[Update 13 Jan 2013] From this morning's Los Angeles Times:
Our principal essay on gun control simpliciter may be viewed here. The present note concerns a much narrower topic: namely, the present national discussion of mental health policy as specifically influenced by the recent events in Newtown. Once again, we shall refrain from the political as such, our focus being logical and psychological.
~ ~ ~
Our principal essay on gun control simpliciter may be viewed here. The present note concerns a much narrower topic: namely, the present national discussion of mental health policy as specifically influenced by the recent events in Newtown. Once again, we shall refrain from the political as such, our focus being logical and psychological.
The nation was recently treated to an extraordinary
spectacle. After lurking for
several days in their tents, the NRA sent out a spokesman to proclaim that the
solution to school shootings was for the Federal
government (pause for emphasis) to do the following things:
(1)
Place armed guards in every school in the nation
(2)
Draw up a list of loonies (again, the Federal government apparently to make the
determination of who is loony and who is not) and (presumably, since otherwise
it would be an empty gesture) detain them pre-emptively, in (again, presumably,
since prison space is at a premium) giant sprawling concentration camps.
Now, both of these may be jolly ideas -- as promised, not
taking any political positions here -- but they are … quite … surprising, coming from a milieu as
viscerally opposed to Federal intervention as the NRA. After
all, the main reason they
demand “semi”-automatic weapons with armor-piercing ordnance, is for an
anticipated showdown, not with aggressive squirrels (as they would have
us believe), but rather (Waco-style) with Federal officers.
But apart from this politico-cognitive dissonance (which is
not, after all, unprecedented: the
supposedly anti-big-government Dubya administration instituted the most intrusive Federal education policy since
forced busing), there is the matter of, well, the facts. Keeping
assault rifles out of the hands of homicidal maniacs is, perhaps, a laudable goal (and you see, once again, how
scrupulously we maintain our distance
from any sort of political axe-grinding: Perhaps you believe that arming homicidal maniacs is a good thing, since they keep down
overpopulation and provide grist for Hollywood script-writers -- being
completely non-committal here), but -- sticking to the subject here, folks, as
so few are able to do -- the specific Newtown events in no wise buttress the case for more intensive
screening/waterboarding/castration/whatever of raving loonies.
For:
(1) Existing regulations (passed over the screams of the NRA)
requiring a 14-day waiting-period
did in fact, in this case, prevent the perp from buying a weapon.
(2) The actual perp
had no police record whatsoever.
He had not been diagnosed as either a paranoid schizophrenic or a
sociopath -- the kind you worry about.
Simply being a tad Asperger’s
won’t cut it -- if you detentioned all the aspies, there would be no-one
left working at Microsoft or N[additional alphabetic characters redacted]. His mother had money to burn and plenty
of time (alimony, no job) and lived in an upscale area, so access to premium
mental-health services was not an
issue.
Now, there is in fact an interesting mental-health aspect to
the Newtown case, but it is scarcely one that the NRA and their lapdogs will be
comfortable with. Namely -- his enabler -- his more-than-enabler, his agent provocateur: his possibly paranoid, definitely
gun-fetishist mother, who took him to shooting ranges to improve his aim. And the awkward thing for the
wingnutters is: She fits (like a
fingerprint-withholding glove) the profile of the Tea-Party/tin-hat/NRA flake. So (to continue our earlier
thought-experiment) if we were to intern everyone fitting that profile … there
would be nobody left to pay dues to the NRA, and the Republican side of the
aisle in the House would lie
empty.
* * *
~ Commercial break ~
Nook lovers are book
lovers!
We now return you to
your regularly scheduled essay.
* * *
So, are we going to detain everyone with weird or toxic
parents? Pretty extreme -- but
even that would not work, as you may glean from a rather remarkable article in
this morning’s New York Times, by a reporter (Andrew Solomon) who was,
so to speak, “embedded” with the parents of one of the Columbine shooters:
Over a period of eight years, I
spent hundreds of hours with the Klebolds. I began
convinced that, if I dug deeply enough into their character, I would
understand why Columbine happened -- that I would recognize damage in their
household that spilled over into catastrophe.
(An aside: This
was truly a heroic repertorial undertaking. He had every reason to suspect that he would be
embedding himself, long-term, into
a den of vipers. Personally, I
would not -- simply going by what little we know -- have wanted to spend ten minutes
in the company of Nancy Lanza.)
