Sunday, January 13, 2013

Mental Health and Gun Control (updated)



[Update 13 Jan 2013]  From this morning's Los Angeles Times:


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Our principal essay on gun control
simpliciter  may be viewed here.   The present note concerns a much narrower topic:   namely, the present national discussion of mental health policy as specifically influenced by the recent events in Newtown.   Once again, we shall refrain from the political as such, our focus being logical and psychological.
 
The nation was recently treated to an extraordinary spectacle.   After lurking for several days in their tents, the NRA sent out a spokesman to proclaim that the solution to school shootings was for the Federal government (pause for emphasis) to do the following things:
            (1) Place armed guards in every school in the nation
            (2) Draw up a list of loonies (again, the Federal government apparently to make the determination of who is loony and who is not) and (presumably, since otherwise it would be an empty gesture) detain them pre-emptively, in (again, presumably, since prison space is at a premium) giant sprawling concentration camps.

Now, both of these may be jolly ideas -- as promised, not taking any political positions here -- but they are … quite … surprising, coming from a milieu as viscerally opposed to Federal intervention as the NRA.   After all, the main reason they demand “semi”-automatic weapons with armor-piercing ordnance, is for an anticipated showdown, not with aggressive squirrels (as they would have us believe), but rather (Waco-style) with Federal officers.

But apart from this politico-cognitive dissonance (which is not, after all, unprecedented:  the supposedly anti-big-government Dubya administration  instituted the most intrusive Federal education policy since forced busing), there is the matter of, well, the facts.  Keeping assault rifles out of the hands of homicidal maniacs  is, perhaps, a laudable goal (and you see, once again, how scrupulously we maintain our distance  from any sort of political axe-grinding:  Perhaps you believe that arming homicidal maniacs is a good thing, since they keep down overpopulation and provide grist for Hollywood script-writers -- being completely non-committal here), but -- sticking to the subject here, folks, as so few are able to do -- the specific Newtown events  in no wise buttress the case for more intensive screening/waterboarding/castration/whatever  of raving loonies.  For:

(1)  Existing regulations (passed over the screams of the NRA) requiring a 14-day waiting-period  did in fact, in this case, prevent the perp from buying a weapon.
(2)  The actual perp  had no police record whatsoever.  He had not been diagnosed as either a paranoid schizophrenic or a sociopath -- the kind you worry about.  Simply being a tad Asperger’s  won’t cut it -- if you detentioned all the aspies, there would be no-one left working at Microsoft or N[additional alphabetic characters redacted].  His mother had money to burn and plenty of time (alimony, no job) and lived in an upscale area, so access to premium mental-health services  was not an issue.

Now, there is in fact an interesting mental-health aspect to the Newtown case, but it is scarcely one that the NRA and their lapdogs will be comfortable with. Namely -- his enabler -- his more-than-enabler, his agent provocateur:   his possibly paranoid, definitely gun-fetishist mother, who took him to shooting ranges to improve his aim.  And the awkward thing for the wingnutters is:  She fits (like a fingerprint-withholding glove) the profile of the Tea-Party/tin-hat/NRA flake.  So (to continue our earlier thought-experiment) if we were to intern everyone fitting that profile … there would be nobody left to pay dues to the NRA, and the Republican side of the aisle in the House  would lie empty.


*     *     *
~ Commercial break ~
Nook lovers are book lovers!
We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

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So, are we going to detain everyone with weird or toxic parents?  Pretty extreme -- but even that would not work, as you may glean from a rather remarkable article in this morning’s New York Times, by a reporter (Andrew Solomon) who was, so to speak, “embedded” with the parents of one of the Columbine shooters:

Over a period of eight years, I spent hundreds of hours with the Klebolds.  I began  convinced that, if I dug deeply enough into their character, I would understand why Columbine happened -- that I would recognize damage in their household that spilled over into catastrophe.

(An aside:  This was truly a heroic repertorial undertaking.   He had every reason to suspect that he would be embedding himself, long-term,  into a den of vipers.  Personally, I would not -- simply going by what little we know --  have wanted to spend ten minutes in the company of Nancy Lanza.)

Instead, I came to view the Klebolds  not only as inculpable, but as admirable, moral, intelligent and kind people  whom I would gladly have had as parents myself.  [This] made Columbine far more bewildering, and forced me to acknowledge that people are unknowable.

