Holmes crazy act doesn't work.
 

The jury finds him guilty of murder.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/us...-shooting.html

PS - if somebody can edit my typo in the topic line and make it " Holmes' ", that would be great. Thanks.

What is the dividing line between "sane" and "insane", Ike? Or is that to simplistic a question? I've always thought "insane" would mean an individual is not truly in charge of his own thoughts/actions.

But a person isn't 'in charge' of their actions, who is? I haven't heard of anyone actually being controlled by radio waves from aliens or the CIA.

In fact 'being insane' means 'makes very bad decisions as to what to do.' What else can it mean? We distinguish between persons who's decisions largely make some sort of sense, and persons who are so fucked-up they don't eat unless they randomly collide with food. Somewhere in there we make a line and say the far side of it is 'legally insane.' How we describe that line seems pretty fuzzy and semantically odd to me. So i have no idea what side of it to put Holmes on.

There are plenty of philosophical questions surrounding the insanity defense. You have identified the central one. I have always thought that it takes some sort of mental flaw to engage in cruelty, including murder. On the other hand, one might suppose that there is simply such a thing as evil. That, of course, leads to the question of what is the cause of evil. There are theological theories on the nature and origin of evil, but many do not subscribe to religious explanations for anything.

Do those who would reject theological definitions of evil nevertheless recognize that some force motivates some people to treat others with cruelty and disdain, even when there is no gain other than the satisfaction of such acts? Even when there is a supposedly rational motivation immense cruelty, such as marshaling power, can use of such means still be described as evil?

I believe that evil motivates people to act in ways that can otherwise be described as cruel, immoral or unethical. I don't think that we can objectively discern the source of such evil.

Regards,

D-Ray

.... How, or why, does that seed of evil get planted and take root in some individuals and not others?

I believe that it is because those people lack empathy.

Yes, they lack empathy. But how did that happen?
Are people hard wired from birth to not have empathy? Are they born with it and lose it somewhere along the way?

I'm leaning toward believing that some people are just born evil and no matter what their early life experiences are.... They are destined to carry out evil acts.

Yes, I believe that they are born that way and no amount of psychiatric help can change their thinking.

Is evil an objective standard?

Regards,

D-Ray

Bad genes and a bad upbringing - nature and nurture. Get one of them right you have a chance of overcoming the effects of a substandard other.

Both bad - looking at a big mess down the road if some environmental variable doesn't change the inevitable.

To my mind, this would be insanity, or at the very least a serious mental defect. The individual is driven by something they simply cannot control. They act purely for the sake of the act itself. Murder just to murder. Steal when they have plenty of money...and so on. The non-insane criminal would be someone who is fully aware that what they do is wrong, what the ramifications of their actions are and are fully capable of stopping themselves any time they choose. But, they choose to do it anyways because there is some motivation for it. Money, sex, revenge, jealousy, power, etc., etc.........

The former is not necessarily evil, because the individual may not actually mean any harm. They're just messed up, for lack of a better term. I'd say the latter, those who know better but commit heinous acts as a means to an end, are what represent "evil".

That's just my thoughts on it anyhow.

Dave

Yes.... Good points, Dave .

I see someone like the Unabomber fitting your description. His head was messed up. In his mind he thought he was doing a noble thing. In reality, he was terrorizing people.

Those two guys that recently broke out of prison I see differently. They killed as a means to end for their benefit.

Mental health isn't like most other medical practice. No scans can show pathology, only levels of brain activity, which only tells you that some areas are running really "hot." No blood tests or pee tests provide diagnostic information. No x-rays to show what's "broken." The diagnoses are clinical evaluations of symptoms with decision trees where "yes" or "no" answers to questions direct the clinician to the next set of Y or N questions, etc., etc. We spend considerable time in supervision and group clinical consultation working on honing our diagnostic skills. So...what have I learned, and what are my clinical opinions on this subject?