Instead, I came to view the
Klebolds not only as inculpable,
but as admirable, moral, intelligent and kind people whom I would gladly have had as parents myself. [This] made Columbine far more
bewildering, and forced me to acknowledge that people are unknowable.
That last generalization, strictly speaking, goes beyond the
facts; yet my own experience, over
sixty-some-odd years, serves only to buttress this deep dark truth.
“Only connect,” E. M. Forster
proposed.
“Only we can’t,” the psychoanalyst knows.
-- Janet Malcolm, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (1981)
And yet, having learned that, and said that, he delivers
himself, a propos of the Newtown case, of the following extraordinary obtusity: “We’d have wished for more
intrusiveness … from Nancy Lanza.”
(sic).
There was no lack of intrusiveness. She home-schooled him on and off,
beginning in elementary school, and again in high school. She battled with his high-school. She shoved him prematurely into
college, where he floundered. She
bathed him in a fine broth of “prepper” paranoia. She kept her home walled-off even to her card-game friends. And by her own lights, she was absolutely devoted to him
(give her credit -- a thankless task).
So: We shall
never be able to predict, when this or that one might crack; and the police-state measures required
to prevent all such outbreaks
would in any case be intolerable. But we can ensure that, when they do crack, they’re not packing rapid-fire
weapons with armor-piercing ordnance
and hundred-bullet magazines.
* * *
Disclaimer:
Lest anyone imagine
that I harbor mean and hurtful thoughts about guns per se,
check out the action
at the site of my buddy,
the two-fisted,
pistol-packing, wise-cracking pre-Consiliar private eye,
Murphy!
* * *
[Psychological appendix, 24 December 2012]
Considered as an objective, empirical discussion of relevant
and knowable issues, the debate (or dialogue, or parallel monologues) on the
mental health angle of the Newtown shooting, doesn’t make sense.
Even now, weeks afterwards, nothing is known of the shooter's ‘motive’ (seeing the thing as
end-directed, and which assumes that the shooter himself knew what he wanted)
or even the trigger of the attack (the immediate
cause or 'releaser', not requiring any conscious knowledge: a term applicable to animals and
psychotics as well as to rational
actors). The young man
himself was not on anybody’s radar;
indeed, he seems to be one of only a handful of Americans who have not
broadcast intimate details about themselves on Facebook, including rants which,
seen in retrospect from some disaster, might seem telling. And
unlike many other would-be teen assassins, he did not tip his hand in advance.
From the plain standpoint of reducing the likely deadliness
of future such attacks (deadliness, not frequency; the latter would be difficult to effect) we would be talking
of such things as longer waiting periods (to frustrate the impulsive), a sharp
limit on the size of ammo clips and armor- (or glass-door-)piercing
capabilities of the ordnance, and, yes, things like armed guards in schools, or
dressing the pupils in body-armor (**), patroling the halls with a rhinoceros
-- things like that. [**Note: I wrote that part as a joke, but
reality is already way past fantasy -- and each twist and turn of this amazing
case is being commented on in a watchful Europe:
Depuis la terrible fusillade, les parents américains
cherchent à protéger leurs enfants avec des équipements de sécurité. Produit
phare : le sac à dos blindé à l'effigie des princesses Disney ou de The Avengers.
So far, though, no reports of a Rhinoceros in the Room.]
~
Gratuit !
Lisez le conte entier
~
These matters are practical, technological, not
psychological. True, you
will have to deal with psychological factors, here as in any case of government
regulation, namely the normal non-pathological attitudes among the general
public, but that is quite different from the psychopathology of potential
perps:
There is no psychological profile
specific enough to pinpoint school shooters in advance. But one common thread
may offer the best opportunity to intercept them: They tend to be indiscreet
during their planning stages. The difference between a tragedy and a tragedy
averted, experts say, is often somebody who knows something deciding to speak
up.
Ironically, the security measures
instituted by many schools after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in
Colorado may discourage students from sharing potentially life-saving information.
And yet, post-Newtown, the mental-health theme
is very much present.
And the reason is, it is not really the cleidoic and
probably forever unknowable Adam Lanza who is on the couch, nor even (a
potentially more interesting analysand) his fearful, armed mom, who at least
left behind more by way of documentation and obiter dicta. No, the patient recumbent and free-associating away, is the
American psyche -- for the moment, distracted by the tragedy
from
our usual daily distractions and diversions. For the sleeping beast of the id is but slumbering, and can
be shaken awake by a shock. As,
this curent story, from this morning’s New York Times:
Indian authorities throttled
movement in the heart of the capital on Monday, shutting roads and railway
stations in a bid to restore law and order after police fought pitched battles
with protesters enraged by the gang rape of a young woman.
