Mass Murder and Depersonalization
9/6/2019
Each and every time someone “goes crazy” and uses a gun to shoot a number of people at random, a big debate ensues as to whether it is the gun or mental illness that is to blame. We all know guns, by themselves, do not spontaneously aim and discharge themselves in the direction of other people. It takes a human being to operate a weapon. We also know that millions of people own millions of guns and handle them responsibly with no intention of randomly shooting anyone. We know that there are millions of people with mental illness diagnoses who are not dangerous to themselves or others, whether they own a gun or not. And we know that seemingly “normal” people with no prior history of mental illness have been responsible for mass shootings.
Those on the Left argue that while it is obvious that people need to pull the trigger, it is the wide availability of the gun that is the issue. Were it not for the availability of the gun, mentally ill people, racists, white supremacists, homophobes and others (mostly angry white males between 20 and 45) would not be able to murder so easily. They also tend to purposely misidentify the lethality of a gun with its appearance and give ordinary semi-automatic rifles names like “assault weapons” and “military style weapons”. They declare that the second amendment does not give ordinary citizens the kind of weapons used by the military.
People on the Right argue that guns don’t kill people, people do. The Right is quick to argue that mass murderers are sick people, mentally ill people. Gun enthusiasts point out that were it not for the mental illness, there would be no mass murders. They accurately point out that weapons like the AR15 and other so called “assault weapons” while dressed up to look like certain military weapons are definitely not the same weapons used by the military. The fact is that if the US military used the AR15, it wouldn’t be able to win a war against the Barbados armed with the real thing. The Right likes to argue that there are 300 million guns in the hands of responsible gun owners and it would be ridiculous to disarm the entire population because of a handful of crazy people used guns to kill people at random.
In the end, the Left fears guns and, generally, think that the people who own them are a little crazy simply by virtue of owning a gun. More than a few on the Left, though they don’t often openly admit it, would completely ban guns of any sort if they had their druthers. They firmly believe lives would be saved if guns did not exist and the citizenry were disarmed.
Those on the Right see gun ownership as an individual right sanctioned by the Second Amendment to the Constitution and, though they don’t often say so in public, see gun ownership as a guarantee of liberty and necessary to deter a power, foreign or domestic from denying them that liberty. They see guns as necessary for self defense against criminals and sincerely believe that life and liberty would be lost if citizens were disarmed.
But, though the Right and Left have different solutions for stopping crazy people from using guns to kill others (take guns away from everybody vs. arm everybody), they do agree that mental illness is an important factor leading to someone pulling the trigger and killing dozens of people.
So what, if any, is the connection between mental illness and a person using a weapon to randomly wound or murder other human beings. It is regularly or popularly assumed that the shooter is “crazy”. I even started this essay with the idea that someone “goes crazy”. But what if being diagnosed with a mental illness is not the same as “going crazy”? What if perfectly normal people can, under certain conditions, “go crazy”? If you agree that sane people can “go crazy, then what precisely do we mean when we say that a person who would do such a thing must be “crazy”.
Succinctly, here is my opinion: there is NO connection between mental illness and mass shootings. So, all the talk about increasing mental health resources for mentally ill people is not likely to be an effective deterrent to mass murder. It’s an idea that gives people comfort to think that something is being done to prevent the problem. But it’s like the drunk who loses his keys in the bushes but searches for them under the lamp post because, he says, there’s more light there. So I maintain that although it’s not mental illness, per se, that is involved, it is an easily identifiable mental state that is common to most mass murderers.
This mental state is called depersonalization. The definition of depersonalization is: “The persistent feeling of observing oneself from outside one’s body or having a sense that one’s surroundings aren't real....Depersonalization can be normal, and is only an indicator of underlying disease when feelings become excessive, all-consuming, and interfere with daily living.” Important to understand is that depersonalization can be a transient state, occurring for a time and then remitting when stressors or conditions change.
The common understanding of depersonalization comes from the military where soldiers are indirectly taught to depersonalize the enemy to make it easier to kill them without regret. The enemy is not thought of by individual names but by group names like gooks, chinks, krauts. Essentially, soldiers are conditioned not to personalize the enemy. Mass murderers often condition themselves similarly by referring to entire groups of people as “niggers”, “kikes”, “spics”, “fairies” “honkies”, etc. Depersonalizing individuals into hated groups makes killing easier.
But this common way of understanding depersonalization is not the clinical way of understanding it. When I use the term depersonalization, I mean that, as in the definition above, there is a feeling that there is an attendant feeling of unreality. While a soldier in battle may lose his empathy for the enemy, most of the time he is very clear that what is happening is very real.
Depersonalization can occur in people with mental illnesses but it can also occur in perfectly normal people under certain circumstances. That’s why we hear 2 different kinds of stories about shooters. Either they were people who exhibited strange behavior for most of their lives (mental illness) or they were ordinary people who no one ever expected to exhibit violent behavior toward others. And while depersonalization sometimes occurs in many different kinds of mental illness, it doesn’t necessarily always occur. And while depersonalization occurs in some people with mental illness, depersonalization also occurs in people without mental illness. Therefore, research on the connection between diagnosed mental illness and mass shootings has not been fruitful nor is it likely to be. Because when you lump all mass murderers together, they aren’t all mentally ill.
While the relevant condition (depersonalization) is a mental state that sometimes occurs in the mentally ill, it is not, in and of itself, a mental illness. You will often hear shooters being described by witnesses as glassy eyed or laughing/smiling while in the act. After some time passes after the mass shooting, we even hear the shooters themselves being extremely overwrought, not understanding themselves why they did what they did and/or describing their state at the time as dream-like or trance-like.
