Posted on 12/14/2003 3:52:08 PM PST by The Westerner
The Psychology of Junior Sniper Lee Malvo by Michael J. Hurd
The defense psychiatrist for the D.C. sniper, Lee Malvo, claims that Malvo was unable to distinguish right from wrong. In other words, he didn't know that it was wrong to shoot innocent people at gas stations and department stores.
Why not? Not because he was psychotic or schizophrenic, meaning completely out of touch with reality (in which case he would not have executed these shootings so competently). Instead, we're supposed to believe that he was so "pathologically loyal" to the elder sniper John Muhammad that he couldn't help but start shooting people.
There is no such thing as a psychological disorder which leads people to become so loyal that they're willing to kill. It's conjecture and excuse-making taken to a nearly incomprehensible extreme. Did it ever occur to the defense psychiatrist that Malvo's loyalty was not to Muhammad but to his own irrational, twisted code of values?
Lee Malvo is a young adult who chose his ideas and "value" system and acted upon those beliefs in an unspeakably evil way. He made no attempt to escape Muhammad and, as the prosecution points out, twice ran away from his mother to be with his hero, the equally violent and evil John Muhammad.
The state of contemporary psychiatry is astonishing. Most young adults are held responsible for not doing drugs and for getting their homework done on time. Yet if they open fire upon innocent people in a vicious, planned and calculated way, psychiatrists conclude "It can't be real. They can't mean it. They must be disordered."
Why can't the psychiatric profession accept that some people simply make evil choices?
About the Author: Dr. Michael Hurd is a psychologist, psychotherapist and author of Effective Therapy (New York: Dunhill, 1997) and Grow Up America! Visit his website at: www.DrHurd.com.
WOA! Time to again revise the DSM to incorporate a newly found disorder!
A psychiatrist that examined Malvo said he didn't know the difference between right and wrong then contradicted herself when she said Malvo thought it was *very wrong* to kill kids and was glad his 13 year old victim lived. Shows that he indeed knows the difference between right and wrong.
Malvo should have taken his pathological loyalties or whatever somewhere else. Fry him.
It is not that they don't understand, it is that they don't care. Nothing is good if it gives them a moment of discomfort, nothing is bad if if gives them a moment of pleasure. And they like it that way.
Because the psychiatric profession is made up, almost exclusively of Liberal-Lefties. Started back in the forties, when they arrived from Europe and Eastern Europe and captured the minds and imaginations of Americans.
The truth should be a little more simple than they would have it re Malvo et al. If he did not, could not know/understand 'right from wrong'; then 'why' was he/they hiding from the police? "Why" did he not just confess/admit what he did; if he did not understand the consequences of his actions.
The reality is; he knew; he hid his crime; he did not reveal himself 'unwittingly'.
Liberals have the worst time with 'personal responsibility'; and this colors their response to the world; 'they' carry the responsibility for all and so they assume the guilt as well.
Accounts for same reactions re Bush and his decision to include our Coalition for the contracts in Iraq and not those who actively opposed us.
'How could we'. . .be so mean as to expect that these world leaders were grown-up enough, competent enough, trust-worthy enough to really understand that their actions and their words, had consequences!
They 'did not mean it'!
How could we be such ugly Americans, while risking these same misguided, getting r e a l l y upset with us? Why are WE so intolerant? And so it goes. . .
What these Lefties cannot get is that personal responsibility - accountability, as cruel as it seems to them. . .must hold for the individual. (we will no doubt soon be hearing more. . .and more, about Saddams early childhood years. . .)
Of course, the 'consequences' of NOT accepting the value of personal responsibility guarantees our reaping the worst of a Liberals imagination.
Have seen this book; but have not read it. . .insightful no doubt; but must be a depressing read however.
Perhaps, I could take it on; but in the meantime, we do know that were Liberals tread. . .victims; the disempowered, follow.
Hmmm, time to say let the keyboard rest now. . .
All the arguments for leniency are descriptions of the creation of an irreconcilable psychopath who will never be able to be rehabilitated. His very youth, lack of a father figure, his alienation, etc., were primary causes of his behavior.
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