Columbine

[janjo]

In many ways it is hard to blame the Harrises for not picking up Eric's psycopathy, when having realised there was at least some sort of problem he was referred to professionals, who also failed to diagnose the problem.
How does one admit to oneself that a much loved child is a psycopath?
Eris was clever enough to fool and manipulate them all.

[michaelflanagansf]

In many ways it is hard to blame the Harrises for not picking up Eric's psycopathy, when having realised there was at least some sort of problem he was referred to professionals, who also failed to diagnose the problem.
How does one admit to oneself that a much loved child is a psycopath?
Eris was clever enough to fool and manipulate them all.

I really don't blame them for not picking up on his being a psychopath, Jess.  I am a bit amazed that by the end Wayne Harris wasn't more suspicious than he was.  That the gun store called up and told him that the clips were in and he didn't put two and two together is somewhat baffling to me.  But he does seem to have been in serious denial about Eric's behavior, particularly with regard to what he did to Brooks Brown.  And that he found a pipe bomb and still didn't get suspicious when the gun store called seems a bit odd to me.

But pick up on psychopathy?  I'm just not sure that many people can do that.  As Dave says in the book, they don't act like Hannibal Lecter, they act like Hugh Grant (when he wasn't out picking up prostitutes, I assume).  Like I said to Gary, one of the central questions for me in the book is how do we recognize psychopathic behavior and what are we willing to give up in order to be willing to recognize this?  It's very similar to the questions about what rights we are willing to give up in order to stop terrorists, I think.  There are a small number of people who are willing to do terrible things and deceive everyone to the best of their ability in order to do them.  Do we put the vast majority of people through extreme scrutiny in order to stop those few?

[KittyHawk]

In some of the articles and manuals I've read skimmed on psychopathy and its treatment, Robert Hare, Michael Caldwell and others have insisted that the general public shouldn't try to determine who is or is not a psychopath. As I understand it, the checklist is not something a casual observer can use and say yes, no, yes, yes, no and decide that their nextdoor neighbor has psychopathic tendancies. Both in diagnosing and treatment, the strong emphasis seems to be on trained professionals using the available tools. Otherwise, the results will not be dependable. So teachers, for example, can't possibly have enough time to go through training in how to spot a psychopath. They CAN be instructed, however, to take troubling signs that they notice to a professional who IS trained in diagnosing the condition. Same goes for parents, I think. Seek professional help.

But Wayne Harris did that, and still no one diagnosed Eric correctly. Do you all think Columbine may sesrve as a warning and help mental health professionals avoid this sort of catastrophe in the future?

[janjo]

In many ways it is hard to blame the Harrises for not picking up Eric's psycopathy, when having realised there was at least some sort of problem he was referred to professionals, who also failed to diagnose the problem.
How does one admit to oneself that a much loved child is a psycopath?
Eris was clever enough to fool and manipulate them all.

I really don't blame them for not picking up on his being a psychopath, Jess.  I am a bit amazed that by the end Wayne Harris wasn't more suspicious than he was.  That the gun store called up and told him that the clips were in and he didn't put two and two together is somewhat baffling to me.  But he does seem to have been in serious denial about Eric's behavior, particularly with regard to what he did to Brooks Brown.  And that he found a pipe bomb and still didn't get suspicious when the gun store called seems a bit odd to me.

But pick up on psychopathy?  I'm just not sure that many people can do that.  As Dave says in the book, they don't act like Hannibal Lecter, they act like Hugh Grant (when he wasn't out picking up prostitutes, I assume).  Like I said to Gary, one of the central questions for me in the book is how do we recognize psychopathic behavior and what are we willing to give up in order to be willing to recognize this?  It's very similar to the questions about what rights we are willing to give up in order to stop terrorists, I think.  There are a small number of people who are willing to do terrible things and deceive everyone to the best of their ability in order to do them.  Do we put the vast majority of people through extreme scrutiny in order to stop those few?

