have not yet offended, the confidential opportunity to remain with their families, in their communities, without being attacked or killed, in return for participation in a controlled chemical castration treatment which would prevent them having and thence acting on their urges, surely this would be a better option, based on understanding that they are mentally ill, rather than criminally evil, than having them in and out of gaol every few years with more and more victims on each occasion?
E
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