That last generalization, strictly speaking, goes beyond the facts;  yet my own experience, over sixty-some-odd years, serves only to buttress this deep dark truth.

“Only connect,” E. M. Forster proposed.
“Only  we can’t,” the psychoanalyst knows.
-- Janet Malcolm, PsychoanalysisThe Impossible Profession (1981)
 
And yet, having learned that, and said that, he delivers himself, a propos of the Newtown case, of the following extraordinary obtusity:  “We’d have wished for more intrusiveness … from Nancy Lanza.”  (sic).
There was no lack of intrusiveness.  She home-schooled him on and off, beginning in elementary school, and again in high school.  She battled with his high-school.  She shoved him prematurely into college, where he floundered.  She bathed him in a fine broth of “prepper” paranoia.  She kept her home walled-off  even to her card-game friends.  And by her own lights, she was absolutely devoted to him (give her credit -- a thankless task).

So:  We shall never be able to predict, when this or that one might crack;  and the police-state measures required to prevent all such outbreaks  would  in any case  be intolerable.  But we can ensure that, when they do crack, they’re not packing rapid-fire weapons with armor-piercing ordnance  and hundred-bullet magazines.



* * *
Disclaimer:
Lest anyone imagine that I harbor mean and hurtful thoughts about guns per se,
check out the action at the site of my buddy,
the two-fisted, pistol-packing, wise-cracking pre-Consiliar private eye,
Murphy!

* * *


[Psychological appendix, 24 December 2012]
Considered as an objective, empirical discussion of relevant and knowable issues, the debate (or dialogue, or parallel monologues) on the mental health angle of the Newtown shooting,  doesn’t make sense.  Even now, weeks afterwards, nothing is known of the shooter's  ‘motive’ (seeing the thing as end-directed, and which assumes that the shooter himself knew what he wanted) or even the trigger of the attack (the immediate cause or 'releaser', not requiring any conscious knowledge:  a term applicable to animals and psychotics  as well as to rational actors).   The young man himself was not on anybody’s radar;  indeed, he seems to be one of only a handful of Americans who have not broadcast intimate details about themselves on Facebook, including rants which, seen in retrospect from some disaster, might seem telling.   And unlike many other would-be teen assassins, he did not tip his hand in advance.


From the plain standpoint of reducing the likely deadliness of future such attacks (deadliness, not frequency;  the latter would be difficult to effect) we would be talking of such things as longer waiting periods (to frustrate the impulsive), a sharp limit on the size of ammo clips and armor- (or glass-door-)piercing capabilities of the ordnance, and, yes, things like armed guards in schools, or dressing the pupils in body-armor (**), patroling the halls with a rhinoceros -- things like that.  [**Note:  I wrote that part as a joke, but reality is already way past fantasy -- and each twist and turn of this amazing case is being commented on in a watchful Europe:



Depuis la terrible fusillade, les parents américains cherchent à protéger leurs enfants avec des équipements de sécurité. Produit phare : le sac à dos blindé à l'effigie des princesses Disney ou de The Avengers.

So far, though, no reports of a Rhinoceros in the Room.]


~
Gratuit !
Lisez le conte entier
~

These matters are practical, technological, not psychological.   True, you will have to deal with psychological factors, here as in any case of government regulation, namely the normal non-pathological attitudes among the general public, but that is quite different from the psychopathology of potential perps:

There is no psychological profile specific enough to pinpoint school shooters in advance. But one common thread may offer the best opportunity to intercept them: They tend to be indiscreet during their planning stages. The difference between a tragedy and a tragedy averted, experts say, is often somebody who knows something deciding to speak up.
Ironically, the security measures instituted by many schools after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado may discourage students from sharing potentially life-saving information.

And yet, post-Newtown,  the mental-health theme  is very much present.


And the reason is, it is not really the cleidoic and probably forever unknowable Adam Lanza who is on the couch, nor even (a potentially more interesting analysand) his fearful, armed mom, who at least left behind more by way of documentation and obiter dicta.  No,  the patient recumbent and free-associating away, is the American psyche -- for the moment, distracted by the tragedy   from our usual daily distractions and diversions.  For the sleeping beast of the id is but slumbering, and can be shaken awake by a shock.  As, this curent story, from this morning’s New York Times:

Indian authorities throttled movement in the heart of the capital on Monday, shutting roads and railway stations in a bid to restore law and order after police fought pitched battles with protesters enraged by the gang rape of a young woman.
Singh’s government … has been caught off-guard by the depth of the popular outrage as protests have snowballed and spread to other cities. India is seen as one of the most unsafe places in the world to be a woman.

