Once again we search for ways to explain the inexplicable. What can possess a person to take the lives of 30 near-random strangers? How can we make sense of such a senseless act?
As a Psychiatrist I am familiar with despair and shame, depression and rage, yet the fundamental shift from an idea, even a wish, for revenge, for venting one's rage, to an act of such nihilism can never be adequately explained.
The expression "to run amok" derives from the Amok Syndrome associated with Malaysian men among whom it was common in the 1800s and into the 1900s. Amok was a sudden eruption of homicidal violence during which the perpetrator, armed with a Kris (later with guns), would race through the streets in a frenzy, killing any person or animal he came upon. When the attack burned out and ended, the attacker would commonly be in a state of exhaustion and often amnestic for the attack; not infrequently the attacks would end with the attacker's suicide.
I do not have a citation but recall reading that the attacker believed that his victims would appear as his slaves in Heaven.
Typically the attack was found to have been preceded by a period of pre-occupation, brooding and depression. Further, there was often an incident that evoked extreme shame in the person preceding the attack. In the Malay Honor-Shame culture, intense shame was incompatible with continued involvement in the community.
In our own experience of such murderous attacks, as in Columbine, or the kinds of work place incidents that have become all too common, there is almost always an aspect of shame-evoked rage associated with the acts. The two young men who murdered their classmates in Columbine were quite clearly acting out a desire for revenge on their classmates who they felt had belittled and slighted them.
The angry young man who murders his ex-girlfriend and the husband who murders his wife and children when they threaten to leave, have become so common as to be cliches. These situations reflect men whose sense of self is defective and depends upon the confirmation of their power and importance that only the idealized woman can offer. Once she threatens to leave, she no longer serves her purpose; now she is no longer the idealized and idealizing other but the hated, devalued object, filled with all the evil projections of the now enraged man. She must die for her offense; by murdering her he asserts his importance to her and regains his lost Honor.
The attack in Virgina, about which much information remains unknown or withheld, reportedly started with the murder of the attacker's ex-girlfriend. If so, it fits the model of an Honor-Shame killing, though with an exponential component, projected onto the entire community.
Amok is different in degree if not in kind from Honor-Shame murders. The particulars will likely offer some insight into the shame that propelled this young man to murder so many, but will never explain what twisted mechanism in his mind justified and triggered such an horrific event. A report on NPR this morning by an eye witness described how she heard shots and maniacal laughter during the spree; this would fit an Honor-Shame dynamic.
(You think I am nothing! I mean nothing to you! Well, now you can see and feel how important I am! I am powerful and feared! Like a god I can take life! My Honor has been restored.)
Yet, in the midst of horror, let us not forget that even in the worst of all situations there is often the light of hope, courage, heroism, and true Honor.
Professor Liviu Librescu, an Israeli survivor of a time when an entire continent went Amok, gave his life to save his students:
As Jews worldwide honored on Monday the memory of those who were murdered in the Holocaust, a 75-year-old survivor sacrificed his life to save his students in Monday's shooting at Virginia Tech college that left 32 dead and over two dozen wounded.
Professor Liviu Librescu threw himself in front of the shooter, who had attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, "but all the students lived - because of him," Virginia Tech student Asael Arad - also an Israeli - told Army Radio.
Librescu's wife, Marlena, told the NRG Web site that her husband had loved his job with "all his heart and his soul."
The couple immigrated to Israel from Romania in 1978 and then moved to Virginia in 1986 for his sabbatical, but had stayed since then, their son, Joe, told Army Radio.
How much more honorable would it be if we remember and immortalize Professor Librescu's name and consign the murderer's name (which you will never find mentioned on this blog) to dust?
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