What is hard for me to grasp is the difference between our two countries as far as gun control is concerned. If a gun dealer rung me about something one of my children had ordered, I would be seriously alarmed, but guns do seem to be pretty common currency in the US. But, I am not an American, I only know what I read and hear from the media. So I may well be completely wrong. Was the problem perhaps that Wayne Harris had been a soldier, and guns and explosives didn't worry him as they would have done me, or you?
I can't answer that, and I am certainly not here to defend Mr Harris.
I am worried about how we can recognise who and who is not a psycopath, and what we can do with them once we have done it. Once they are identified there is no really reliable treatment that can easily be applied, and they can't be arrested until they have been found to have committed a crime.
It is all very difficult.

edited to correct quote

[KittyHawk]

...
I am worried about how we can recognise who and who is not a psycopath, and what we can do with them once we have done it. Once they are identified there is no really reliable treatment that can easily be applied, and they can't be arrested until they have been found to have committed a crime.
It is all very difficult.

You're certainly right, Janjo, that there's no easy treatment. But Michael Caldwell (see the bibiography under Juvenile Psychopathy) has a program which has been implemented for 10 years that shows signs of teaching juveniles with psychopathic tendencies how to alter their behavior. He's shown success although the program does take a number of highly trained professionals and time. He and some members of the Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy are hoping for grant money and another site which can provide the resources to replicate his study. So it's not completely hopeless. Some opponents of spending money to study treatment claim it's not cost efficient since there's such a small number of psychopaths. But they are ignoring the disproportional amount of damage (financial, physical, emotional) that they cause.

[janjo]

It is a small and very specialised programme, and is not available world wide. It is encouraging, but picking out the psychopaths and getting them on the programme would be quite problematical. Harris fooled mental health workers for some time, and no one expected him to behave as he did. Someone should have been reading his IT output and connecting the dots, but there is so much information, and so many students who cause concern in all sorts of ways that it does not surprise me at all that he was missed.

[Sandy]

~snip~
It is just so difficult to theorize without more information about the parents.
Eric's dad did indeed appear to apply military discipline and "personnel management" as his primary parenting skills.
This is not unusual, however.
Pat Conroy's father did the same, to a much greater abusive extent it would seem.  But again, we don't know enough about Eric's dad.
Of course, Pat Conroy, as far as we know, is not a psychopath .

If we are to accept that Eric is a psychopath, then I suppose he could manipulate any type of parenting technique.
This is the truly frightening aspect to all this as far as I am concerned.
Just how is a parent supposed to recognize psychopathic behavior?
It is difficult enough, I should think, to recognize and treat extreme depression in a teenager.

I agree that it's hard to theorize about the parents' state of minds in the absence of information about it, but it's also hard to theorize about Eric's state of mind from his behavior, and here I include his journals. We can ask all the psychological questions we want, but I fear we can't get answers out of Eric, and his father seems pretty reluctant.

One question is, was military-type discipline a form of control or child-rearing that was suited to Eric's psychic needs and inner makeup? Were the parents listening to what those needs were? (Okay, that's two questions.)

I think you're right that it is very difficult to recognize these sorts problems. It is, in fact, generally in hindsight that we see them, and I would be interested in knowing just how successful the checklist is in predicting future behavior rather than describing past actions.

How do we get at the inner soul of someone else? I think we have to recognize the shades of darkness and doubt that lurk with ourselves and also recognize that others are liable to the same sorts of demons.

edited to correct quote

[Sandy]

~snip~
The problem with trying to enter Eric's internal world is that he was actively working to keep people from doing that.  He had people in diversion and even a psychiatrist who were trying to enter, engage and effect that world and he manipulated them.

For a 'normal' child I quite agree with you, Sandy - it would have done a world of good to have a parent try to get to the 'why' of the drinking, the pipe bombs, the attacks on Brooks Brown.  But for Eric it was a game - he was doing everything he could to manipulate and deceive his parents.

