Posted by Egghatcher(Taran)
Just yesterday i made a statement that south asians are better cultured . and now this south korean comes forth with force majeure and shows what can happen when a normal mind is forced to snapping level ...something that is more prevalent in the occident environment ..Just my steadfast POV..
What Made Him Do It?
As details trickle in about the identity of suspected shooter Cho Seung-Hui, a closer look at what psychologists tell us about the mind of the mass murderer.
April 17, 2007 - Who was the gunman at Virginia Tech? On Tuesday morning, officials named him as Cho Seung Hui, a student who lived on campus, but they were still trying to understand what had triggered his rampage. It is a struggle researchers across the nation can identify with all too well. For decades, forensic psychologists have tried to create a profile of a typical mass murderer, with similar hopes of fathoming what could drive a seemingly normal person to such a horrible act. But they, too, have managed to sketch only a faint outline. Theres no one profile of a mass murderer, says Jana Martin, a licensed psychologist in Long Beach, California. Some kill for revenge, others kill for fame; some give off obvious warning signs while others strike unexpectedly; some go after people they know, and others simply look for the nearest target. Until details about Cho's life and death begin to filter out, there will be only one trait that ties him to all the others, says Louis Schlesinger, a professor of forensic psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is someone who is filled with such hatred that he doesnt want to kill one specific person. He just wants to kill."
Researchers seeking to understand multiple murders have little evidence to work with, says Schlesinger. Mass killings are extremely rare, and most gunmen are shot down by police before they can be apprehended, or else they commit suicide, as Cho apparently did. That fact has prevented psychologists from coming to a full understanding of the murderers motives; with no killers to question, they must piece together clues from those who knew the perpetrators. After these episodes, everyone becomes a psychologist, looking back for warning signs, says Jack Levin, a forensic psychologist at Northeastern University who gave a lecture on serial murder at Virginia Tech last year. But the observations of friends and family members are often unreliable, he adds, informed more by 20/20 hindsight than anything else.
Still, psychologists can say a few things with certainly about who is more likely to commit the most serious of crimes. Over 90 percent of killers are male, and the same holds for mass murderersI cant think of a single case where a woman has done this, says Schlesingerpartly because men tend to have more access to guns, which are usually the weapons of choice. The killers are usually somewhere between the ages of 25 and 35. They generally do not have previous histories of breaking the law in any serious way, says Levin. And they are not, on the whole, psychopaths, although they are often identified in the media as such. A psychopath is someone with little conscience, little interpersonal bonding, someone whos smooth and manipulative," says Schlesinger. "That personality has nothing, zero, to do with mass murder."
Indeed, the personality type most often associated with mass murder is in some ways the opposite of a psychopath. He is far from cool-headed; instead, he is aggrieved, hurt, and above all paranoid. Some mass murderers may be trying to exercise power over a world that they feel has left them powerless. "These people often feel some great injustice has been done to them. They're angry and they want to take it out on the world," says Schlesinger. "Then they develop the idea that committing murder will be the solution to whatever their problem is, and they fixate on it. Eventually they come to feel that there's no other solution."
The problems that the murderers, however horribly, are trying to "solve" can be almost anythingthe loss of a job, a financial setback, or a bad breakup (several of Cho's classmates have told reporters that he was looking for his girlfriend). But these relatively minor setbacks are merely the events that push the killers over the edge; they don't put them near the edge in the first place. They are usually the last in a long string of perceived insults and hardships. "You don't just get a D on your report card and then open fire on 30 people," says Levin. "It takes a prolonged series of frustrations. These people are chronically depressed and miserable."
Because their lists of grievances are so long, mass murderers do not always limit their killings to those they think have directly and recently wronged them. They may simply hope to do the most damage possible. With this type of mass murder there's not always even a relationship [between the killer and the victims], says Schlesinger. Schools and restaurants are places where these types of mass murders occur, but that could be for the simple reason that there are lots of people there. In Mondays case, however, several psychologists said they were not surprised that Cho turned out to be a Virginia Tech student. Almost always [in school shootings], the perpetrator is a student who seeks revenge, says Levin. In the most deadly college shooting in America before this weeksa 1966 attack at the University of Texas that killed 16 and wounded 31the perpetrator, Charles Whitman, had been a student and research assistant at UT. Some mass murderers, Levin says, want to conduct "executions" of their classmates, as Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris did at Columbine High School. As for Cho and whatever had upset him, Levin says, "It was murder by proxy. I think he was trying to kill the college."
Potential killers, especially the young, are highly suggestible. In their volatile minds, the "copycat factor" often takes on added importance. The Columbine shootings have inspired several similar plans. And Levin says Cho, who was of Korean descent, may have been influenced by a mass shooting in at Dawson College in Montreal last September. That shooter was also a male, Asian student in his 20s. "The inspiration, if there is one, usually comes from someone who shares important characteristics with the killer," says Levin. "I'd venture a guess that that's what happened here."
If Cho had been planning his murderous spree since Septembers shooting in Montreal, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary. Some mass murderers spend a year or more hatching their plans. In that time, they may leave clues as to their intentions. But these clues are not always easy to see. Many of the warning signsa near-daily loss of temper, vandalism, increased alcohol and drug use, overreacting to slight setbacksare characteristic of depression in general. "These are warning signs that a person is in trouble, not that he's going to kill 30 people," says Levin. "There are hundreds of thousands of people who have led lives of frustration, who blame others for their problems, and who are socially isolated, but guess what? They never kill anyone." Peter Sheras, a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia, says one key to recognizing serious warning signs is learning which ones seem likely to play out in real life. "People need to distinguish between transient threatsthings that pass in a moment of anger that get cleared upversus serious threats where there's a likelihood that it's going to be carried out," he says. "You can't completely know, but if the person is depressed or despondent or suicidal, we should take that more seriously."
Unfortunately, though, by then it may be too late. Once a person has decided to commit mass murder, he's extremely unlikely to admit to being depressed or to seek psychological help, and he may also cut off many relationships with friends who might encourage him to do so. In other words, the people who need counseling the most are those who will try hardest to avoid it. "By the time they've reached a point where they have a plan to kill somebody, their life is not of value to them anymore," Martin says. "Their goal is to hurt someone or become famous in some way, and they don't, at that point, want to stop themselves from accomplishing that."
Indeed, for mass murderers, there is usually only one way to end their plans, and thus to stop whatever pain they feel. Most of them ultimately commit suicide, says Levin, or otherwise they "commit suicide by cop"-hoping that sharpshooters will stop them with a well-aimed bullet. In death, at least, they feel they can put down the pain and anger they carry. "They may think, 'I may never amount to much, but I'm going to die amounting to something. This is my final mark on the world, my final statement,'" says Martin. "It's a fantasy that they will have the ultimate last word, even if they don't live to see it." At Virginia Tech, though, there are many words of sorrow left to be said.
Edited by ani11 - 17 years ago
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