OK...here goes. In my humble clinical opinion the only people who can be considered not responsible for their actions are suffering from psychosis so severe that they are totally unable to differentiate actual right from wrong. They may be suffering from delusions such as "command hallucinations", where a higher power or some mystical manifestation is instructing them to take certain action that a stable person would normally reject as dangerous to self or others. They literally don't know it's wrong. They are no more responsible for driving their car into a group of people at a bus stop because the voices instructed them to, than is the driver who suffers a seizure, goes unconscious and drives their car into a group of people at a bus stop. They have disturbances of thought process, not mood or emotion.

The difficulty is always determining if they're faking it, or actually delusional. How that is done is not my area of expertise. I'm better with disorders of character and personality. Those who have emotional disturbances and accompanying behavioral problems. Histrionic, narcissistic, borderline, anti-social personalities. In cases like Holmes, sociopathic personalities. No empathy, no concern for the rights and feeling of others. They know right from wrong...they're just pissed off over their own miserable existence and don't care.

There's one other specifically disturbing condition called reactive attachment disorder that causes a similar but significantly more severe lack of empathy and ability to have reasonable human interaction. It complicated and related to missing attachment experience in infancy and early childhood. If anybody is interested, it's pretty fascinating but would take just too much time try to explain here. But you can always google around to get some information on it. Those who have it are pretty much impossible to deal with, and often extremely dangerous.

But I've rambled long enough and the smart phone is about to go dead.

Thnx for the insight.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

Thanks, Ike. I'll be searching that soon.

Well...that depends on a lot of things. One may or may not have a chance...and one may not have a chance even if both are right at the beginning of life. It's more complicated than that. It's not either/or. For instance, it often doesn't matter much how good one's genes are if they have a really ugly negative infant attachment experience.

Yes, covered above - environmental variables can be positive or negative.

I read up on that last night. I'm far from being any sort of expert, but it seems to me the gist of "reactive attachment disorder" is that the subject never really develops the ability to feel affection, passion or love for others instead reacting to these things negatively, even violently in some extreme cases. In other words, trying to give one of these individuals a hug could cost you teeth? Or maybe your life? :eek:

Man, that is terrible.:(

It's not clear precisely what the causes are but it seems more prevalent in children raised outside of a loving environment. Most sufferers seem to have been raised in a clinical or worse, an abusive environment.

Is that correct?

Some people are so narcissistic that they cpome to believe that everyone else in their world owes them whatever it is they happen to want. This does not necessarily lead to actions such as Holmes' I did know a young man who simply rejected his mother because he decided that she was no longer a source of endless funds. He broke her heart.

I think that's more accurately a description of sociopathy rather than narcissism.

Not this one he never physically hurt people or got violent - he simply walked away.

Which, of course, did hurt his mother. Perhaps not physically but a sociopath isn't necessarily predisposed to doing physical harm to others.

As I understand it a sociopath doesn't care about the effects of his actions on others, so long as his needs/desires are met. His cruelties don't have to be physical they can be emotional, financial or material.

In the interest of clinical accuracy...

Narcissists, antisocials and sociopaths all share a lack of empathy, interpersonal exploitation, and severe self-absorption as part of their presentation. My experience in watching forensic psychiatrists at work is that when a narcissist crosses the line and commits any act that might possibly be identified as unlawful (whether law enforcement takes action or not), such as theft, extortion, physical threats, physical violence, robbery, fatal physical acts...you catch my drift, eh? The narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis goes out the window in favor of antisocial personality disorder. If you look at the diagnostic criteria for the latter, there's a number of criteria specific to violations of the law, whether felony or misdemeanor level.

Sociopathy is not a DSM diagnostic category. It may not ever have been. It's used in discussion, evaluation and diagnostic formulation to mostly to identify the severity of somebody who's probably diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. In descriptive sections of an assessment, terminology such as "sociopathic behavior" or "sociopathic presentations" will be used to clarify and emphasize pathology and behavior...but it's not a diagnostic category. In simple terms...really bad antisocials are sociopathic. At least that how I see it.