Psychiatrist: Lanza Was 'Pseudocommando' with 'Wounded Narcissism'

Breitbart News ^ | 12-18-2012 | Breitbart News

[servo1969]

Psychiatrist James Knoll told CNN’s Headline News today that Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, was acting in a “ritualistic” way during the horrific events. Knoll, who does research at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University, said in a recent report that killers like Lanza see themselves as “pseudocommandos … driven by strong feelings of anger and resentment, in addition to having a paranoid character. He plans out the offense ritualistically, and comes prepared with a powerful arsenal of weapons.”

The report continues: “[The pseudocommando] most often kills in public during the daytime. And has no escape planned. Pseudocommandos are 'collectors of injustice' who nurture their wounded narcissism and ultimately retreat into a fantasy life of violence and revenge."

Knoll wrote that killers like Lanza have an “obliterative mindset … his ‘self’ is already dead and … his physical death is of little consequence” in his own mind.

Knoll emailed HLN to let them know that psychiatry couldn’t do much about these sorts of people. “We think far too shallow about these events. We concern ourselves with metal detectors, security systems, 'profiles,' preventing 'the mentally ill' from obtaining firearms. This is shallow, facile thinking. Want to make a material impact? Think deeper. Cultivate a respect for how to teach compassion, nonviolence and personal responsibility in individual minds.”

[Road Glide]

“First, there is no validated evidence that Lanza had Autism or Asperger’s Syndrome.”

You have posted this before.

Didn’t Ryan Lanza tell the police that his brother -had- a “developmental disorder” that had been diagnosed as being Asperger’s?

Seems I read that several times.

[Intolerant in NJ]

It’s become almost trendy to say your child has Asperger’s, or ASD, certainly more trendy than saying your kid is lazy, mean, or a brat...when I was learning this stuff fifty or so years ago at places like Walter Reed, I don't recall there even being an Asperger's diagnosis, and autism was pretty much a footnote at the bottom of the page of childhood psychiatric diagnoses, which emphasized Childhood Schizophrenia and behavioral and personality disorders such as social withdrawal and oppositional tendencies. I've been out of the field for going on a dozen years so most of what I get is second hand and anecdotal, but my impression is that there's a lot of overdiagnosis of autism these days, probably because there's been such success in gaining funding for this particular disorder - practioners follow the money and such. It will be interesting to find out as the investigation continues when and how Mr. Lanza was diagnosed with Asperger's, and what was or wasn't done about it......

[Fire_on_High]

No, he just takes what a good satirist does and does it exquisitely well. Enough truth to make it sound reasonable in a world that’s clearly done mad...

[SoldierDad]

There are NEWS reports that Ryan Lanza claimed his brother had Asperger’s Syndrome. There have been NO reports from any medical professional that Adam Lanza was diagnosed with any disorder, let alone Autism or Asperger’s. Until a medical profession that is identified as having evaluated and/or treated Adam Lanza for Autism/Asperger’s, I will refrain from believing what the drive-by-media has reported.

[Recovering Ex-hippie]

Yup.

[SoldierDad]

A Psychiatrist (Lorna Wing) popularized the term, “Asperger’s Syndrome” in 1981. It was named after Hans Asperger (1906 - 1980), an Austrian Psychiatrist and Pediatrician who is said to have exhibited many of the features of Asperger’s as a child. The proliferation of diagnoses of Autism and Asperger’s over the past 20 years has catapulted the disorder, and related disorders into prominence. Autism and Asperger’s has, indeed, become trendy.

[Boogieman]

They’re calling it a spectrum of disorders now, with Aspergers being on the milder side, and autism on the more serious side. That may be true, but I think they open up the possibility for more misdiagnoses just because, with a spectrum, there is no limit to the number of gradations you can dream up. If a child displays only one or two of the symptoms of Aspergers, but not enough to meet all the diagnostic requirements, they can just place the child a little bit lower on the spectrum, whether that is an accurate assessment of the child’s condition or not.

[MeganC]

“Does that suggest (serious question) that people who don’t get written sarcasm and irony, and as you probably know there are many around here, may be suffering from Asbergers?”

I don’t know. Just speaking for myself, I do much better at discerning sarcasm when it is written as opposed to spoken. When something is written down I can take a moment to stop and consider it but when I stop to assess what someone *says* to me it ends up being more socially awkward than if I just go ahead and do my best to figure out what the person meant to say.

[x]

Had he suddenly snapped, run around raving, or thought the kids were Martians, it might be excused as schizophrenic behavior. (Though certainly not condoned.) But this seems cold-blooded.

He wasn't really a verbal guy, though.

You can apply that hot-blooded versus cold-blooded, rage versus deliberation distinction with normal people, but some people are "cold-blooded" all the time. They don't have the full range of emotion or the ability to verbalize what they're feeling.

I'm not sure that he was deliberating about what to do. He may have been so out of it that he didn't know what he was doing, or he might have found it hard to tell what was reality and what was fantasy.

None of that excuses what he did, but I suspect a lot of what we think about crazy people has to do with crazies who are in some way "normal" -- those whose behavior is fathomable by us to some degree. There may be people out there who are a lot more divorced from reality and ordinary human behavior than that.

FWIW, without saying his main problem was paranoia, I'd say that some crazy people probably would destroy their hard drives for some crazy reasons -- as would somebody who was in some blind berserker rage.

[MoochPooch]

. . . a lot of what we think about crazy people has to do with crazies who are in some way "normal" -- those whose behavior is fathomable by us to some degree.

Unfortunately, that's the reason why these people are so hard to control. They can be functional on a basic level, which makes them difficult to put away. They may know enough to hide or finess their behavior. And only until they become overtly dangerous or violent, there are no legal grounds for having them committed.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Interesting - thanks - I wonder where all the Asperger’s patients were before 1981.......

[Intolerant in NJ]

They’re calling it a spectrum of disorders now, with Aspergers being on the milder side, and autism on the more serious side...as I recall it back in the day, "autism" was a vague, hazy diagnosis whose essential element was that it was some sort of "organic" disorder, meaning that there was assumed to be some unspecified maldevelopment or injury to the brain itself causing it, with the implication that there was little that could be done to improve the condition. Apparently there's been a lot of refinement and reinterpretation of the diagnosis since, else it's hard to understand how such a disorder could be meaningfully integrated into any "spectrum"......

[SoldierDad]

My guess is that they were identified as having Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Conduct Disorder (CD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), or any of the many others that existed in the DSM at that time.