Singh’s government … has been
caught off-guard by the depth of the popular outrage as protests have
snowballed and spread to other cities. India is seen as one of the most unsafe
places in the world to be a woman.
Seen only thus far, the Indian popular response to the rape
incident is as mysterious as the
American popular response to the killings at Newtown. For, grotesque
and violent events, far worse than that one, happen all the time in India without leading to pitched battles in the streets. And as one observer wisely remarks:
“People are not reacting to just
one rape case. They are reacting to the general malaise, the frustration with
the leadership. There is a feeling that the leadership is completely
disconnected,” said political analyst Neerja Chowdhury.
In other words, the incident was a trigger, a final camel’s-back-breaking straw, la goutte qui fait déborder le vase.
And that is a good
thing; only, we need to be conscious of the true
nature of the debate, else we get mired in the particularities of one given
incident, or, worse, talk past each other
since we are only nominally discussing the actual incident, but are in reality doing
such things as pushing pre-set agendas (that is almost always the politicians’
response) or flailing about, sincerely but semi-unconsciously, in the roiled-up
juices of our own psyche.
[Update 28 December 2012] In case you thought the observation that comparable violent
events happen in India all the time, was overblown, here is just the latest among those that happened to make it
into the world press:
Une adolescente indienne, victime
d'un viol collectif, s'est suicidée après qu'un policier eut tenté de la
convaincre de retirer sa plainte et d'épouser un de ses violeurs, a-t-on appris
aujourd'hui auprès de la police et de ses proches. La jeune fille, âgée de 17
ans, a avalé du poison et a été retrouvée morte hier soir. Son suicide
intervient après un autre viol collectif d'une étudiante dans un autobus à New
Delhi le 16 décembre, qui a provoqué une vague d'indignation en Inde. L'état de
santé de la victime est extrêmement grave.
L'adolescente qui s'est suicidée
avait subi un viol en bande le 13 novembre pendant
un festival à Diwali dans la région de Patiala, dans l'Etat du Pendjab.
[Update 13 Jan 2013] For the latest on the psychosociology of recent events in India, and their impact on America, check this:
While we are on the subject of national psyches and armed
violence, let us consider an
earlier case involving guns: the
Guns of August, 1914.
The English psychoanalyst Ernest Jones writes:
After the First World War, the
strong dislike in England of everything German was incomparably stronger than it was after the Second World
War, although one might have thought it was more justified on the latter
occasion.
-- Ernest Jones, Freud: The Last
Phase (1957), p. 48
Younger readers, well acquainted with the atrocities of the
Second World War, while barely
cognizant of the First, may nod absently in agreement; but from a historian’s standpoint,
there is more to it than that, and Jones’ fascinating observation is an
understatement. For there
seems to be a sort of consensus among historians, that, unlike the long-prepared and
go-for-broke Axis aggression that launched WWII, the outbreak of the earlier
war had been something of a muddle, not due primarily to enraged war-aims of a
consciously aggressive German nation, aroused as one man, but owing more to the
pig-headedness of its fumbling leaders, together with a continent-spanning web
of secret treaties and entangling alliances, which wound up dragging everybody
in after some stupid little incident in Sarajevo, -- a juggernaut rolling along
unstoppably with a momentum and logic (or illogic) of its own: rather the way the pre-set
tolerance-levels of programmed trading unleashed the shuddering stock-market
meltdown of the 1980s. Nor
did the Germans or anyone else have any idea how deadly and how interminable
the conflict would turn out to be: soldiers from several nations marched off to the front
with cockades on their caps, figuring the bloody thing would be over and done
with in time for tiffin.
As historian Gordon Craig put it (Germany: 1866-1945
[1978], p. 303), the Wilhelmine diplomats “allowed themselves fatalistically to
be borne away by the flood in 1914” (a curiously feminine and sexual image for
those stiff-collared Prussian militarists, by the way); whereas the Nazis were themselves the flood.
And yet, during and after that conflict, Englishmen (and
many Americans) reacted to Germans (and to German-Americans) with loathing;
whereas, after the truly deep German guilt for the 1939-45 conflict (a guilt
that definitely includes the women, who thought Hitler was just adorable), we
reacted instead with the Marshall
Plan.
Go figure.
~
We might pursue this line of musing to armed conflicts closer to home.
