Anders Behring Breivik -Aspie?

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[quote="Surfman"]Who will be the brave knight that will slay this dragon?

ooops that sounds a lot like Brevik doesnt it?[/quote

Surfman-

we can make a whole list of guys who have aspie traits- some of them will have massive empathy and do stuff like plan and save meticulously then treck off to Africa and sink a well in a village,maybe on an island , but they never get mentioned in the media- saving 200 lives is not newsworthy.

All I know is the potential spin and all the groups over here who stand to benefit by labelling him an aspie is not going to do us any favors I don't think , in this climate . Unless you can think of any. I'm open to discussion, because i don't for a moment think I've got a monopoply on the truth.

Think of all the tax they can gather from employed aspies

Think of all the welfare they can save

Think of all the problems like bullying that could greatly diminish and/or go away completely

Reduction in deranged neurodiverse on an angry rampage against their oppressors

This is all just the tip of the iceberg......

However, there are much bigger issues below the surface

The clash of the old world with the new

Warlords money and self interest

Gods in heaven, demons in hell, us in the middle of their battles

They'll definitely go for the first two points. No probs.

They rest they'll agree with, until they get the first two.

Do I need to tell you how this goes?




Man they just need to see the human pyramid , the hierarcy for what it is and how most of us are locked into it and how a few ultra high aggressive use ice axes to climb up and down the human mountain to get what they want.


Us in the middle- I didn't sign up for this at birth choice meeting 101.

True, armies throughout history had to develop new and novel ways to induce soldiers to actually kill another human. Once they get past the nerve wracking experience the first time then blood lust and propaganda take over. Many a mass murderer was under the pay of some government or kingdom under the guise of being a soldier.

Paradoxically very normal people can want to kill as unusual circumstances and belief in propoganda may precede the urge to kill. Examples here include Nazi Germany and Rwanda. Many serial killers also carry a belief that they are doing "gods work" in a puritanical ritual. Others have a satanic belief in sacrifice and many simply have an overwhelming desire to convert their violent sexual urges to reality. There are copious numbers of books written on the subject.

Individuals may also follow a path that takes them on a quest to kill for a belief in a greater cause (Timothy McVeigh and Anders BreveiK).

I want to comment on this and say that the type of "empathy" that aspies categorically lack is the practical kind, the ability to easily understand what a persons feelings and motivations are in day to day situations. This is different than a psychopathic lack of empathy (which this guy clearly had). An aspie will, 99% of the time, know that understanding other people's emotions is important, and will make an effort to do so as to avoid confrontation and hurting people's feelings. A psychopath will fail to see why what other people feel is important at all, and thus will not care if they cause immense trauma in other people.

As to the main issue of whether Breivik was an aspie, I have to admit that some of his behavior does seem a bit Asperger-ish. I can tell you from personal experience that WoW seems to attract aspies in general (many were in my guild), most obviously because of the escape from reality it provides, but also because of the repetitive tasks, the spreadsheet number-crunching (there is actually a site devoted to this called elitistjerks.com), etc. Breivik's lack of an ability to "fit in" and obsessive interest also point towards Asperger's.

I do agree with this person though:

Many news sites don’t, but BBC News:

Professor Coid says key to the diagnostics would be whether or not Mr Breivik had any close friendships – such as a girlfriend.

“I would be interested in whether in the past he has had normal close friendships, and whether his mental state has deteriorated since then. If he hasn’t had any, then maybe we are talking about someone who is closer to the Unabomber, who was cut off from society.”

[...]

