First some general comments. I think the topic of the Virginia Tech
Massacre is difficult for at least the following reasons:

1. The problem is genuinely a difficult one to resolve.
2. The media coverage as always was controversial and worthy of
criticism.
3. Even though the problem is very localized, it's treated like a
problem that needs to be solved through measures taken by some
central authority. Here the national government.
4. Every person quickly sought to create a moral story around
whatever their particular ideological view was, such that the
Virginia Tech Massacre for many people justified their own ideology.

Now I live in Japan, and I've blogged a little bit about reaction in
Japan here:
http://tinyurl.com/2868h3
http://tinyurl.com/ywvhn4

In Japan, many people have a deep fear of guns. When the media first
started reporting about the massacre, statistics were very
selectively used to show America was gun-crazy and dangerous as a
result of the over proliferation of guns.

Some media outlets emphasized how many people commit suicide with a
gun every year in America. They pointed this out to show how
dangerous guns were. But the fact is, that even without guns,
Japanese commit suicide much more frequently than Americans.
Similarly, while violent crimes with guns is nearly at twenty year
lows, this was ignored in favor of sheer number of crimes with
handguns last year in America.

Now, here's where things get fascinating. When it became known that
the perpetrator of the incident was Asian, a South Korean, the
emphasis of the reporting in Japan changed. The problem was no longer
guns, guns, guns, but instead how hard things are in a society made
up of diverse ethnic groups. The moral being, how fortunate it is
that people in Japan live in a homogenous society, where things like
this can't happen. Of course, as a Caucasian in Japan, I'm an ethnic
minority. So what does this view say about me? Moreover, things like
massacres do happen in Japan, just not with guns.

So, in Japan the massacre's moral changed as we learned more about
the perpetrator. So what was the story in America, where the crime
actually took place?

Watching CNN, I was really surprised at how many "mad doctors" came
out and played pundit. Almost all of them said, "Well, it's very hard
to say, you know, I don't know all the details, but from what I've
seen so far on TV, I'd have to say ..."

-- he was a repressed homosexual.
-- he was a psychotic.
-- he had schizophrenia.
-- he was [clinically] depressed.
-- et cetera, ad nauseam.

I kept thinking to myself, how do they know? Clearly because of their
1000 fold experience, to which this episode will now be added as
their 1001st experience. (I'm alluding to something Karl Popper once
said.)

I guess, I'm at least a little guilty here of creating my own moral
tale from what happened. I thought it was perhaps because people
haven't been listening to Thomas Szasz enough. I thought, look at how
well treated the perpetrator of the crime was.

His behavior in many ways was *bad*, really *bad*, and yet people
tolerated it. Carry a gun on campus at Virginia Tech and you will
most likely be expelled. However, stalk girls, or take pictures of
them under the desk ... and ... you are mentally ill, you need help,
you need some one to heal you, someone to devote more attention to
you, some one to worry about you more, some one to love you more.

I don't really want to play this game where we try to create our own
moral tale from the Virginia Tech Massacre, complete with an easy to
grasp moral. But, well, there you have it.

So I was really taken aback when I discovered an article by Dr.
Jonathan Kellerman in the Opinion Journal basically arguing it's all
Szasz's fault. My initial reaction was sort of like, "huh?" followed
by disgust.

I've already posted the full article here, so now let me take some
quotes from the article and comment on them:

"Hungarian-born in 1920, and witness to vicious state exploitation of
medical practice by the Nazis and the communists, Dr. Szasz pushed an
absolutist dogma of individual choice, finding ready converts among
members of the Do-Your-Own-Thing generation."

I don't think Szasz has ever supported the do-your-own-own thing
generation. In fact, Szasz has again and again argued for self-
autonomy and self-responsibility, NEVER self-actualization. In many
ways, he's challenged the self-actualization promoters.

"Though his early essays offered much-needed critiques of the
Orwellian nightmares that can result when autocracy corrupts health
care, Dr. Szasz devolved into something of a psychiatric Flat-
Earther, insisting in the face of mounting contrary evidence that
mental illness simply does not exist."

I mean, by gosh, how could mental illness not exist. We've got 33
dead people in Virginia to show it does! What more proof do you want!
We've all met crazy people. I mean some people out there are just
bonkers. Who can deny it?

"Currently, he serves on a commission, cofounded with the Church of
Scientology, that purports to investigate human rights violations
perpetrated by mental health professionals."

In other words, Szasz is bonkers by association. We all know those
weirdoes at the Church of Scientology are probably sick themselves.
And Szasz is one of them now, that's how far gone he is.

"Accepting the arguments of the liberationists and the libertarians
at face value led to the assertion that no matter how bizarre,
disabling or life-threatening a person's hallucinations and
delusions, involuntary treatment was never called for. And to the
assertion that violation of that premise created yet another class of
political prisoners."