(1) First,
Vietnam, from which -- as from the Edenic Fall -- we date all our later woes.
In psychoanalytic terms, it represented a true repetition compulsion, since, as most
of us were unaware at the time, the
French had already been down that road, and lost. Rather than let
well enough alone, we poked the same tarbaby, then punched it, then pummeled
it, then grasped it with both arms.
Harder -- More -- Escalate!
(The French term for this is:
fuite en avant.)
(2) Next, the
war in Afghanistan, which in terms
of sheer duration actually does
make the Great War somewhat resemble a pre-tiffen stroll.
Now, as to our essential reason for invading, there are no
psychological questions to pose.
Al-Qaeda had hit us with intolerable attacks, of which 9/11 was only the
most recent, and they were sitting in Taliban territory, thumbing their
noses. An armed response was
a no-brainer, and most of the world was with us (not only in spirit, but some
of them with boots on the
ground). The fact that we
charged in there, and single-mindedly pursued al-Qaeda until we had captured
Ben Laden in his cave … oh, wait.
At this point, the narrative does get a bit muddled.
A thorny problem for future psychohistorians. Myself, I cannot begin to unravel
it. Those later in a position to
take a long view back will doubtless notice certain odd features:
(a) The initial use of the term “Crusade” by the Bush
Administration. It was soon
retracted as a gaffe, but was the sort of gaffe quite familiar to Freudians.
(b) The truly odd fact that Bush-the-Younger or
Dubya-the-Young had
explicitly campaigned in 2000 against “nation-building” (though it was an odd
issue to choose), and yet, one year later, swiveled around 180 degrees. Some Oedipal scenario involved
Bush Senior? I have no idea.
(c) The feminist vendetta against the Taliban, which predated
9/11 and had entirely other grounds.
(3) Finally (and let's hope that it really is final), the
war against Iraq. Here the
motivations were much more obscure, and some of them fabricated. Much about the whole thing
seems delusional. A soldier
of my acquaintance was part of a platoon ordered to go out and dig around
randomly in the desert, on the chance that their shovels might strike a hidden
cache of “red mercury” (which is one of the more imaginary varieties of
WMD). With all the time in
the world to plan for the thing -- since, after all, Iraq had not attacked us,
nor was poised for attack -- the superhawks rushed the thing, sending in troops
with inadequately armored Humvees. Allowing for a certain quantum of sheer Bushie
stupidity ("Dubya, yer doin' a heckuva job"), there are still several anomalies that remain unexplained.
Countering later criticism of a long list of such DoD
inadequacies, Donald Rumsfeld famously quipped, “You go to war with the army
you have, not the army you wish you had.” That sally was widely derided, in part because of
commentators’ eventual awareness that the fact we did not have the army we
might have wished we had, was in part due, not to military necessity, but to
the Bush desire to have it all, actually lowering taxes in wartime. (Again, possibly an Oedipal note,
against his one-term loser of a father?
And a late-hit against Bush Senior’s “Read my lips” fiasco.)
But more to our present purpose
is a possible unconscious subtext to that epigram: “You go to war against the enemy you
have, not the enemy you wish you had.” There are several layers to this.
(i) For some of its proponents, the Iraq war seems to have
elements of an actual displacement
(Verschiebung), in the Freudian
sense, the real target being Iran.
As, indeed, some of the superhawks quipped at the time: “Everyone
wants to go to Baghdad; real men want
to go to Tehran.” (The reasons for
Iran as target are interesting,
but are not to our present purpose.)
(ii) The United States had plainly little to gain from this
adventure. Cynics on the left said
it was all about oil, but that
really didn’t happen at all.
If you wish cynically to seek an economic motivation, it would be in
plum contracts for Dick Cheney’s pals in Halliburton and the like -- a windfall
for a few, but the bill for which was picked up by the tax-payers (or would be,
by tomorrow’s tax-payers), and which thus harmed the nation as a whole. Another motivation (for a few) was to do a favor for Country
A, by way of compensation for not taking on Iran for them.
(iii) Again, speculatively, our old friend Oedipus. Dad had done everything right throughout his long life,
while the wastrel son goofed and fooled. But Dad had fallen down (one could argue onself into
believing, though in retrospect the caution of Bush Senior seems providential) in his
curtain-raiser Gulf War; now the
son would show him and do it
right. It is difficult to
put any other construction on Dubya’s astonishing premature-ejaculation of
“Mission Accomplished”, playing dress-up in a flight uniform and prancing atop
an aircraft carrier. Many of
us boys used to do such things, safety-pinning a towel around our necks
capewise, and pretending to be Superman.
