Mom Did IT! Slaughter in Ct.

This discussion started on Cognitive816, but I reserve that board for more technical aspects of cognitive theory. I also feel more free here to discuss the issues you have raised as they are not personal and as they have a broader scope to them.

Here is what I wrote simply to warn about the idiocy prevalent on Corporate Media over the school shootings:

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Autism and the Ct. School Shootings

I very seldom, in fact so far as I can remember, never comment on current events using my Psychological Training or Cognitive Science as an element. I try to keep that separate.

However, I am becoming very disturbed at the facile way reporters and commentators are throwing around terms such as "Autism" and "Asperger's Syndrome" as related to causation in the situation. Neither is or could be true. It is possible that some sort of identity disorder could be involved, but this is not Dustin Hoffman or Jerry from Boston Legal.

End of story. If you want to know more, let me know. Otherwise, look elsewhere for the causes.
http://cognitive816.blogspot.com/2012/12/autism-and-ct-school-shootings.htm

The first comment comes from the author of the new book on the D.C. Madame. I have never known him to be very far off when it came to facts and I feel absolutely comfortable is accepting his description of the guys mother.

When you want to find the cause of a murder suicide, it is usually more efficient to look towards the suicide, the the murder(s). I do know she owned several guns as well and the kids were shot by guns she owned. He also took care to dispose of her first..

It looks to me that his mother was a controlling, bourgeois cunt who was intensely neurotic. That would drive anyone nuts. ;0) The fact that the judge told both parents to take parenting education classes says it all, they're dysfunctional as hell. She was a moron not to have a locked gun case with one key hidden squarely away. I agree, just think she was pushing the poor bastard too far, square peg into a round hole bourgeois crap, insensitive treatment & an inability to face sending him off to the nuthouse. Not that society has a real mental healthcare system currently! That's what I think the real issue is, he was nuts, but it wasn't the autism at all, but something entirely different, cultural cues inclusive, our tendency towards violence to solve problems. He probably felt he was trapped with his shrewish mother for the rest of his shitty life and got desperate.

I also doubt, Matt, that is was Asperger's at all. It also looks as if the father got out of Dodge as fast as he could. I didn't know that about the judge, but it explains a great deal. In my practice, I have usually found that it was the parents who were screwed up, although I could not use that in the eitiology.

Another:

I have heard parents say Asperger's when it was adult onset  schizophrenia. Now his mother used that term to a friend saying he was acting up, maybe she would have gotten it right if time hadn't run out.

Well, those parents were wrong. They are two different ailments entirely, and schizophrenia is at least four different ailments. Asperger's may actually be environmental.

Here is another accurate obsevation:

Pop psychobabble diagnoses are a common a way to dismiss or trivialize people's motives...

It rather sums things up.

I really do think that the next thing to be put up on cognitive will be a discussion of the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (V). It is pretty controversial, but hardly fit for here. :)