Consolidated blog entries perhaps pertinent to the horrible December 14 mass shooting at the Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school

In the December 15 entry of my “Jersey Mountain Bear” blog, for the convenience of whomever, is material from several blog entries of mine that appeared on the present blog this past year, a few related to the Aurora theater-shooting tragedy. Others are related to areas of psychology and to diagnoses that sometimes become relevant in mass-shooting incidents.

The December 15 “Mountain Bear” entry consolidates a set of blog entries that may be more or less of interest to those who are interested in this (the Newtown) tragedy. This is not meant to be an exhaustive, easily digested set, at least to read all at once. I am interested in getting the material together for your convenience, and meanwhile….

I am waiting on information about this sad story as it comes out over the weekend. I may not say much more about it, in view of the fact that many of us are affected by this matter, made no less affecting by it coming during the holiday season, and we all have our rich opinions, and defer to the families immediately involved and their close associates, who are bound to have the strongest feelings and deserve some measure of privacy.

General thoughts—on the psychiatric aspect, and on gun laws

I must emphasize that (1) I do not believe that in every case of a mass shooting we must look to a simple, formulaic explanation of the killer’s mentality, (2) sometimes we have to say the whole incident is unexplainable—“the killer was crazy/bad” is a simple enough explanation, at least in the immediate interim (whether we express revulsion at the killer or not), (3) not every person (by a long shot) with a serious psychiatric disorder is apt to be a killer, and (4) even in murder trials where “not guilty by reason of insanity” is to be opted for, it is not a simple, inevitable thing to apportion to what extent a person behaved in an evil fashion due to illness, or due to bad motives, or anything else. (Of course, the killer in this case committed suicide at the end of his rampage.)

Humans are not formulae, and even among those with serious disorders, the life courses, the ability of such persons to contribute to society, and the amount of happiness (or not) the persons may suffer can vary widely. Just as any of us happier, more normal people wouldn’t want to be summed up as an easy formula, neither can we do the same with those who are ill, whether or not they take the extra (and inexcusable) step of being considerably violent.

Lastly, in my opinion, it is a much easier—more efficient, and more likely to be effective—task to adjust gun laws to cut down on violent incidents such as that on December 14 than it is to control, forestall, or eliminate ill/super-violent behavior, much less to identify who might be apt to engage in it.

By the way, initial reports about the killer’s having suffered a personality disorder don’t tell you very much: personality disorders as a category are odd and, as to symptoms, run the gamut in individual cases from making the sufferer generally non-threatening to making the sufferer (almost) psychotic (at times, and with the number of psychotic episodes varying between sufferers, you could say). For an interesting article on this category in The New York Times not long ago, see here. (This Times article is usually very good, but seems to get hung up on one conceptual aspect that other people have had trouble with, that personality disorders involve the supposedly-odd concept of “personality” as opposed to brain, mind, etc. A topic for another discussion.)

Update: Subsequent reports (including a 60 Minutes segment on December 16) suggest that the killer suffered from Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. Obviously a more fine-grained and documented assessment of the killer (to the extent possible) may be pending. As a general matter, among the mental disabilities, autism (the disorders within the autistic spectrum) is a general category apart from both mental retardation (developmental disability) and mental (psychiatric) illness. On the level of general, phenomenologically observed symptoms, autism seems to feature symptoms of both mental illness and developmental disability, but it is categorized (largely for treatment purposes) as a developmental disorder. In general, to my knowledge--and you of course can freely research this as you see fit--mass shooters and other such violent persons do not usually include those with some form of autism.

Little editorial note on the consolidated “Mountain Bear” entry

Not all of the sets of copy in the December 15 entry on my other blog will be relevant to the December 14 event. Also, a few caveats: Because this set of copy came from my files for making the original entries, some of the entries may be missing tiny bits of copy, and often will not include links to outside Web sites (you will more often than not see the inserted “URL” in these cases). If you want to check out the links, you can go to the original blog entry, and I include links for these at the start of each entry.