Do you think that virginia Tech killer Cho Seu was an Aspie?

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I just re-read the articles about him being possibly autistic. He was mute, but his parents called him "well-behaved".

Has any parent of any autistic child EVER said that their child was generally well-behaved

I go back to my initial assessment. He is NOT autistic.

Well if polls here can be trusted, a lot of us have delusional thinking. At what point the delusion becomes serious and outright psychotic is more a membrane than a barrier. There might be a genetic link between autism and schizophrenia... both groups have much higher rates of Rh- blood, for example. And autism and schizophrenia can run in the same family; einstein had a schizophrenic son. So maybe it is possible for an autistic to reach a snapping point where he becomes outright psychotic... I don't know.

Not to mention, the crtieria for schizotypal personality disorder and asperger's syndrome are very similar, and I have read at least one article positing that they identify the same goup of people.

Why are you trying to make a case for him being ASPIE or HFA? Maybe you should watch todays glen beck. He seems to be reasonable about this. Cho was OBVIOUSLY a propagandist that wanted publicity at ANY cause. He should NOT have had guns, or even been in college. He probably thought he would be spared, and could be famous, etc... CHO just HATED people. He said things that were more true of him than most. So he was a HYPOCRITE! I SWEAR, his reading sounded like kids sounded in my first grade class! Glen Beck pointed out how his manifesto seems to be a conglomeration of other manifestos.

Steve

If they don't have sensory issues they would not necessarily be melting down all the time. Also some parents might appreciate the "shut down" a kid may have in front of company or at school if it appears as being very docile. Or as long as he had meltdowns in private he might have been considered well behaved. Consider the cultural differences too - some people do not want to bring shame on their family whereas the opposite is common in the U.S.

"Common in the US" I guess, but many parents will still try to put their children in the best light possible when discussing about them in public, regardless of ethnic background. These are the people who gave life to him.

God help us if the media says Cho is an Aspie. Where would we be then? What treatment would be face in society then? I don't see any reason he isn't an Aspie, although I must stress other conditions are far, far more likely.

I have some unsteady emotions(Though it is RARE I "blow up", and it is never that bad). I have the hypo/hyper sensitivities. I am horrible socially. I had the "rude"/"Arrogant"/"blunt", streak. In retrospect, I think I acted autistic. I WAS well behaved though.

STILL, I DOUBT CHO was autistic. I wish people would stop trying to say he was.

Steve

You make a crucial point. Everyone will sooner or later face times of extreme stress. Some of us get to this point more often than others, but none is immune. When the darkness is upon us, and evil ideas start to make sense, we need to reach for something larger than ourselves. We can evade and confound earthly opposition, but there is no escaping God's judgment. This is the notion that keeps me from straying when other safeguards are weakened.

He was supposedly DXed with autism(not AS,because it wasnt in the manual then)in 1992.....that would have been shortly after he and his family moved here from S.Korea.I wonder if the language barriers and cultural differences would have effected the DX?If he had AS,it certainly did not include executive dysfunction....he seemed highly organized.

Does anyone know what the first murder was about.First it was said to be someone he was romantically involved with,then it wasnt?

And who the hell was he referring to when he talked about his "children,sisters and brothers"????What group is he identifying with?I havnt found the full "manifesto"....just excerpts and photoes.I dont see any thing of any "logical progression" in his words.It certainly seems more the paranoid ramblings of a paranoid schizophrenic then a well thought out analysis and criticism of modern society.I dont think he learned much in his English classes,maybe would have done better in Drama.I dont recall it being an aspie trait to be an "attention hoar",which appears to be his main goal in the picture posing.

I think he was in a situation...his parents were going to find out that he wasnt a business major,as he had told them and he may have had a "psychotic break" knowing that it was a matter of time before they found it out?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

That's just what the parents say. If you asked my parents what I was like as a child (and this was once done at a psych assessment when I was 14) they will say I was a very happy child with no problems . I remember, when they said that, I nearly fell over on the ground I was so stunned. I wondered what reality they had been living in. I head banged in the classroom, scratched myself to the point of bleeding, had no friends, tried running away from home at age 5 and tried to kill myself at age 7, but I was a very happy child with no problems?

Parents tend to be in serious denial about autistic traits in their kids.

He reportedly had "Ismael Ax" written on his arm. Ishmael was Hagar's son whom she left to die in the desert after she'd been cast out by Abraham. So maybe he was referring to all outcasts...? The "Ax of Ishmael?"

Folklorically Arabs are considered the descendents of Ishmael.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if he really were an Aspie, but trying to diagnose posthumously is somewhat of a guessing game. Of course being Aspie doesn't automatically relegate one to being a killer, but it does tend to make us more prone to interpreting society incorrectly or being interpreted by society incorrectly. From that, some Aspies don't know how to handle their frustration and anger and depression, and resort to violence. Note that I could replace the word "Aspies" with "people" in the previous sentence and it'd still apply; anybody who experienced societal issues like Aspies do could react the same way.