If we are talking about someone who was cut off socially, “this would indicate a more schizoid personality – an highly functioning individual with a form of autism, and an increasing obsession with right-wing ideology



Dear Prof. Jeremy Coid,

I just read your interview in the BBC News and since then, I worry a lot about myself and can’t stop thinking about it. I hope you as an expert can help me deal with it. I highly suspect, that I also got this so called “asperger syndrome”, a form of autism. I didn’t get a diagnosis yet, but I also spent a lot of time alone, in front of the computer in my life, cut off socially. I am probably sort of a “loner”. Just like this mass-murder Anders Bering Breivik. But there is even more: I am approximately the same age as him, and I also didn’t have a girlfriend yet. Just like him. As a kid, I also watched a lot of documentaries about the Knights Templar. He probably did so, too. I am some highly functioning individual with a form of autism. According to an expert, he also may have. I am in fear of my brain, what if I really got this autistic form? Maybe I go mad, too. Please tell me, how likely do you think it is that I also become a mass-murder?

Thanks a lot,

anton

I see you have done a double-post on this, but what I said there applies:

I really don't know if you are winding him up or if you are entirely serious. Maybe it's just me be I can't tell from the way you've written it.

Thank you.

Sociopaths do FEEL some kind empathy, IMO.

If they didn't, how could they read others and manipulate people so well?

They have it, maybe what THEY don't have is sympathy. They know how people feel, they just don't care.

I'm tired of empathy being such a huge component of what makes someone *good* in most people's eyes.

IMO many people lack empathy. They could be BORN as good or BAD people, though, and I don't that most people aren't born rotten.

It would be extremely easy to spot an autistic sociopath, it'd just be obvious. Not to so with the NT sociopath.

I think many NTs lack empathy as well, but ARE good people at heart, and would never do anything like what people who *may* or may not lack empathy, and also happen to be sociopaths would do. It just isn't as obvious that they lack empathy, because they have better4 social skills, and/or aren't AS lacking in empathy or impaired with TOM as much as some people on the spectrum might be.

IMO, a sociopath just shouldn't be defined as a person who lacks empathy.

i don't always agree with what some of you write, but i do really appreciate the level of intellect here. smart crowd

This is so right - the problem is that there is no single definition of "empathy". If it describes the entire communication process - observing another person, recognizing the emotional state they are in, feeling a corresponding emotion and responding appropriately - then many conditions are marked by a "lack of empathy".

Sociopaths recognize and manipulate emotional states, and can respond highly appropriately when they choose to do so, but do not feel a corresponding state - they can lack compassion or remorse.

People with ASD have poor recognition skills, but do feel and communicate appropriately when they are able to recognize or deduce emotional states - this recognition process is much more conscious and analytic than for most people.

We need to use words for each element of the communication loop, not "empathy" with multiple, ill-defined meanings.

http://www.crimetimes.org/05c/w05cp13.htm

ASPERGER'S DISORDER: A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION FOR BEHAVIOR
OF SUBGROUP OF SERIAL KILLERS?
A series of papers by J. Arturo Silva and colleagues suggests that some serial killers-including Jeffrey Dahmer and Theodore Kaczynski (the "Unabomber")-exhibit evidence of Asperger's disorder (AD), a variant of autism.

Autism is a neurological disorder that severely affects communication, social skills, behavior, and learning. Individuals with AD are far less impaired mentally and socially than other autistic individuals, and often are highly intelligent. Unlike people with autism, individuals with AD exhibit normal language development, although their speech tends to be somewhat eccentric. While very few people with AD are violent, studies do suggest that the prevalence of AD may be elevated in violent criminal populations.

Silva et al. say that Dahmer, convicted of serially killing and cannibalizing young boys, exhibited signs of AD from his earliest years. As a child, he exhibited poor eye contact, displayed facial expressions "devoid of emotional glow," had a rigid body posture and gait, and was isolated, socially inept, and "emotionally disconnected." He also strongly disliked change and was highly ritualistic and obsessive (with his obsessions including the collection of bones and dead animal bodies). All of these traits can be signs of AD.

Silver et al. argue that Dahmer's creation, collection, and utilization of cadavers can be viewed as "a sexualized form of the repetitive behavioral patterns typically encountered in AD." Dahmer's treatment of his victims, they say, is consistent with the fact that individuals with AD have trouble both in "theory of mind" (the understanding that other people have thoughts and feelings) and in distinguishing between people and objects.

