Adam Lanza diagnosed Aspergers, what happens with bad care

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It's not the emotional turmoil; it's how you react to it. Some people get depressed. Some people throw themselves into their work. Some get hooked on alcohol or drugs. Some escape into fantasy or into a hobby, or concentrate on education or career. Some get mental or physical illnesses. Many lean on friends, family, or pets. Only a few will respond to emotional turmoil by taking it out on other people.

People who have been hurt still have free will--the ability to say, "No, I'm not going to make innocent people hurt because I am hurting." I see this as a very important thing to remind people of because I am an abuse survivor and I know many of you are, too. We are not bound to the abuser; we are not broken beyond repair. We have the ability to decide that we will not hurt someone else the way we were hurt. I know that having been hurt gives us the opportunity to channel that pain and anger into violence, but we are free not to take that opportunity, and most of us do not. Some survive unbelievable abuse and recover to become people whose lives are defined by compassion. Others are hurt in comparatively small ways, and let that pain drive them to murder. It is not about whether you have been hurt; it is about how you respond to it.

And I agree with you 100%.

Something I noticed, Did he want to beat someones kill record or "payback" those who wronged him? Appears to be a contrediction here becouse most of the victim list was unknown to him.

I would have thought someone with aspergers acting on their asperger impluse would single out thoses who hurt them and be sure to leave the innocent alone, that idea fits our kind of logic better I think. I know thats what I would do if I had a score to settle, then again i'm not a cold blooded killer so maybe I don't understand their logic. Thats my opinion though.

He killed his mom too. That was probably revenge. I'm not sure about the kids, but that could've been a mixture of the adrenaline rush from murdering his mother, along with other factors. Maybe he realized he was bound to get caught and wanted to go out with a bang*.

*If there is an alternate way to phrase this, please tell me so I can edit it.

I wouldnt overlook the possibility that he may have been having a really bad meltdown when it happened.

I'd like to see what environmental factors in the society he was brought up in are the cause for someone to murder 20+ children (specifically targeting them too, not like say, "collateral damage"), that's discounting acquired pathological entities that might change cognitive functioning and behavior (biology). There's group behavior which can do this, i.e., the usual genocides, but the causes of that are well known -- demonizing and mental conditioning via social empathy and/or threats of violence. These people are all "bad" too.

Saying someone is just "bad" or "sick" doesn't lead anywhere. It's the acts people do that make them "bad" or "sick", then you go from there when someone does such an act.

The reason can be hate, rage, frustration, and/or any other negative emotion, but they themselves don't cause "bad" acts such as this; most people feel these things yet most people don't specifically go out of their way to murder children. Hence, a "bad" person.

Saying someone is just bad or evil isn't an oversimplification either -- sometimes that's the most reasonable answer when everything is looked at.

Adam may have done nothing wrong and/or bad at all leading up to this (though this would be unlikely), but his final moments on earth were irredeemable, and were the actions of a bad/evil person.

I said environmental factors are a likely 'factor.' not the cause by themselves...genetic, environmental and social factors are what influence behavior no matter how you slice it. One can not just pick and choose certain factors or decide environmental factors did not play a role just because they don't want to believe their society could possibly contribute to such horror...when usually it is a rather significant factor.

Also if bad or sick is the word one wants to use to describe someone who does something of this nature, I can't very well take issue with that however I think what is more important is why they became that way, or if they had cruel tendencies from a very early age as well...I would think society would want to know what creates such a 'bad' person so appropriate changes can be made if needed.

I also never said emotions cause someone to do that, I said they are a factor and well sometimes emotions might overwhelm logic in which is probably an important detail.

His taking his moms life i'm sure was a form of revenge, or she got in the way of his plan, I forget the details.

If it was a meltdown it I don't see how it could have been as pre-planned as well is it was, the idea of opening fire on these people and killing them appeared to be a sane thought to him no matter what state of mind he was in at the time of the shootings. Thats one of the reasons the aspergers angle makes no sence to me, or least on its own.

Same here. except no SSRIs. Been playing violent games for years and i have zero interest in going on a shooting spree.