I don't understand how you can say that "Cho was OBVIOUSLY a propagandist that wanted publicity at ANY cause," and think this is somehow contrary to what Aspies do. Just look at the numerous Aspies here on WP and elsewhere who are very opinionated and dogmatic, relishing their soapboxes. Many Aspies are very hypocritical too, when they fail to see their own actions impartially and when they think that their own situation has special circumstances and is therefore exempt from their own standards. Many Aspies also don't speak quite properly, whether it be from a lack of vocal inflection or pronunciation or lisp or other communicative issue.

I also don't understand where the judgment that "he should not have even been in college" comes from.

I don't think he thought he would be spared. Maybe he did think he would be famous/infamous or at least known from his act, and I'm sure it was one of his goals, to get that recognition for the pain and anger he felt. He was in pain and anger, and felt like nobody cared or was listening.

I also would not be surprised if his manifesto were a conglomeration of other manifestoes. If he were AS, this would fit too; ASDs are noted for lack of imagination. But there's too much focus on putting some kind of label on him, both out in the media as well as in this thread with all the "xyz mental disorder is more likely" stuff. If we really want to figure out and understand him, then see him as a human being, albeit misguided, but still a human being with thoughts and emotions, and not some incomprehensible killer with a label on him.

And this is right before they go curebie on you too!
Seriously though, two thumbs up for you! My parents are still in denial.

Now Cho is a textbook killer. If being awkward and getting bullied in school makes for a school killer, then there are lots of people who would fit the profile. It would certainly be true for Aspies.

Looking at the videos, Cho does strike me as lucid. He has thought about killing people for a long time. What makes him ‘delusional’ is the ideational impulse to kill, but he was very clear that killing all those people was what he wanted.

I do agree with those who say that Cho’s diagnosis as autistic may not be correct. Autism is sort of a catch all for childhood conditions that cannot be properly discerned because the patient lacks the verbal skills to express themselves. Certainly, the portrait of a quiet child is not what I would expect from an Aspie kid. Aspie kids tend to be talkative (little professors) and rather rambunctious, too much so in fact that they become unmanageable in a classroom.

The “Go back to China” taunt really bites. Young Asian guy in a hostile culture. Maybe this horrible incident will spark a debate on how Asian men are treated in America.

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Va. Tech Gunman Seen As Textbook Killer

By MATT APUZZO and SHARON COHEN, Associated Press Writers
4:28 PM PDT, April 19, 2007


BLACKSBURG, Va. -- In high school, Cho Seung-Hui almost never opened his mouth. When he finally did, his classmates laughed, pointed at him and said: "Go back to China."

As such details of the Virginia Tech shooter's life come out, and experts pore over his sick and twisted writings and his videotaped rant, it is becoming increasingly clear that Cho was almost a textbook case of a school shooter: a painfully awkward, picked-on young man who lashed out with methodical fury at a world he believed was out to get him.

"In virtually every regard, Cho is prototypical of mass killers that I've studied in the past 25 years," said Northeastern University criminal justice professor James Alan Fox, co-author of 16 books on crime. "That doesn't mean, however, that one could have predicted his rampage."

When criminologists and psychologists look at mass murders, Cho fits the themes they see repeatedly: a friendless figure, someone who has been bullied, someone who blames others and is bent on revenge, a careful planner, a male. And someone who sent up warning signs with his strange behavior long in advance.

Among other things, the 23-year-old South Korean immigrant was sent to a psychiatric hospital and pronounced an imminent danger to himself. He was accused of stalking two women and photographing female students in class with his cell phone. And his violence-filled writings were so disturbing he was removed from one class, and professors begged him to get counseling. He rarely looked anyone in the eye and did not even talk to his own roommates.

Cho, who killed 32 people and committed suicide at the Blacksburg campus Monday, cast himself in his video diatribe as a persecuted figure like Jesus Christ. Cho, who came to the U.S. at about age 8 in 1992 and whose parents works at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington, also ranted against rich "brats" with Mercedes, gold necklaces, cognac and trust funds.

Classmates in Virginia, where Cho grew up, said he was teased and picked on, apparently because of shyness and his strange, mumbly way of speaking.

Once, in English class at Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., when the teacher had the students read aloud, Cho looked down when it was his turn, said Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior and high school classmate. After the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho began reading in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.

"The whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'" Davids said.

Stephanie Roberts, 22, a classmate of Cho's at Westfield High, said she never witnessed anyone picking on Cho in high school. But she said friends of hers who went to middle school with him told her they recalled him getting bullied there.

"There were just some people who were really mean to him and they would push him down and laugh at him," Roberts said. "He didn't speak English really well and they would really make fun of him."