Seen only thus far, the Indian popular response to the rape incident  is as mysterious as the American popular response to the killings at Newtown.  For,  grotesque and violent events, far worse than that one, happen all the time in India  without leading to pitched battles in the streets.  And as one observer wisely remarks:

“People are not reacting to just one rape case. They are reacting to the general malaise, the frustration with the leadership. There is a feeling that the leadership is completely disconnected,” said political analyst Neerja Chowdhury.

In other words, the incident was a trigger, a final camel’s-back-breaking straw, la goutte qui fait déborder le vase.

And that is a good thing;  only,  we need to be conscious of the true nature of the debate, else we get mired in the particularities of one given incident, or, worse, talk past each other since we are only nominally discussing the actual incident, but are in reality doing such things as pushing pre-set agendas (that is almost always the politicians’ response) or flailing about, sincerely but semi-unconsciously, in the roiled-up juices of our own psyche.


[Update 28 December 2012]  In case you thought the observation that comparable violent events happen in India all the time, was overblown, here is just the latest  among those that happened to make it into the world press:

Une adolescente indienne, victime d'un viol collectif, s'est suicidée après qu'un policier eut tenté de la convaincre de retirer sa plainte et d'épouser un de ses violeurs, a-t-on appris aujourd'hui auprès de la police et de ses proches. La jeune fille, âgée de 17 ans, a avalé du poison et a été retrouvée morte hier soir. Son suicide intervient après un autre viol collectif d'une étudiante dans un autobus à New Delhi le 16 décembre, qui a provoqué une vague d'indignation en Inde. L'état de santé de la victime est extrêmement grave.
L'adolescente qui s'est suicidée avait subi un viol en bande le 13 novembre pendant un festival à Diwali dans la région de Patiala, dans l'Etat du Pendjab.

[Update 13 Jan 2013] For the latest on the psychosociology of recent events in India, and their impact on America, check this:

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While we are on the subject of national psyches and armed violence,   let us consider an earlier case involving guns:  the Guns of August, 1914.
The English psychoanalyst Ernest Jones writes:

After the First World War, the strong dislike in England of everything German  was incomparably stronger than it was after the Second World War, although one might have thought it was more justified on the latter occasion.
-- Ernest Jones, Freud: The Last Phase (1957), p. 48

Younger readers, well acquainted with the atrocities of the Second World War,  while barely cognizant of the First, may nod absently in agreement;   but from a historian’s standpoint, there is more to it than that, and Jones’ fascinating observation is an understatement.   For there seems to be a sort of consensus among historians, that, unlike the long-prepared and go-for-broke Axis aggression that launched WWII, the outbreak of the earlier war had been something of a muddle, not due primarily to enraged war-aims of a consciously aggressive German nation, aroused as one man, but owing more to the pig-headedness of its fumbling leaders, together with a continent-spanning web of secret treaties and entangling alliances, which wound up dragging everybody in after some stupid little incident in Sarajevo, -- a juggernaut rolling along unstoppably with a momentum and logic (or illogic) of its own:  rather the way the pre-set tolerance-levels of programmed trading unleashed the shuddering stock-market meltdown of the 1980s.   Nor did the Germans or anyone else have any idea how deadly and how interminable the conflict would turn out to be: soldiers from several nations marched off to the front with cockades on their caps, figuring the bloody thing would be over and done with in time for tiffin.


As historian Gordon Craig put it (Germany: 1866-1945 [1978], p. 303), the Wilhelmine diplomats “allowed themselves fatalistically to be borne away by the flood in 1914” (a curiously feminine and sexual image for those stiff-collared Prussian militarists, by the way);  whereas the Nazis were themselves the flood.
And yet, during and after that conflict, Englishmen (and many Americans) reacted to Germans (and to German-Americans) with loathing; whereas, after the truly deep German guilt for the 1939-45 conflict (a guilt that definitely includes the women, who thought Hitler was just adorable), we reacted instead  with the Marshall Plan.
Go figure.
~

We might pursue this line of musing  to armed conflicts  closer to home.