I suppose it's possible that if Wayne had engaged Eric internally he may have been able to put off the violence that Eric wanted to commit.  But Eric did want to commit violence - and if Wayne had been able to put off the onset of it my guess is that it only would have shown up later - like with Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer.  Now those are two radically different cases - Bundy seems to have had a very violent childhood and Dahmer a very nurturing one (although his parents divorce did cause conflict in his young life).

I agree that, under the best of circumstances, it would have been hard to enter Eric's mind. And he, like so many teenagers, wanted to keep others out. Since his parents had themselves been teenagers at one time, I wonder if they remembered all the turnoil and demands for autonomy that they would have made then. I think we can begin to know another's mind by referring to our own inner lives, but we are also finite beings who can't encompass all the possible outcomes.

[Nikki]

27)  'Who Owns The The Tragedy' is a chapter in which Eric and Dylan don't appear.  Do you think that focusing on someone other than them provides a relief to the reader?  Do you think Dave intentionally gave the reader breathing space here?

IMO this chapter acts as an arc between the main story of the tragedy and the aftermath including the official end of the mourning period, the media debacle, and Patrick's recovery, as well as a breather for the reader.


28)  In this chapter ('Who Owns') we read more about the recovery of Patrick Ireland.  What do you feel we can learn about human resilience from his story?  Do you feel that the forgiveness that he espoused is necessary for complete healing?  Why do you think it was more difficult for Patrick's mother to forgive the killers than Patrick?

Patrick's recovery efforts and resilience is nothing less than heroic.  Maybe he had to forgive in order to heal and pick up his life without the baggage of hate and resentment. I don't think everyone could forgive so easily, and maybe complete healing on this level is very personal.   Patrick's mother's bond with her child was strong, and seeing his struggle on a day-to-day basis probably enhanced the feelings of hatred she felt toward the killers. She knew what his future life would be like, and it must have been torture to watch him struggle to regain his physical and psychological healing.


29)  This chapter also details the struggle between the school and the media upon its reopening.  Does the media seem unnecessarily insensitive to you or are they just trying to do their job?  Where do your sympathies lie here - with the parents, the media, or is it mixed?

[/quote]

IMO the media always seems insensitive in these catastrophic cases.  Their 'in your face' need for personal interviews with  victims' families and survivors leave a bad taste, to me.  I can't help but sympathize with the parents, so the compromise reached made sense; too bad the media hadn't thought of this sooner.  

[Nikki]

32)  Why on earth would the sheriff and undersheriff pose with the killers weapons?  Does this seem irrational and hurtful to you?  Should they have been fired (or recalled - whichever is done in this case) for this behavior?

There were embarrassing leaks in the department: the video regarding Cassie Bernal was leaked to CBS; Kate Battan had let slip the first passages from Eric's journal; the report was delayed again; there were a number of copies of Eric's journal around; the undersheriff allowed a reporter from Time to see the Basement Tapes after promising the families they would see them first.  Perhaps Stone and Dunaway posed in full uniform with the killers' guns to show they were really a macho police force instead of the Keystone Cops outfit they really were. Yes, they should have been fired for this insensitive, distasteful, and downright stupid behavior.  IMO Stone should have been fired long ago.

[Nikki]

33)  What is your opinion to the reactions to the revelations concerning the Cassie Bernall story?

By the time the book came out, Cassie's story had taken on a life of its own.  Even with Emily's testimony, Cassie had already been lauded as a martyr and the 'Evangelical community' would never accept that the story was untrue. IMO the most cynical remark to come out of this episode was the Rev. Dave McPherson's statement: You will never change the story of Cassie. The church is going to stick to the martyr story.  You can say it didn't happen that way, but the church won't accept it.

[Nikki]

34)  Were you surprised that the Klebolds sued Jeffco?  What is your opinions regarding the merits of their case?

I wasn't surprised.  The police bungled the case from the get-go IMO, and since the Klebolds were on everyone's hate list they wanted to justify, in any way they good, why they were unaware of Dylan's relationship to Eric for which they blamed the police.   Even Brian Rohrbough agreed that "it seems reasonable [that they sue]."  I'm no  lawyer, but there seemed to be merit in their suit, especially given the inept police performance.