While it is possible he had Aspergers (Psychiatry is not even close to being a science and there are many quacks in the US), he may also have qualified as a sociopath. Sociopathy comes from environmental factors, basically turning a person into a pseudo-psychopath. If he experienced lots of crap, he turns into crap. That incombination with an overcontrolling mother = serial killer.

The only thing Aspergers can make you do, is to move to silicon valley.

And if Breivik had Aspergers, then i'm f*****g Santa Clause!

* Narcisistic photos of himself
* Delusions of grandure
* No empathy or remorse in court
* Smiled when he saw what he had done
* Manipulated media
= Psychopath and nothing else.

I agree. A really bad meltdown would have left him incoherent and unable to understand what a gun does, let alone that other people exist and that pointing the gun at them will kill them. You just aren't capable of that kind of thought when you're in the middle of a bad meltdown. The highest sophistication you're capable of is usually something along the lines of "bad, bad, get away, go away, escape, stop, stop, make it stop", and that not even in words. Even an angry outburst during a milder meltdown, one where you are still able to use enough symbolic thought to remember other people exist and to use language, would cripple your planning ability. At the very most you would hit or throw things or yell insults that made little or no sense. Planning or executing a mass murder is not something that an autistic person mid-meltdown is capable of, any more than they would be capable of doing something like that in the middle of a generalized seizure. During that crime, he was not in a meltdown, or even in more than mild overload. He was thinking clearly. He was using his theory of mind to understand how his victims might flee or try to protect themselves.

I am thirty years old, living on my own, and have been in therapy for autism for ten years, and I would not be capable of an act of this complexity and intensity even if it hurt absolutely no one. I would be too overwhelmed by such a quickly-changing situation, by so many people's possible motivations and thoughts.

I am not saying Adam Lanza couldn't have been autistic, but I am saying that it could not have been a very severe case in terms of executive functioning and social skills. His actions show a person capable of sophisticated social reasoning and of processing multiple sources of data at once and quickly. He might have been a borderline case, or he might have had stronger traits in an unrelated area. I won't deny that autistic people, like neurotypicals, are capable of committing murder. I just think that the cognitive and social ability displayed is not consistent with anything but a very mild case of autism.

This whole thing is heartbreaking, but there are some insights to be gathered here:

1. Adam was not formally diagnosed or evaluated even by the time he was 6-7 years old. As a father with two children on the spectrum (and having traits myself), and knowing how serious Adam's issues were, this seems irresponsible. The parents seemed to try and wait it out, rather than deal with the problems.

2. Adam's mother appears to have traits of narcissism and paranoia (lots of guns, isolation, etc.) --looking at the Port Arthur massacre, we see that the family in that incident was very similar. The child was kept away from others, the father paranoid (and eventually commits suicide), etc. The psychologist Alfred Adler described mental illness as a lack of social interest: it is clear from these killers and their families, that there was little social interest.

3. Peter Lanza was totally uninvolved with his family, working 16 hour days, and refusing to accept his responsibility as a father. History is full of countless cases of kids getting into trouble because there is no father in the house.

4. Sticking a kid in front of a video game and giving him a TV dinner is not parenting. This is obvious. For a child that already has problems with social interest, it compounds the problem.

But all of this is academic: there are larger societal/cultural problems here. Children need role-models and examples of courage, fortitude, and character. They need to be taught to handle adversity. The need to be given goals that are much greater than themselves. We live in a self-centered, indulgent, alienated society, and some clumsy gesture at teaching morality and character through religion is not going to cut it. A child's value system, there reality, starts at home and goes out from there. If there are no values and no direction at home, the child drifts like a ship in turbulent seas between ice floes. For a boy who already had psychological problems, this portends disaster.

Just having guns isn't an indicator of an antisocial family. I grew up in Missouri, in the US, and lots of people would go out and hunt. I had venison stew more times than I can count (and it's very good, provided it's slow-cooked). Other people are into target shooting. A few keep handguns for personal protection. They didn't seem any different from the general population to me.

