I don’t see the relevance but okay. The environment he grew up in was normal by all accounts. All I said. His torturing of small animals was his own doing/choice.
The relevance is that healthy children don’t do that. He was not well, probably ever. His being mentally ill was no more in his control than if he’d had leukemia or cerebral palsy. How is that not sad to you?
It’s the headline because “Patrick Kennedy feels sympathy for the mentally ill” is boring, and the purpose of the headline is to get you interested in reading the article, and watching the interview, not to encourage you to find something else to do. The article itself doesn’t seem to suggest he was wrong in any way to feel sympathy for Loughner.
It’s sad, but I’m not saying I pity him exactly. The guy was a sociopath. He was basically doomed from the start.
Torturing animals is one of the major red lights of a sociopath.
My post was meant to be in support of yours, Guinastasia, but now I’m totally confused as to what side of the fence you’re on?
Of course he was a sociopath. Are you saying you have no pity for sociopaths?
Didn’t say anything about it being sad or not. I just seem to have a different criteria for “bad childhood” than some of you. But I don’t want to get into this as I don’t see where the significant disagreement lies.
To elaborate further: I’m not arguing that his childhood was rainbows and lollipops from his point of view. Just that fact that it’s not necessarily outside factors (like abusive adults) that can turn one into a serial killer. Their brains can already be screwed up with no outside help.
I think you’re right.
I have struggled in a couple of my real-life relationships to find the line between what a person does and the choices they make as a mature human being, and what can be “blamed” on a mental illness or trauma, and there’s definitely not always a clear answer. Pretty much all serial killers, IMO, are sick and deserving of our sympathy and compassion.
It all depends on the situation, I suppose. In the case of Dahmer? Not really. I suppose I pity the fact that he was basically doomed from the start, but I really don’t feel any sympathy for him. For godsakes, the guy killed and ate his victims! Yes, he was poorly wired, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t guilty, or that he should get a pass.
Mental illness is a sad fact of life – but it’s not an excuse to be an evil dick.
Well, there’s the question: if his brain was so screwed up (and I agree that it doesn’t take abusive parents or a deprived childhood), how much of his behavior was choice?
Allow me to make my own, possibly arbitrary, distinction. There are some people who kill or torture as a means to an end. People like Stalin, or Pol Pot who apparently think nothing of killing millions to consolidate power. On a smaller scale – maybe an armed robber who wants money and will kill anyone he thinks might identify him. These people get no sympathy at all from me. The rest of us are either tools or obstacles to people like them. I’m thinking of someone like the fictional Tom Ripley.
OTOH, there are people like Dahmer, who seems to have been driven to these acts as their horrible twisted goal, or to achieve some form of satisfaction or lessen some kind of pain. It seems to me that they are more deserving of sympathy because they are less in control of themselves.
I was under the impression that there is no treatment that has been shown to be effective for psychopaths.
They are predators in the purest sense of the word. When I hear about a psychopathic serial killer part of me feels they should be euthanized, much like we put down a tiger that has attacked and maimed visitors to a zoo. I feel sorry for the beast but I can’t help but think euthanasia the best option. Doing this to a human being of course goes against everything I believe about the death penalty, vigilante justice, etc. So I’m conflicted to say the least.
Maybe I just have a bad case of compassion fatigue.
There’s a difference between psychopathic and psychotic or otherwise mentally ill. Psychopaths are not mentally ill in the sense that they are out of touch with reality or don’t know what they’re doing. They know what they’re doing, they just don’t care.
Ted Bundy, for example, was a pure psychopath and sexual sadist, not somebody who was hallucinating or paranoid.
It sounds like the Tucson shooter is schizophrenic, not psychopathic.