Mental illness and shooting people!

And that is what I'm saying, just adding to it. The classic seems to be an inherent, I suppose genetic mental condition. The other I speak of is more of a conditioned one due to the culture of the moment and people failing to discipline their own minds. Under certain conditions, people can dehumanize others to the point of seeing them as evil- and I think our society is doing far too much of that right now. It as has become popular, and that makes it easier to discard the value of others, even validate killing them when you blame them for what ails you, without assigning blame to anyone specific.

One way or another, a mass murderer is capable of believing that other people have no value, and also capable of finding a reason why they should (or no reason why they shouldn't) be exterminated.

It is very hard to put yourself in the mindset of such people in order to understand what is going on there.

 

So, that's your solution; lock up all them crazy people? Out of sight, out of mind, right?

It's not like we're talking about human beings with medical conditions, let's just stick 'em in a glorified prison and pretend they don't exist!

 

The twister strikes again. There's nothing you can't turn into a pretzel with your amazing logic. .

 

So what is your solution to people with

So what do you suggest we do with people suffering from antisocial personality disorder? And please note it can be damned hard to diagnose.

 

Yes. The ones who are a danger to themselves or others. And personally, I would suggest the serial child molester.

 

While I've done a lot on how people think with normal minds, I have no idea how the actual sociopath should be treated. I know from things I've read over the years that identifying them in advance must be very hard. Seems a number of serial killers have been sociopaths that usually acted totally compatible with people, then spontaneously decided to kill one, or more. Ted Bundy comes to mind; I remember he was good looking and liked, seemed to be a caring person to most, and killed around 30 people.

The capacity to do that would say there would be few signs visible to the average person- and probably few to a shrink, even a very good one. If what I've read over the years is true, there are not running symptoms, behavioral benchmarks that serve as markers. Is that how you understand it?

I accept that life can't be made risk-free, and people are by far the unpredictable element of risk. I have no idea how you can cover the risk a sociopath presents before the fact, even if you could identify them. Lawyers would have a field day if we tried.

 

Exactly so there really is no way outside of Hollywood. "But he seemed so normal" seems to be a recurring them after most of these mass shooters. Serial killers tend to be a different species all together. Bundy became a loner driving huge distances during his career, BTK had a wife and kids.

 

I know quite a bit about BTK, real name Dennis Rader. I lived in the area at the time. I watched a video from his trial. Once caught He freely admitted guilt, and in court recounted each killing as the judge asked questions. He remembered every detail, answered every question as if he were making a clinical statement. He was totally without emotion as he told the stories- cold as ice. I consider myself above average in understanding people's motives and reading character, but watching this guy was very scary- just to realize how anyone could commit his kind of crimes and discuss it this way with zero emotional impact. There was nothing to read, so to speak as there would be in a normal person. Rader seemed like he thought of himself as a hit man, picking his own targets. Even had what he called a "hit kit" he kept in a locked storage cabinet. Unlike Bundy, Rader wasn't seen as a nice guy in the neighborhood, although he had a position in the local church. He's alive and well in a Kansas prison, Eldorado correctional- on the taxpayer's dime.

 

The basic point was that Bundy and BTK had almost nothing in common other than a desire to see people die rather unpleasant deaths, to understate it more than a bit.

 

What seems obvious is that they do have in common was the lack of any remorse or empathy about killing, and that is the condition that you were talking about. Neither of them raised red flags either. They went about it differently but with the same result.

Doesn't matter here, and back on subject- I know of no way to spot them or control them before the fact. Wish I did.

 

The mental illness crisis in this country correlates directly with the increases in psychology, psychiatry and institutionalized "social work." So perhaps we don't need to lock up the mentally ill, but rather the shrinks and social workers.

Maybe UNDO government subsidy of the unwed mother cottage industry while we are at it, and a whole lot of other collectivist bullshit.

People tend to get a lot more sane of a sudden when they are made responsible and accountable for their bad behavior and choices. Interesting phenomenon.

 

Yes by all means we should blame the canaries in the coal mine for the gas that's killing people. Most mass shooters who aren't gang bangers kill themselves off. Damn few of them have ever seen a psychologist. Same is true of serial killers. Damn few gang bangers have ever seen a psychologist.

Now if you want to state that the cottage industry that's blaming everything on God's green earth for the crime but the criminal isn't helping anything you've likely got a point and one I agree with. But that isn't directly related to Psychology.

 

We are an increasingly liberal society of single parents raising children in a culture of chaos

You can never spend enough money on shrinks to fix that problem

 

Garyd, I'm curious. Are you a psychologist, have a psych degree- or what is it that you think backs up your opinions here? I agree with some of what you say, but I also wonder why you don't see other things.

I do not find psychologists infallible; in fact I find some of them highly so. It's a field where a great deal of it is subjective opinion, and a great deal of behavior that wasn't socially or politically proper at the moment has been labeled as mental illness by the psych professions- and a great many locked away in asylums as a result. A lot of damage has been done by the lack of consistent skills and attitudes among them. Theoretically, such people would rarely become suicidal- but their rate is high. I'm a skeptic, I doubt most claims at first. I doubt my own conclusions as well, and that causes me to double check and see what I missed or have wrong- and still know that in many cases, I may still be wrong. To me, assuming you are infallible is a flaw that will invariably come back to bite you.

All antisocial behavior is not mental illness, indeed most of it is not, and a great deal of it can be corrected with self-discipline and social discipline, meaning society recognizes bad conduct, calls it and does not tolerate it- and of course sets better examples. Our current failure to set those examples is doing serious harm to society, but that is not to say the result is mental illness.

You seem to think your beliefs are infallible. Why?

 

What problem?

If statistics show they don't do these things, why do we need to spend money on a non-issue? Or, do you disbelieve the statistics you are reading? Weird thread.

 

Quite simple; the problem of lots of people getting little or no help for their mental illnesses.

 

Oh, you mean those who can't get a job, but aren't ill enough to get housing and care through the gov't? That's different.

 

The mental health industry is a big part of the gas. Sorry if you don't like that fact but it is what it is. It is saturated with leftism/statism/collectivism and all its accompanying lie narratives ("Trump is mentally ill... I know because I diagnosed him during a TV appearance") encouragement towards self-absorbed feelz and reliance on "treatment by prescription pad" that is directly responsible for our prescription drug abuse epidemic. It creates permanent "victims" out of thin air who remain blissfully unaccountable for their behavior and actions, helps/cures few, and equates to one of the main JOBS PROGRAMS in the gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex. The only worse of the "social unsciences" are anthropology and sociology.

Two of my favorite "gifts" that the "mental health" industry bestowed on our culture during the last 30 years.

http://www.readthehook.com/94136/cover-sidebar-which-hunt-repressed-memory-and-other-80s-fads

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse

It's a dungheap that does far more harm than good in society.

 

yes I agree it has had more than its fair share of quacks, twits, and just plain ole crap for brains jackasses. And it is also true that it has become corrupted by the fact that far too many of it's practitioners now work for the government which isn't good for any profession especially one as easily abused as psychology. But not every practitioner is a leftist,jackass or an out and out crackpot.

 

And you have no argument from me on any of that.