There's a "survivalist" subculture, and most of these folks are actually okay, too. Most of them are the kind of people who look at events like Hurricane Katrina as evidence that they have to be able to provide for themselves and their families even in the absence of a social structure. They are often in professions like military, firefighting, paramedics, rescue, forest ranger, security, or involved in organizations like the Red Cross. Most of them are not paranoid so much as independent, and tend to enjoy hunting and camping. When it comes to guns, they're usually enthusiastic gun owners and absolutely fanatical about handling them safely. I've learned a lot from them, even though I'm not interested in guns; more the survival/hiking stuff. Personally, I can survive for about two weeks in my apartment without any external help, or for three days outside it with an emergency backpack--longer, technically, in both cases, but that's how long I have supplies for. But some of these people plan for years or even generations... stocks of seed grain, training in medicine in case hospitals break down, a library of books on technology and engineering.

In this group there are some people who are the sort of people who really are trouble, who will go antisocial and consider everybody an enemy. Generally, they are ostracized and called out for being reprehensible examples of human beings. The most extreme position the survivalist community tolerates is something along the lines of, "If things get really bad, I'll protect myself/my family first and leave everyone else alone." Anybody who even suggests hostile actions like shooting people or stealing things that other people own, becomes very unpopular very quickly.

So I would say that the atmosphere of paranoia and the willingness to benefit at the expense of others is the dangerous element. Gun enthusiasts, by and large, aren't bad people. The trouble starts when bad people start getting attracted to guns. These people are seen by the hobbyists and outdoorspeople as basically the scum of the earth.

these cases are too complicated to boil down to being caused by _X_... i.e. bad parenting, society, his diagnosis, his lack of treatment, whatever. you can take hundreds of other individuals and give them identical experiences and they won't do what he did. the experts can't and won't speculate to the degree that armchair psychologists/criminologists aspire to, because there are simply too many unknown factors in the mix.

while it is generally understood that people want answers because it helps them feel better about a tragedy, or it helps them feel like there is hope of prevention, or it gives them a common enemy to be angry at, or it helps them feel like they can figure out the mystery... well, the answer is not so simple. the supposed reasons why HE supposedly snapped are the same reasons that another person might becomes successful in some aspect of life.

single parent who was neglectful? not enough supports in school? could raise a self-sufficient adult.
switching schools too much? could lead to resilience and adaptability - plus an escape from bullies.
taking meds? could lead to better mental health.

we are simply not predictable to that degree. it's not like a recipe where you can predict which ingredients will yield which results.

Last edited by hyperlexian on 23 Feb 2013, 12:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah. I had an early environment that was actually quite a lot like the one they describe for Adam Lanza. I was raised by a single mom with occasional "help" from less-than-kind stepfathers. I switched schools a lot, back and forth to home-schooling. I had very little counseling and no diagnosis until I got out on my own and away from my psychology-hating mom. Heck, my mom's even a paranoid conspiracy theorist. You'd think that would be the perfect storm for a mass shooting if the Lanza case were any indication, but I think I'm probably among the least likely to ever try anything like that. I don't even kill spiders, for heaven's sake. Life is sacred and if I were to get even more traumatized for some reason, I'd just get nightmares and start hiding in my apartment, get depressed, and probably cope by doing more volunteer work just so I'd feel halfway useful. Shooting up a school is about as natural to me as space travel is to a catfish.

Your arguments are ridiculous.

Of course the interactions that a person has as a child have great influence on how they act as an adult. Consider that child molesters often were molested as children. Either it's reasonable to assume that child molesters are attracted to children they somehow instinctually know will grow up to also molest children, or it's reasonable to assume that being subjected to child molestation has the ability to influence a child's development and increase the likelihood that they will do something which almost anyone would consider horrible.

Even something that may have a small effect on an an adult can have a profound reaction on a child's development.

It would be easier if all there was to consider were that some people are just born biologically evil, but people's experiences can fundamentally change them. I've heard many stories of how people's personalities have been changed by tragedy or by success or by sudden good fortune.

He also killed his mother and himself.

Evil is as evil does.

Adam Lanza was evil, no doubt about it.