I Am Adam Lanza's Therapist

[Stefan Molyneux]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3l_e_paeIA

 

http://www.fdrurl.com/lanzatherapist

 

Freedomain Radio is the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web - http://www.freedomainradio.com

 

Note, I think it is not confirmed that the mother volunteered at his school.

 

Radical Attachment Disorder (RAD) children were not born RAD. They were born to love and be loved. Every child I ever met with a propensity for violence was the natural product of extremely painful treatment, usually beginning with being left in daycare too young (perhaps as newborns) and too long (daily, throughout their first years).  It was so painful the child drew a conclusion that they were alone in the world, and they gave up on the deepest drive and hope of all, love. They gave up on loving and being loved and cherished. They were not loveable. They decided they were on their own and there was no adult in the world they could trust. They decided never to be vulnerable again, because it hurts too much. We all know adults who feel that way. This is why. However, our injuries were small compared to Adam's, Dylan's, Eric's, Jared's and Seung-Hui's. It's relative.

 

            Sometimes a three-month-old draws this conclusion. I have seen it. The infant will arch her back and push away. If the parent tries to make eye contact or talk tenderly, she will wriggle or point to the corner in the ceiling to "change the subject". Sometimes a two-year-old draws the same conclusion. It is a decision a child forms before the age of three when the seeds of extreme violence are set. By the same token, the seeds of resilient mental health are set before the age of five, the optimal year to let them leave home for a while. It all stems from how they are treated in the beginning years of life. It's a decision the child makes that can be unmade, with the right intervention. Everyone wants to love and be loved if it's safe, only if it's safe.

 

            Our evolutionary, genetic design requires a mother's warmth, holding and interaction. All infants need safety or the feeling of safety. All of us wanted to nurse and be cuddled when we were infants. We all wanted to feel gently touched. We wanted to engage with loving eyes and softly spoken words. All of us got our identity or our idea of what we were worth and who we were by how we were treated in the beginning. It's during this period that our temperament is formed, something that turns into personality as more experiences are had.

 

            During the first years our personalities form quickly, and our brains develop faster than it ever will again. More happens in the brain during these years. Unlearning and relearning the material of these years becomes more difficult as the child ages.

 

            If we spend our first years with one primary caregiver who adores us, but sets a reasonably high bar for us in terms of discipline and behavior, we become resilient and headed for greatness. If we spend our first years in daycare or with rotating caregivers or parents who are distracted, we form fragile identities. Anything in between produces in-between results. Without a secure attachment we are highly susceptible to future insults. From there, other abuses that most children could adequately handle become a tipping point for these children. As they get older, rejection becomes a trigger, rather, the trigger...

[Bardan]

Fantastic! Grateful to Stef for reading this text. Hope to see it in the podcast feed soon- I converted my own mp3 so I could absorb it.

Apart from understanding the outside world it's a great attachment theory run-through (which I can't get enough of just now) that allows us to measure our own experience. I used to sneer at kids playing with their parents in the park myself- in this 25mins was the answer to that.

The background video was relevant but a distraction to me and I also have a reservation with what the author said about parental authority.

[Wesley]

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-father-of-conn-massacre-shooter-says-he-wishes-son-was-never-born-20140310,0,4991278.story#axzz2vfVpwg2S

 

 

Peter Lanza, the father of the man who killed 20 children and six educators in an elementary school in Connecticut, wishes his son, Adam, had never been born because the massacre was an act that “couldn't get any more evil.”

In a series of interviews with the magazine the New Yorker, Peter Lanza broke his silence on the 2012 rampage at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that stunned the nation and resumed a debate about gun control. Lanza said he hadn't seen his son for two years at the time of shooting and he constantly thinks about what he could have done differently.

“Any variation on what I did and how my relationship was had to be good, because no outcome could be worse,” Lanza told the magazine in an article dated March 17. “You can't get any more evil. … How much do I beat up on myself about the fact that he's my son? A lot.”

Adam Lanza, 20, began his killing spree on Dec. 14, 2012, by fatally shooting his mother, Nancy, Peter's former wife. Adam Lanza then drove to the school where he opened fire, killing 20 pupils, each between 6 and 7 years old, and six adults before killing himself.

Peter Lanza has not commented publicly on the shooting, but according to the magazine contacted reporter Andrew Solomon in September, months before the first anniversary of the shooting. Solomon writes that he met six times with Lanza, an accountant who is vice president for taxes at General Electric subsidiary GE Energy Financial Services.

Lanza has said he will not talk to other media.

Peter and Nancy Lanza separated in 2001 and divorced in 2009. He said he last saw Adam in October 2010. He said he wanted to maintain contact, but Nancy Lanza wrote to say that Adam didn't want to see his father.

Peter Lanza said Adam was 13 when a psychiatrist diagnosed him with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism not associated with violence. But he believes the syndrome “veiled a contaminant” that wasn't Asperger's. “I was thinking it could mask schizophrenia,” Lanza said.

Peter Lanza told the magazine that his son as a young child was “just a normal little weird kid” who used to spend hours with his father playing with Legos.

But as he grew older, Adam's mental health problems worsened, according to Connecticut State Police documents. A Yale University professor diagnosed Lanza in 2006 with profound autism spectrum disorder, “with rigidity, isolation, and a lack of comprehension of ordinary social interaction and communications,” while also displaying symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the released documents show.

Peter Lanza said his and Nancy Lanza's concerns about Adam increased when he began middle school.“It was crystal clear something was wrong,” he said. “The social awkwardness, the uncomfortable anxiety, unable to sleep, stress, unable to concentrate, having a hard time learning, the awkward walk, reduced eye contact. You could see the changes occurring.”

Peter Lanza believes his son had no affection for him at the time of the shootings.

“With hindsight, I know Adam would have killed me in a heartbeat, if he'd had the chance. I don't question that for a minute,” he told the magazine.

He said he wished Adam had never been born.

“That didn't come right away,” Peter Lanza said about the statement. “That's not a natural thing, when you're thinking about your kid. But, God, there's no question. There can only be one conclusion, when you finally get there. That's fairly recent, too, but that's totally where I am.”

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-father-of-conn-massacre-shooter-says-he-wishes-son-was-never-born-20140310,0,4991278.story#ixzz2vfXlGp6j

[quickstine]

The New Yorker published the article this week: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/17/140317fa_fact_solomon?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weeklyemail&mbid=nl_Weekly%20(28)

 

The 8 pp article (online at least, but quite long) does not cover the toddlerhood or the maternal and paternal bonding in infancy and very early years ... 

[zg7666]

Just as a side note:  analyzing hundreds of scientific papers, newspaper articles and court documents related to the mass and serial murder researchers from the University of Glasgow have recently come to the finding that individuals who suffer from autistic spectrum disorder and / or a head injury prone [extremely] violent behavior, but only if they are in childhood were exposed to continuous psychological stress and trauma. 

 

239 serial and mass murderers in the study, 28 percent of them were, or are suspected to be the case, of autistic disorder, with seven per cent of the sub-sample at the same time had a head injury. 21 per cent of the total sample had less reliable evidence that they once suffered a head injury; of these, 13 percent at the same time suffer from some form of autism. Finally, more than half of the assassin with autistic disorder and / or head injury had a childhood marked by psychological trauma; Their crimes and the method of execution are severe and cruel compared to those committed by comparable individuals whose childhood passed without any major hitches. 

 

Overall, the researchers conclude that approximately ten percent of serial and mass murderers exhibit autistic symptoms; additional ten percent of the perpetrators of multiple murders have experienced an injury or multiple injuries to the head; two-thirds, of both, was marked by severe childhood psychological trauma.

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178914000305