A few points:
(1) I'm not an expert on mass murderers (suicidal or not) but
from what I have read of Lankford's "theory" seems to be consistent
with some of the research that is available. Whether it explains
all mass murderers or a specialized subset of them is an empirical
question. The viewpoint that a mass murderer is "making a statement"
for some act of disrespect or as revenge in a spectacular way is not
original with Lankford. The issue of mental illness is, I think, quite
complex and I don't think that Lankford has dealt with it adequately.
Consider the following quote from the NY Times article:
|The specific psychiatric diagnoses vary widely, and include everything
|from clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder to
|schizophrenia and others forms of psychosis.
It strikes me odd that almost all major psychiatric diagnoses seem
to be associated with being a mass murderer. Again, subgroups
may be inappropriately combined.
(2) I learned about the Newtown attack while giving a final exam
(I was reading news.google.com) and though I was shocked by the
number of victims, especially children, I was further disturbed to
learn that it was the SECOND attack being reported. Another
news item reported a man in China who had gone to a school and
stabbed 22 children and one teacher. Here is one article on
the attack:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20723910
and another is
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/index.html
Apparently this was not the first such school attack in China, however,
because only a knife was used, the outcome was quite different.
NPR covered the story a little bit in the latter half of this article:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/12/17/167475324/china-cracks-down-on-doomsday-rumors-link-seen-to-friday-attack
Consider the following quote:
|"'Yesterday, I watched an entire day's worth of CCTV4 news. I watched
|how America is in chaos and an abyss of suffering, with guns spreading
|unchecked, and had no idea whatsoever about the extremely tragic crime
|in Henan!,' wrote one user on Weibo, in a translation by ChinaSmack."
And consider this follow-up article:
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking_news_detail.asp?id=29452&icid=2&d_str=
(3) The Newtown incident has many disturbing details associated with it
(e.g., what was the nature of the disorders that the shooter had, why did
the mother appear to cultivate gun use in her son, and so on). It is going
to take some time to figure out what happened if we ever do. Simplistic
explanations for public consumption might be appropriately ignored.
(4) Although Lankford appears to have published in some serious journals,
there is the issue of a thesis he did while at Haverford College; see:
http://thesis.haverford.edu/dspace/handle/10066/627
The thesis can be accessed here:
http://thesis.haverford.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10066/627/2002LankfordA.pdf?sequence=5
Presumably Lankford's tongue was firmly in his cheek when he argued that
Mark Twain was Satan. Then again, are his arguments here any more
persuasive
than the ones he made in the NY Times?
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
-----Original Message-----
On Tue, 18 Dec 2012 08:22:34 -0800, Marie Helweg-Larsen wrote:
Here is the link to the New York Times article
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/opinion/what-drives-suicidal-mass-killers.html
I found the model interesting as well although I also do not know how
consistent it is with other research on suicide (for example). Anyone out
there
who is familiar with this research?
I thought the last line was a bit of a let-down - obviously there are huge
cross-cultural differences in suicidal mass killers exactly because (as he
notes) culture influences affect all these 3 things (as well as access to
methods by which to kills many people at once). The more interesting
question
is why these young men would have done had they been born in Denmark (or
another country with low rates of violence and few weapons).
-----Original Message-----
On Tuesday, December 18, 2012 11:10 AM, Jim Clark wrote:
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: [tips] Psychological Explanation for Suicidal Mass Killers
Hi
The NY Times has a piece by Lankford, a Criminal Justice scholar who offers
a
psychological explanation for suicidal mass killers. The article is the
first
listed on Lankford's site below:
http://adamlankford.com/pressroom.htm
The gist is a three-part model
1. mental health problems that contribute to desire to die 2. sense of
victimization 3. desire for fame and attention
He appears to have a number of works advancing this view. I'm not familiar
enough with the literature to know how valid the model is.
---
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