(1)  First, Vietnam, from which -- as from the Edenic Fall -- we date all our later woes.
In psychoanalytic terms, it represented a true repetition compulsion, since, as most of us were unaware at the time, the French had already been down that road, and lost.   Rather than let well enough alone, we poked the same tarbaby, then punched it, then pummeled it, then grasped it with both arms.  Harder -- More -- Escalate!  (The French term for this is:  fuite en avant.)
(2)  Next, the war in Afghanistan, which  in terms of sheer duration  actually does make the Great War somewhat resemble a pre-tiffen stroll.
Now, as to our essential reason for invading, there are no psychological questions to pose.  Al-Qaeda had hit us with intolerable attacks, of which 9/11 was only the most recent, and they were sitting in Taliban territory, thumbing their noses.   An armed response was a no-brainer, and most of the world was with us (not only in spirit, but some of them  with boots on the ground).   The fact that we charged in there, and single-mindedly pursued al-Qaeda until we had captured Ben Laden in his cave … oh, wait.  At this point, the narrative does get a bit muddled.
A thorny problem for future psychohistorians.  Myself, I cannot begin to unravel it.  Those later in a position to take a long view back  will doubtless notice certain odd features:
(a)  The initial use of the term “Crusade” by the Bush Administration.  It was soon retracted as a gaffe, but was the sort of gaffe quite familiar to Freudians.
(b)  The truly odd fact that Bush-the-Younger or Dubya-the-Young   had explicitly campaigned in 2000 against “nation-building” (though it was an odd issue to choose), and yet, one year later, swiveled around 180 degrees.   Some Oedipal scenario involved Bush Senior?   I have no idea.
(c)  The feminist vendetta against the Taliban, which predated 9/11 and had entirely other grounds.

(3)  Finally (and let's hope that it really is final), the war against Iraq.   Here the motivations were much more obscure, and some of them fabricated.    Much about the whole thing seems delusional.   A soldier of my acquaintance was part of a platoon ordered to go out and dig around randomly in the desert, on the chance that their shovels might strike a hidden cache of “red mercury” (which is one of the more imaginary varieties of WMD).   With all the time in the world to plan for the thing -- since, after all, Iraq had not attacked us, nor was poised for attack -- the superhawks rushed the thing, sending in troops with inadequately armored Humvees.    Allowing for a certain quantum of sheer Bushie stupidity ("Dubya, yer doin' a heckuva job"), there are still several anomalies that remain unexplained.

Countering later criticism of a long list of such DoD inadequacies, Donald Rumsfeld famously quipped, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.”   That sally was widely derided, in part because of commentators’ eventual awareness that the fact we did not have the army we might have wished we had, was in part due, not to military necessity, but to the Bush desire to have it all, actually lowering taxes in wartime.  (Again, possibly an Oedipal note, against his one-term loser of a father?  And a late-hit against  Bush Senior’s “Read my lips” fiasco.)  But more to our present purpose  is a possible unconscious subtext to that epigram:  “You go to war against the enemy you have, not the enemy you wish you had.”    There are several layers to this.

(i)   For some of its proponents, the Iraq war seems to have elements of an actual displacement (Verschiebung), in the Freudian sense, the real target being Iran.   As, indeed, some of the superhawks quipped at the time:  “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad; real men want to go to Tehran.”  (The reasons for Iran as target  are interesting, but are not to our present purpose.)
(ii)  The United States had plainly little to gain from this adventure.  Cynics on the left said it was all about oil,  but that really didn’t happen at all.   If you wish cynically to seek an economic motivation, it would be in plum contracts for Dick Cheney’s pals in Halliburton and the like -- a windfall for a few, but the bill for which was picked up by the tax-payers (or would be, by tomorrow’s tax-payers), and which thus harmed the nation as a whole.   Another motivation (for a few) was to do a favor for Country A, by way of compensation for not taking on Iran for them.
(iii)  Again, speculatively, our old friend Oedipus.   Dad had done everything right throughout his long life, while the wastrel son  goofed and fooled.   But Dad had fallen down (one could argue onself into believing, though in retrospect the caution of Bush Senior seems providential) in his curtain-raiser Gulf War;  now the son would show him and do it right.   It is difficult to put any other construction on Dubya’s astonishing premature-ejaculation of “Mission Accomplished”, playing dress-up in a flight uniform and prancing atop an aircraft carrier.   Many of us boys used to do such things, safety-pinning a towel around our necks capewise, and pretending to be Superman.  But most of us knocked it off by around six years old.