[Nikki]

37)  What are your observations regarding the Jeffco Sheriff's department and its delay in releasing its report?  What deficiencies do you see in the reports?  If there had not been lawsuits which forced them to release the reports do you feel they would continue stalling?

"
 I think they were inept, and there certainly seemed reason for Jeffco being "ridiculed for its report."  Did the department delay the report to cover up an inept police investigation, or were they unable to answer the accusations of neglect?   I do think they would have continued stalling without the court's order to release reports.

[Dave Cullen]

In many ways it is hard to blame the Harrises for not picking up Eric's psycopathy, when having realised there was at least some sort of problem he was referred to professionals, who also failed to diagnose the problem.
How does one admit to oneself that a much loved child is a psycopath?
Eris was clever enough to fool and manipulate them all.

I really don't blame them for not picking up on his being a psychopath, Jess.  I am a bit amazed that by the end Wayne Harris wasn't more suspicious than he was.  That the gun store called up and told him that the clips were in and he didn't put two and two together is somewhat baffling to me.  But he does seem to have been in serious denial about Eric's behavior, particularly with regard to what he did to Brooks Brown.  And that he found a pipe bomb and still didn't get suspicious when the gun store called seems a bit odd to me.

But pick up on psychopathy?  I'm just not sure that many people can do that. 

I totally agree on the psychopathy. How many parents even know what that really means, much less the warning signs in kids?

MF, on this: "I am a bit amazed that by the end Wayne Harris wasn't more suspicious than he was"--on what are you basing your assessment of how suspicious he was? I don't think we really know a great deal about his mindset, except that we know he was on Eric's case a lot. According to Eric--who I think we can trust on this--dad's focus was Eric's complete lack of goals. He was graduating high school brilliant, but with nothing lined up but a pizza job. That seems like a reasonable primary concern.

My hunch is that Wayne felt that idle hands get into trouble; lots of bored brilliant kids act out. If he could get the kid to find something calling to fall in love with, he would pour his attention into that and quit feeling the need for mischief. I think that makes sense. That's true of a lot of kids who appear like Eric.

As for the call from the gun store, puzzling things happen to most of us every day or week of our life. When we can't make sense of them, we typically shrug them off pretty fast, and a day or two later, often forget they happened. Who knows what Wayne was thinking. Maybe he was distracted, had his mind on something else. Maybe he wondered, but then let it go. People do things like that all the time. I wish he had noticed, but it's easy from the outside--knowing what happened--to see the clues leap out. In real life, where a zillion things are happening every day, and you think you just got some stupid wrong number or prank . . . you move on.

As for connecting with the pipe bomb, remember that was about a year earlier. Again, as you're reading the book, and seeing these together, they seem easy to connect. But in real life, if someone in your family gets in trouble and then a year later, you get what you think is a wrong number, do you go, "Hey, a year ago . . ." and put it together?

You really have to put yourself in his shoes, and feel like what it would be like if these things happened in your life, with all the intervening life.

[Dave Cullen]

~snip~
It is just so difficult to theorize without more information about the parents. . . .

I agree that it's hard to theorize about the parents' state of minds in the absence of information about it, but it's also hard to theorize about Eric's state of mind from his behavior, and here I include his journals. We can ask all the psychological questions we want, but I fear we can't get answers out of Eric, and his father seems pretty reluctant.

edited to correct quote

I just read this from Gary, and I guess you're making the same point as me. We don't have a whole lot to go on about Wayne's take on Eric. We have quite a few bits, but we don't have hear him ever tell us what he thinks about the whole thing. I agree with you both.

I disagree about Eric, though. He left an extraordinary amount of data about himself, and his thoughts and motives. It also helps greatly that he fits the psychopathic pattern to a T (is that the expression), and they follow very similar patterns to each other. From that, we can deduce a great deal, with a high level of certainty, IMO.