It's All About Him

My reporter's odyssey has taken me from the chill dawn outside the Florida prison in which serial killer Ted Bundy met his end, to the charred façade of a Bronx nightclub where Julio Gonzalez incinerated 87 people, to a muddy Colorado hillside overlooking the Columbine High School library, in which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold wrought their mayhem. Along the way, I've come to believe that we're looking for why in all the wrong places.

Freud explained narcissism as a failure to grow up. All infants are narcissists, he pointed out, but as we grow, we ought to learn that other people have lives independent of our own. It's not their job to please us, applaud for us or even notice us--let alone die because we're unhappy.

I've lost interest in the cracks, chips, holes and broken places in the lives of men like Cho Seung-Hui, the mass murderer of Virginia Tech. The pain, grievances and self-pity of mass killers are only symptoms of the real explanation. Those who do these things share one common trait. They are raging narcissists. "I died--like Jesus Christ," Cho said in a video sent to NBC.

Psychologists from South Africa to Chicago have begun to recognize that extreme self-centeredness is the forest in these stories, and all the other things-- guns, games, lyrics, pornography--are just trees. To list the traits of the narcissist is enough to prove the point: grandiosity, numbness to the needs and pain of others, emotional isolation, resentment and envy.

The rest of the article is worth reading, imo, and clearly shows the media's complicity.(Bold type is my addition.)

Criminologists distinguish between serial killers like Bundy, whose crimes occur one at a time and who try hard to avoid capture, and mass killers like Cho. But the central role of narcissism plainly connects them. Only a narcissist could decide that his alienation should be underlined in the blood of strangers.

The flamboyant nature of these crimes is like a neon sign pointing to the truth. Charles Whitman playing God in his Texas clock tower, James Huberty spraying lead in a California restaurant, Harris and Klebold in their theatrical trench coats--they're all stars in the cinema of their self-absorbed minds.

A generation ago, the social critic Christopher Lasch diagnosed narcissism as the signal disorder of contemporary American culture. The cult of celebrity, the marketing of instant gratification, skepticism toward moral codes and the politics of victimhood were signs of a society regressing toward the infant stage.

You don't have to buy Freud's explanation or Lasch's indictment, however, to see an immediate danger in the way we examine the lives of mass killers. Earnestly and honestly, detectives and journalists dig up apparent clues and weave them into a sort of explanation.

In the days after Columbine, for example, Harris and Klebold emerged as alienated misfits in the jock culture of their suburban high school. We learned about their morbid taste in music and their violent video games. Largely missing, though, was the proper frame around the picture: the extreme narcissism that licensed these boys, in their minds, to murder their teachers and classmates.

Something similar is now going on with Cho, whose florid writings and videos were an almanac of gripes. "I'm so lonely," he moped to a teacher, failing to mention that he often refused to answer even when people said hello. Of course he was lonely.

In Holocaust studies, there is a school of thought that says to explain is to forgive. I won't go that far. But we must stop explaining killers on their terms. Minus the clear context of narcissism, the biographical details of these men can begin to look like a plausible chain of cause and effect--especially to other narcissists. And they don't need any more encouragement.

There's a telling moment in Michael Moore's film Bowling for Columbine, in which singer Marilyn Manson dismisses the idea that listening to his lyrics contributed to the disintegration of Harris and Klebold. What the Columbine killers needed, Manson suggests, was for someone to listen to them. This is the narcissist's view of narcissism: everything would be fine if only he received more attention. The real problem can be found in the killer's mirror.

It’s a little more serious than narcissism if you ask me!

If I may, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a LOT more serious than most people think. Whole families - three or more generations, are ensnared by the Naricissist's voracious hunger for confirmation of his existence and importance.

The real problem can be found in the killer’s mirror

The real problem is that the narcissist thinks that everyone else's job is to BE his mirror. To provide evidence of his existence.

Because in their world it's all about them, anyway...

Again, if I may, the prospect that anything might NOT be about them is so terrifying that they will go to incredible lengths to force the world into testifying to their importance. Seriously, it's the pain of being an emotional/psychological black hole that kills them, I think. Without CONSTANT reassurance, they labor in terror that there is no self to esteem.

Yes, and more widespread. In fact, I agree with the guy who defined it in the article as a cultural thing. The whole idea that other groups of people owe you something, and that it's your right to use the power of the government to take it from them, is narcissism. And that describes our political system.

Also narcissism, taken to the extreme, can justify not just school shootings, but killings on a much larger scale, like those of Pol Pot, or Stalin.

[Um I forgot to add that my MAIN objection is that, well, it's actually all about ME -- but I didn't want to say so ...]

I think that society provides us with models and myths that "enable" narcissism. Drawing the line between a character trait and a personality disorder is not child's play either. A good hysteric can make a great actor. Someone who is over the top hysterical may be a fine actor for a while, but S/he is also a menace.

The single minded focus of some with narcissistic tendencies can rpoduce great results. Over-the-top narcissists produce bruises, injuries, emotionally damaged people, and death.

Excuse me, I have to get back to my mirror now. I don't want to keep my audience waiting.

This article neglects the fact that the killer was diagnosed as autistic but never treated for it because his parents couldn’t afford it. Autistics do not recognize the existence of, or interact with others so naturally they would be narcissistic.

I see all the same attitudes in my sister who is bipolar with a past head injury. She’s God’s special envoy, she’s ruined other people’s lives with her self-serving behavior and she was cruelly persecuted by her family. But, she would never shoot up a classroom!

This young man needed to have his nuts cut off. He was clearly too socially immature and brain damaged to handle adult urges. His rage was detonated by sexual ineptitude.

Thanks for your concern which seems so genuine. You’re right about the Minimal Brain Damage being neglected. It’s impossible to lock up or constantly monitor everybody who might benefit from a structured environment, because they will obviously resist and the cost is prohibitive.

My sister is doing much better now that she has been in jail for 8 months and is getting regular medication. But the authorities do not know what to do with her... community MH center or state hospital? It would be very nice of you to pray for her. She was arrested for B&E related to a long-term delusion, and seriously compounded her troubles by resisting authority. The family is very grateful to the state.

Well I did pray for her. And I won't all the time but I know I will think of her and you and the rest of the family from time to time, so I'll keeping sort of harassing God about it.

I hope the state and the cops were not too awful. I did work for a while as a volunteer deputy and did some Temporary Detainment Orders. I never had a rough time, but some of the guys have really had to fight with some of the victims.

What I admired about my comrades was they really didn't take an ill person personally.

It's hard and sad. My wife and I took care of a lady for while who had a complicated diagnosis. She ended up phoning in a false report on me to the cops, who showed up, took one look at me and decided that it was a false report..... Thank God!

So onw WANTS to be kind and to help, but sometimes the cost is great.

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