Similar patterns, Silva and colleagues say, appear in the history of Kaczynski, who killed three people and wounded dozens by sending them mail bombs. Silva et al. note that Kaczynski was aloof and could not understand the feelings of others. He also exhibited an aversion to being touched and experienced extreme distress when exposed to noise, both common reactions in children with autism. A neighbor described the young Kaczynski as "a child who was an old man before his time," consistent with Hans Asperger's description of his young patients with AD as "little professors," and as an adult, Kaczynski was extremely impaired in social relationships. Kaczynski's preoccupations with bomb-making and the perceived evils of technology, the authors say, can be viewed as typical of the obsessive interests of a person with AD.

Silva et al. say their characterization of a subset of serial killers as having high-functioning autism could lead to a greater understanding of the etiology of both serial homicide and autism. "Psychological phenomena of central importance to understanding serial killers such as deficits in empathy have frequently been explained as originating from a psychopathic core," they say, "thereby missing the possibility that deficits in empathy may also be due to autistic psychopathology."

-----
"A neuropsychiatric developmental model of serial homicidal behavior," J. Arturo Silva, Gregory B. Leong, and Michelle M. Ferrari, Behavioral Sciences and the Law, Vol. 22, 2004, 787-99; and "The case of Jeffrey Dahmer: Sexual serial homicide from a neuropsychiatric developmental perspective," J. Arturo Silva, Michelle M. Ferrari, and Gregory B. Leong, Journal of Forensic Sciences, Vol. 47, No. 6, 2002, 1-13; and "Asperger's disorder and the origins of the Unabomber," J. Arturo Silva, Michelle M. Ferrari, and Gregory B. Leong, American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2003, 5-43. Address for all: J. Arturo Silva, P.O. Box 20928, San Jose, CA 95160, silvapsychcorp@earthlink.net.

additional reading:

http://www.autismuk.com/?page_id=1133

Asperger’s Disorder remains an under-diagnosed condition because of clinical unfamiliarity with its adult presentation. As forensic clinicians become familiar with the presentation of Asperger’s disorder, it appears that affected individuals are over-represented in forensic criminal settings. Unique features of such persons may heighten their risks for engaging in criminal behavior. Both Theory of Mind deficits and a predilection for intense narrow interests, when coupled with deficient social awareness of salient interpersonal and social constraints on behavior, can result in criminal acts. We discuss comorbidities of forensic relevance. We present several cases that highlight these issues and review the relevant forensic literature. Furthermore, there may be valid questions as to degree of criminal responsibility in such persons. From a neuropsychiatric perspective, these disorders appear to have a biological underpinning for deficits in empathy, a finding that may have important repercussions when assessing remorse in criminal proceedings.

Dr Arturo Silva is widely regarded as a (rather harmful) joke, unsupported by either evidence or other academics. His diagnoses of people who he has never examined, often posthumously, are one instance of his strict adherence to poor methodology.

It has been suggested that terrorists like Breivik and McVeigh could not enter into any meaningful relationship. A sign of autism? I doubt it. Now that I have had more time to read into what happened, it has become clear that the massacrer saw people as little more than abstractions or as national symbols, which reflects disdain for human lives, their intricacy, and their subtle, individual, qualities, these details that make them irreplaceable. This is common of fascists (along with an absense of sympathy and overall psychopathy) not an indicator of autism. Most people, nt and aspie alike, understand that even those they despise still have rights and family members that love them or need them to survive. This creature is not an aspie, just someone with a perverse savior complex. I suppose that Adolph Hitler, Kim Jong Il, the islamic militants, and their nonautistic followers were/are aspies too?

Last edited by petitesouris on 12 Sep 2011, 9:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

True, not all angry loner right wing gun nuts who lose it are aspies.

Should aspies who have meltdowns be allowed to have guns?

is that so?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3 ... utism.html
(einstein/newton, by simon baron cohen)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical ... d_autistic
(thomas jefferson, mozart, by tony attwood)

you'll end up running out of autism researchers if you use this line of thinking