Regan Wilder, 21, who attended Virginia Tech, high school and middle school with Cho, said she was sure Cho probably was picked on in middle school, but so was everyone else. And it didn't seem as if English was the problem for him, she said. If he didn't speak English well, there were several other Korean students he could have reached out to for friendship, but he didn't.

In other developments Thursday:

_ Gov. Timothy Kaine appointed an independent panel to look into the tragedy and how authorities handled it. The panel will be led by former Virginia State Police superintendent Gerald Massengill and will include former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

_ University officials said that all of Cho's student victims would be awarded degrees posthumously, and officials are outlining a way to let students complete their courses, possibly by allowing their work to this point in the semester count as completed.

_ With a backlash developing against the media, and some warning of copycat killers, the major TV networks cut back on showings of Cho's video rant. "It has value as breaking news," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider, "but then becomes practically pornographic as it is just repeated ad nauseam."

A 2002 federal study on common characteristics of school shooters found that 71 percent of them "felt bullied, persecuted or injured by others prior to the attack."

The report said that "in some of these cases the experience of being bullied seemed to have a significant impact on the attacker and appeared to have been a factor in his decision to mount an attack at the school. In one case, most of the attacker's schoolmates described the attacker as the kid everyone teased."

Cho "would almost be a poster child for the pattern that we saw," said Marisa Randazzo, the former chief research psychologist at the U.S. Secret Service and co-author of the study, conducted jointly with the Education Department.

Among the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre were two other Westfield High graduates, Reema Samaha and Erin Peterson. Both young women graduated from the high school last year. But police said it is not clear whether Cho singled them out.

However, another expert who has worked with mentally disturbed young criminals suggested that Cho's actions probably had genetic causes.

"This is very different" from someone who was bullied to the breaking point -- Cho was clearly psychotic and delusional, said Dr. Louis Kraus, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center.

"This type of mental illness that this poor man had was not something that was likely precipitated by teasing or bullying," he said. More likely, he said, is that Cho had a biological psychiatric disorder that may have worsened in recent years because of the pressures of college life and his leaving the support of his family.

Randazzo said about the only difference between Cho and the killers studied is he hadn't bragged about the assault in advance, though that may surface later, perhaps in blogs or chat rooms.

Fox, the criminologist, said Cho probably made the decision to go on a killing spree months ago based on his weapon purchase. That would explain why witnesses described him as remarkably calm when he did the shooting.

"There's a lot of scripting that's going on in their heads, a lot of planning. Once they've decided it, there's a certain degree of comfort and satisfaction that they'll be the last to laugh," Fox said.

Fox said there is typically a precipitating event that sets a gunman off. It is not yet known what that was in Cho's case.

"It may not be huge" to normal people, but to Cho "it was the final straw that broke the camel's back," Fox said.

- his speech was delayed to the point where his parents feared that he wouldn't speak<<<<BIG DEAL! BTW This means NO AS!

Not necessarily.

- he was bullied in high school <<<<<BIG DEAL! There are a LOT of reasons for this

He was bullied because he was different and since he didn't talk he was likely unable to defend himself. That doesn't make him Aspie, but you're not really paranoid when people really are after you.

- his parents were worried about his inability to make friends<<<<<WOW, THEY were worried, so HE had it?!?!?!?

My point is that he never had any friends and that his isolation was noticeable.


- his classmates laughed at his speech impediment<<<<<WOW, THEY laughed, so HE had it!?!?!?!?

Yes he had a speech impediment. You can hear it in his audio.

- he had irregular sleeping habits (not unusual in college though)<<<<<NOT UNUSUAL!

Not terribly unusual, but one of his suitemates found it unusual enough to mention it.

- he avoided eye contact<<<<<NOT UNUSUAL***

Everyone has said that his lack of eye contact was aside from him not speaking the most unusual thing about him. They all mention it.

- he avoided conversation<<<<<NOT UNUSUAL***

Have you read anything about this guy? He didn't talk at all! His lack of conversation was extremely unusual!


- he arranged the bullets for the picture<<<HOW do you know? And WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? He could have simply opened the box, and been a little careful. Anyway, that says NOTHING!

Look at the pictures. They are very neatly arranged in rows. Even Keith Olberman mentioned how odd it was it when he saw the picture.


- his manifesto was very organized with pictures/video inserted with the text<<<<YEAH, and he didn't seem to know some words, or the manifesto!

I'll take your word for it, but I never noticed that.

- his voice was a monotone while he raged in his video...he didn't sound particularly upset<<<AGAIN, he read this like he didn't right(sic) it!

I don't see it the same way at all. The words in his manifesto are consistent with some of his other writings that were mentioned earlier.

- his facial movements while raging in his videos were extremely limited...he didn't look upset.<<<What do you expect?

I would expect him to look mad or otherwise upset.