This is very uneven. First, what does Kellerman mean by "no matter
how far gone", is mental illness a journey then? Note, that Szasz
has, indeed, argued against involuntary treatment. But he has also
argued that people need to be responsible for their actions. Even in
this case, the person in question was stalking and troubling people
in ways that could be considered criminal. But he was *never* treated
as a criminal. There is no report of him having to be accountable for
his actions. So, even if we accept the highly questionable premise,
that Szasz's ideas helped to abolish "involuntary treatment", his
other ideas have been completely ignored. People are still being
treated as sick, when for Szasz they should be being treated as
criminal or at minimum ethically in the wrong. The perpetrator of the
Virginia Tech Massacre is a case in point.

Again and again, the media kept trying to *justify* the perpetrators
actions. Maybe someone should stop to consider that his actions
simply are NOT justifiable.

"Many of these unfortunates end up as victims of violent crimes. A
few become victimizers and when they do, watch out. For though it is
true that schizophrenics are responsible for a proportionally lower
rate of violent offenses than the general population (because many
forms of the disease engender passivity and physical inactivity),
when crazy people do act out the results are often horrific: bloody
spree killings ignited by paranoid thinking and the angry urgings of
internal voices. Which brings us to outrages such as the Virginia
Tech massacre."

This just takes my breath away. Crazy people are dangerous! Watch
out! Danger! Danger! Let's stamp those we think are dangerous with a
big scarlet letter on the forehead and give them the special
treatment they deserve.

"Diagnosis from afar is the purview of talk-shows hosts and other
charlatans, and I will not attempt to detail the psyche of the
Virginia Tech slaughterer. But I will hazard that much of what has
been reported about his pre-massacre behavior--prolonged periods of
asocial mutism and withdrawal, irrational anger and hatred, bizarre
writing and speech--is not at odds with the picture of a fulminating,
serious mental disease. And his age falls squarely within the most
common period when psychosis blossoms."

In other words, I'm tellin' ya' the guy was nuts!

"No one who knew him seems surprised by what he did. On the
contrary, dorm chatter characterized him explicitly as a future
school-shooter. One of his professors, the poet Nikki Giovanni, saw
him as a disruptive bully and kicked him out of her class. Other
teachers viewed him as disturbed and referred him for the ubiquitous
"counseling"--an outcome that is ambiguous to the point of
meaninglessness and akin to "treatment" for a patient with
metastasized cancer."

The school policy was to expel people who had guns. However, for
stalking girls, you only need counseling. Also, the idea that mental
illness resembles cancer is ludicrous. So skilled is Kellerman, he
can diagnose something akin to cancer from his living room while
watching video clips of his patient on TV.

"But even that minimal care wasn't given. The shooter didn't want it
and no one tried to force him to get it. While it's been reported
that he was involuntarily committed to a "Behavioral Health Center"
in December 2005, those reports also say he was released the very
next morning. Even if the will to segregate an obvious menace had
been in place, the legal mechanisms to provide even temporary
"warehousing" were absent. The rest is terrible history."

What if he'd been thrown out of the school and arrested for stalking,
instead of involuntarily committed?

"That is not to say that anyone who pens violence-laden poetry or
lets slip the occasional hostile remark should be protectively
incarcerated."

But indeed, it surly is.

"But when the level of threat rises to college freshmen and faculty
prophesying accurately, perhaps we should err on the side of public
safety rather than protect individual liberty at all costs."

Is the suggestion that we should deputize students and teachers as
assistants of "mad doctors", or that even ordinary people know
craziness when they see it? In general, it's a symptom of
justificationism that there's always ample proof for most theories.
Once the theories been proved, we always seem to have known it all
along.

"If the Virginia Tech shooter had been locked up for careful
observation in a humane mental hospital, the worst-case scenario
would've been a minor league civil liberties goof: an unpleasant
semester break for an odd and hostile young misanthrope who might've
even have learned to be more polite. Yes, it's possible confinement
would've been futile or even stoked his rage. But a third outcome is
also possible: Simply getting a patient through a crisis point can
prevent disaster, as happens with suicidal people restrained from
self-destruction who lose their enthusiasm for repeat performances."

So it's been decided then. That the killer was a looney, and that he
should have been involuntarily committed. Because this didn't happen,
33 people are dead. What a load of malarkey.

"But all this remains in the realm of fantasy."

You bet it does!

"Talk to anyone who's tried to commit a dangerously violent child or
parent for even a few days: A stranger with a law degree will show up
at the hearing and paint you as a fascist."

This is new to me, but I'm glad to hear it.

"Unless we confront the unpleasant fact that the brains of a small
percentage of our citizens incubate dark, disturbed thoughts that can
blossom into vicious behavior, we can look forward to repeats of last
week's outrage."

What's this last part got to do with mental illness. Kellerman
clearly admits here that the problem he is confronting is evil,
itself. Perhaps we should do away with prisons entirely and just have
mental wards.

Best,
Matt Dioguardi