~

[24 Dec 2012]  Update re the Webster matter.
It is as if Satan, savoring his Newtown escapade like a fine wine, had asked himself:  What can I do for an encore?
True, I could shoot up another school;  but that would be … derivative.  Been there done that.
-- Hey, I’ve got it! (he says to himSelf).  Lure some first responders into an ambush!!

Far be it from me  to empathize into the thought-processes of Satan (that task defeated Murphy, here).   But -- just on a hunch -- we’d better get some armed guards at the nunnery …

Practical legal lessons to derive from this latest incident:
(1)  In the first instance, none.  The guy was a convicted felon, already forbidden to buy arms.  No new laws needed  in that respect.
(2) (and this is admittedly weaker)  Then how did he get that semi-automatic? -- Presumably, stole it.  -- But then, if the proposed ban on such weapons  were put into effect, he wouldn’t have had anything to steal.
(3)  But as against that -- In this particular instance, luring a handful  into a trap, machine-gun-style shooting was not the point.  Any sniper rifle would do just fine.

One further legal lesson (nothing to do with gun control per se):
(4)  Anyone who kills his grandmother with a hammer, is permanently too dangerous to be paroled.

~

[Appendix, 26 December 2012]   
In an effort  better to understand the psychology of gun nuts  Second-Amendment fundamentalists, we’ll post from time to time  such anecdotes as may throw light on this.  The point is not to highlight fringe cases, but to explore what is indisputably a large part of the American mainstream -- and which has, after all, largely had its way, via the legislative process.

The following, for instance, which appeared in this morning’s Washington Post, does not concern some marginal wacko, but an actual Republican House majority leader.  Oh, wait …

December 25
The day after Labor Day, just as campaign season was entering its final frenzy, FreedomWorks, the Washington-based tea party organization, went into free fall.
Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.
The coup lasted all of six days. By Sept. 10, Armey was gone — with a promise of $8 million — and the five ousted employees were back.

Presumably the moral of the story (NRA-style)  is that this tragic incident never would have happened, if only those two top employees had themselves been heavily armed.   Then Armey would have been outgunned.  Or, if he too was packing (concealed), they could have simply had a shoot-out, may the better man win.



The fellow who is to cough up the eight million is himself a pretty interesting character:

The force behind their return was Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative grass-roots organizations.
Stephenson wanted a substantial sum spent in support of Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), a tea party favorite and Stephenson’s local congressman, several who attended the retreat recalled. Walsh garnered national headlines during the campaign when he questioned whether his opponent, Tammy Duckworth, a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot who lost both legs in Iraq, was a “true hero.”

It is apparent that such thinking cannot be understood as simply lying at this point or that point on the traditional politico-economic spectrum from liberal to conservative.   Something else -- something darker -- is going on.


[Update]  That crack about the “shoot-out” was intended as satire -- and not very trenchant satire at that, since it presumably portrays the principles as more extreme than they really are.  And yet someone just posted the following response to the WaPo article:

Liberals and other misguided leftists (are there really any other kind?) of course fail to take the lesson that this article contains. 
 Well, here's one lone American patriot who has. 
 If the three weeping women had Bushmasters--the gun of choice of patriots and "responsible" gun owners, they wouldn't have been weeping. And they might have watered the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.  
 …  It seems that Brother Dick hasn't got his "man card" yet or he would have been carrying. 

Now, to me, that reads like satire as well, and rather broader.  Yet apparently a number of readers took it seriously,  and got all in a worrit.  These were then scolded by another poster,  saying that the original poster showed “irony …  so plain that his tongue was practically sticking out the other cheek? Lighten up, people.”

Since I don’t know anything about the original poster, I can’t be sure whether it reflects his actual politics.  Nor is that in itself of the least importance.    The point here is simply that it has become difficult, in some cases, to distinguish between satire and actual delusion.



[Update 5 janvier 2013]  Tel un bacille:
Four people were dead including the gunman following a hostage-taking incident on Saturday in Aurora, Colorado, the same town where a man shot dead 12 people and wounded 58 more at a movie theater last July. 
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/05/us-usa-shooting-colorado-idUSBRE90408W20130105
(This world is too weird;  I should get back to math...)


~

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