But most of us knocked it off by around six years old.
~
[24 Dec 2012]
Update re the Webster matter.
It is as if Satan, savoring his Newtown escapade like a fine
wine, had asked himself: What can
I do for an encore?
True, I could shoot up another school; but that would be … derivative. Been there done that.
-- Hey, I’ve got it! (he says to himSelf). Lure some first responders into an ambush!!
Far be it from me
to empathize into the thought-processes of Satan (that task defeated
Murphy, here). But --
just on a hunch -- we’d better get some armed guards at the nunnery …
Practical legal lessons to derive from this latest incident:
(1) In the first instance, none. The guy was a convicted felon, already forbidden to buy
arms. No new laws needed in that respect.
(2) (and this is admittedly
weaker) Then how did he get that
semi-automatic? -- Presumably, stole it.
-- But then, if the proposed ban on such weapons were put into effect, he wouldn’t have
had anything to steal.
(3) But as against that -- In this particular instance, luring a
handful into a trap,
machine-gun-style shooting was not the point. Any sniper rifle would do just fine.
One further legal lesson (nothing to do with gun control per
se):
(4) Anyone who kills his grandmother with a hammer, is
permanently too dangerous to be paroled.
~
In an effort better to understand the psychology of
The following, for instance, which appeared in this morning’s
Washington Post, does not concern some marginal wacko, but an actual Republican House majority leader. Oh, wait …
December 25
The day after Labor Day, just as
campaign season was entering its final frenzy, FreedomWorks, the
Washington-based tea party organization, went into free fall.
Richard K. Armey, the group’s
chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol
Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his
waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The
gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the
premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the
news.
The coup lasted all of six days. By
Sept. 10, Armey was gone — with a promise of $8 million — and the five ousted
employees were back.
Presumably the moral of the story (NRA-style) is that this tragic incident never
would have happened, if only those two top employees had themselves been
heavily armed. Then Armey
would have been outgunned. Or, if
he too was packing (concealed), they could have simply had a shoot-out, may the
better man win.
The fellow who is to cough up the eight million is himself a
pretty interesting character:
The force behind their return was
Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted
increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative
grass-roots organizations.
Stephenson wanted a substantial sum
spent in support of Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), a tea party favorite and
Stephenson’s local congressman, several who attended the retreat recalled.
Walsh garnered national headlines during the campaign when he questioned
whether his opponent, Tammy Duckworth, a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot who
lost both legs in Iraq, was a “true hero.”
It is apparent that such thinking cannot be understood as
simply lying at this point or that point on the traditional politico-economic
spectrum from liberal to conservative. Something else -- something darker -- is going on.
[Update] That
crack about the “shoot-out” was intended as satire -- and not very trenchant
satire at that, since it presumably portrays the principles as more extreme
than they really are. And yet
someone just posted the following response to the WaPo article:
Liberals and other
misguided leftists (are there really any other kind?) of course fail to take
the lesson that this article contains.
Well, here's one lone American patriot who has.
If the three weeping women had Bushmasters--the gun of choice of patriots and "responsible" gun owners, they wouldn't have been weeping. And they might have watered the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
… It seems that Brother Dick hasn't got his "man card" yet or he would have been carrying.
Well, here's one lone American patriot who has.
If the three weeping women had Bushmasters--the gun of choice of patriots and "responsible" gun owners, they wouldn't have been weeping. And they might have watered the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
… It seems that Brother Dick hasn't got his "man card" yet or he would have been carrying.
Now, to me, that reads like satire as well, and rather broader. Yet apparently a number of readers took
it seriously, and got all in a
worrit. These were then scolded by
another poster, saying that the
original poster showed “irony … so plain that his tongue was
practically sticking out the other cheek? Lighten up, people.”
Since I don’t know anything about the original
poster, I can’t be sure whether it reflects his actual politics. Nor is that in itself of the least
importance. The point
here is simply that it has become difficult, in some cases, to distinguish
between satire and actual delusion.
[Update 5 janvier 2013] Tel un bacille:
Four people were dead
including the gunman following a hostage-taking incident on Saturday in Aurora,
Colorado, the same town where a man shot dead 12 people and wounded 58 more at
a movie theater last July.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/05/us-usa-shooting-colorado-idUSBRE90408W20130105
(This world is too weird; I should get back to math...)
~
For further productions from this pen, click here:
No comments:
Post a Comment