Lanza was in the autistic spectrum and was incapable of having many of the grand issues that this psychoblabber proposes he had.
Autism comes in degrees. With some it can be strong enough to retard their social capabilities but is not strong enough to retard their desire to form meaningful connections with other human beings, which is probably a bit frustrating for some people.
Second, Autism and Asperger's Syndrome (two distinctly different neuro-developmental disorders, despite the DSM-V completely removing the Asperger's label) exist on a continuum from very mild to very severe.
Third, both Autism and Asperger's manifest differently in each case, regardless of the degree of severity of the disorder.
I have for 16+ years worked with children with Autism and Asperger's Syndrome. It is possible that Lanza was a person with Asperger's or High Functioning Autism. These individuals are often very bright. I have a son-in-law who is a person with undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome (He has a high school aged son from his first marriage diagnosed with Asperger's. He and my daughter have a four year old daughter who, as yet, is undiagnosed, but presents nearly all of the characteristics of Asperger's). My son-in-law works in the ITT department for our local school district. With computers he is extremely gifted. With people and social situations, not so much.
Please, please, please, before commenting regarding the issue of Autism and/or Asperger's Syndrome, do some serious research. Not every person with Autism is retarded (yes, thanks to Obozo, we're not suppose to use that term). They are not all prone to violence. Not all cases of this disorder present the exact same characteristics or symptomology.
Knoll wrote an article about "pseudocommandos." He pretty much owns the term and he's going to trot it out whenever something happens that has the slightest resemblance to his theory.
There's probably going to be a lot of controversy between those who play up the autism/Asperger's theory and those who are looking for other explanations. In an earlier article, Knoll mentioned those who saw Asperger's symptoms in Jeffrey Dahmer, but here he's going out of his way to avoid discussion autism.
The impression I get is that the psychodynamic stuff may have some validity, but this shooter was very, very distant from the rest of humanity and from ordinary feelings.
He seemed to be smart enough to destroy his hard drive.
So where did you get his medical charts from?
“Autistic spectrum” is just the latest fad term used to aggregate a number of possibly unrelated conditions. “Schizophrenia” has a similar history. It’s just cover for the collective ignorance of the psychiatric profession, which has fallen prey to a puritanical materialism that leads to one scientific dead end after another. Man is hybrid, both machine and spirit, not merely the sum of his chemical constituents, but made in the image of God. Any analysis ignoring this is doomed to wallow in primitive theories of limited benefit to the patient. It is like we have advanced in our biological knowledge in so many good ways, but are still stuck in the “leeches are good for you” stage of psychiatric knowledge. Wasn’t it “Bones” of Star Trek who called 20th Century medicine “stone knives and bear skins?” After my brush with the present state of psychiatry, I have to agree with him. We have a long way to go.
Your ignorance is showing. People on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum have emotions as complex as the rest of us, and can be as sane, or as insane as anyone else.
Empathy may not come easily to people on the autistic spectrum, but you can raise such a child with good moral principles, a sound conscience, and a rational view of the world.
I concur, howerver, with your judgement of the psychiatrist and his psychobabble.
IF that diagnosis was correct. With the huge increase in autism/Aspergers diagnoses lately, there is certainly a case to be made that false diagnoses account for some of that increase. 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.
Most people with Aspergers don’t manifest this kind of violence either, it’s more of a trait of people with some type of psychosis, so I think that probably weighs in favor of a misdiagnosis too. Of course all of that is just armchair speculation, so take it for what it’s worth.
“Lanza was in the autistic spectrum and was incapable of having many of the grand issues that this psychoblabber proposes he had.”
Agreed, a little too much babble.
Although — I sense that regardless of his abilities to excel in certain areas (such as computers), Adam Lanza was probably quite childlike in many ways, hamstrung by his disability (Asperger’s). He probably didn’t have the ability to handle the powers of adult emotions and physical development (i.e., sexual expression) as would a normal 20-year-old. (perhaps that’s just more babble, as well)
Drudge has this Fox News article up, that speculates that the boy was upset because his mother was taking action to gain conservatorship over him and have him committed:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/18/fear-being-committed-may-have-caused-connecticut-madman-to-snap/
Interesting article, worth reading.