What does it take to induce a mental state where the individual experiences a disconnection from their sense of things being real? While there are many apparent situations or circumstances one can specify, I believe we can simplify by summarizing as follows: anything that keeps a person internalized, in their own thoughts or imagination, for long periods of time, disconnected from real human relationship and real world consequences, can result in them “getting stuck” in a depersonalized mental state. In that state, the borderline between what is real and what is not can become blurred.
As I indicated, there are also a host of other factors that can contribute to depersonalization such as over-the-counter and prescription medications, high levels of stress, high intelligence and a tendency toward abstract ideas, isolation or lack of social connection. All of these things put a person inside their own minds and create a kind of disconnection from the outside world in such a way that the line between what is inside and what is outside becomes blurred.
Individuals in stressful situations who spend hours going over and over possible solutions in their heads, people who spend untold hours playing video games in which they are immersed in imaginary worlds, people who use a great deal of marijuana, people who are isolated or actively avoid human relationship, creative people absorbed in their creative process or developing solutions to mathematical problems, or people who believe they have been mistreated and obsess over why and what it may mean; all these people and others are susceptible to depersonalization if they do not get some relief from their internal world through interaction with real people in the external world.
The reason research has not demonstrated a connection between violent video games and mass shootings is because it is not the content of video games that is relevant but how much time one spends operating in the virtual reality of the game. Any video game that creates an imaginary or fantasy world in which the user moves about and is played for many hours a day for days at a time begins to blur the line between fantasy and reality. Though I cannot prove it, I believe extended participation in these games actually makes temporary changes to brain function which can last for hours or even days.
In the real world, there are consequences to actions one takes. In video games, there are no REAL consequences for actions taken. If you get “killed” you don’t die, you don’t feel pain. If you get lost there is no hunger, no thirst. If mistakes in judgment are made, the game merely resets and one begins again. I would like to say that the real world does not operate the way in which a video game operates. However, today we are increasingly seeing excuses being made for people who make errors in judgment and no real consequences occurring. Real consequences keep one connected to the outside world, to their impact on other people and the impact of the outside world on them. To the extent that a society ameliorates consequences, the real world becomes more like a video game. If you can cuss out a total stranger on-line with no consequences, the reality of other people becomes diminished. If you can lump entire classes of people together as a concept and never actually interact with them except as a stereotype of some group they belong to, then bigotry of all sorts can flourish. So, as we look for causes of depersonalization and the gun violence it may lead to, we need look no further than our evolving technology based, media driven culture.
With respect to marijuana, it is not the marijuana, per se, that causes depersonalization but whether the individual using the marijuana uses it as a method to avoid interaction with the outside world. Marijuana use, if extensive or even moderate in some people, can result in a temporary feeling of unreality and does, indeed, temporarily alter brain chemistry.
It is my belief that people who spend substantial time on video games AND regularly use marijuana are at particular risk for experiencing depersonalization. Both of these things, combined with any of the other contributors to depersonalization mentioned above wreak havoc with the borderline between what is real and what is not real.
While our politicians search for solutions to the problem of mass shootings, they appear to me to be talking around the issue but never really focusing in on the key issue of depersonalization. While background checks can be useful in keeping guns out of the hands of people with criminal backgrounds or people whose judgment is compromised by some mental illnesses or other cognitive dysfunctions, they will not be helpful in identifying who might be susceptible to depersonalization.
Mandatory mental health treatment rendered prior to the event would not have helped in some of the cases of mass murder because there generally would have been no indication of the depersonalization, at least in the case of those not mentally ill. Because people differ in how their brains operate, it is difficult to impossible to predict who will be subject to depersonalization and when.
Taking all firearms or certain firearms away from millions of people because some people use them to murder themselves or others is pointless. The choice of weapon is irrelevant. If it is not an AR15 or an AK47 that is available, it will be a handgun. If handguns are not available, it will be a knife or machete or bomb. One of the earliest largest mass murders in US history was perpetrated in 1927 by a school janitor using a bomb in Bath, Michigan. There was a time when children brought guns to school and yet there were fewer school shootings. Clearly the issue is not the guns themselves but the environment that makes people capable of taking any weapon and using it to murder others.
Identifying possible mass shooters before the fact might be near impossible. But identifying people who seem angry about some issue, seem to be somewhat obsessive about that anger and unable to let it go, who seem to spend a great deal of time alone with little or no interaction with other people, who use marijuana and video games as a way of avoiding interaction with others, and who seem to be uncharacteristically disconnected in their human interactions might serve as warning signs of the depersonalization state that enables someone to grab a weapon and use it on others.
When mass shootings occur, people say “we have to do something about it”. Never mind that there are more people killed by malpracticing physicians than by semi-automatic rifles in any particular year. The hysterical imperative to do something…anything…is typical but not reasonable. To do something that is not effective in solving a problem is no better than doing nothing at all.
So what can we as citizens and our government do to effectively prevent mass murder. My answer is to address the issue of depersonalization. Want to outlaw guns? Why not outlaw marijuana? It makes as much sense to take guns away millions who use them responsibly than to take marijuana away from everyone because a few mass murderers may have used it irresponsibly. But guns don’t contribute to depersonalization while marijuana might. Instead, government is using it as an income producing crop.
Here’s what we can do:
1. Get people who are isolated and alone involved with activities in their communities.
2. Pay notice to angry people who blame a person or group of person’s for some perceived threat to their well being.
3. Keep children and young people limited to the amount of time spent in virtual reality experiences.
4. Pay notice to people who seem disconnected or in a daze due to use of certain medications or recreational drugs.
5. Demand that politicians demonstrate that their solutions are effective in addressing the problems they are meant to address.
When all is said and done, what we do in interacting with members of our communities may be more effective than anything government can do. Disconnect from social media and mobile technology and reconnect face-to-face with real people and the real world.
