12 killed in shooting at satirical newspaper office in Paris

Former President George W. Bush said that the invasion of Iraq was mandated by (his Christian) God, and it is estimated to date that the US has inadvertantly killed more innocent civilians than the 9/11 attack. Perhaps it's splitting hairs, but if you're an average person living in Iraq, worried that your trip to the market could be your last due to either Al Qaida, the US, or both, does it really matter which side is committing the most violence?

 

Sorry but that's not because they have a mental illness, it's because they are bad people or lack a moral compass as is the case with the personality disorder of psychopathy.

 

To be clear, are you suggesting that a personality disorder is not a mental illness?

 

Isn't this a bit pedantic? When an animal rights activist firebombs a university, is it relevant if he was baptised or not?

 

Some people class it as a type of mental illness, but that's not what makes people commit such crimes as we saw with Charlie Hebdo. There are lots of psychopaths in the world but they don't all go around killing other people, mental illness doesn't excuses their actions.

 

You're right, it doesn't excuse their actions; however, it can be used to try and explain them.

 

2 assault teams have breached - the `brothers` are reported to have been killed and the supermarket team entered as well

 

I guess that as a psychologist I have a more layered view about this. First, explanations are not excuses! They are attempts at understanding which is the first step towards problem solving.

Second, if we want to understand people's behaviour rather than categorise it, the labels "good" or "bad" (or "moral" and "immoral") are not very helpful in themselves. It is circular reasoning at best: "This person does bad things because he is a bad person".

Third (and this could be a thread all of its own) is the issue of how we define health and illness, and therefore also mental health and illness. In the olden days health and illness had a moral dimension. Illness was seen as divine punishment --but sometimes also as a divine blessing. It was a stigma or a sign of holiness. Even today we tend to make moral judgements about illness: whether a person deserved it, what it says about them, whether they are a helpless victim or instigator of their own suffering, or a brave hero in the face of adversity. People with mental illness too are often seen as tragic victims, or tragically but specially gifted people, or occasionally as foaming at the mouth villains out to kill people and molest our children. None of that is true, of course; people with mental illness are just people. They are us, on a very bad day.

Whereas mental illness originally was regarded as a discrete condition dichotomous with mental health, it is now understood that mental illness lies on a continuum with mental health. This is still a very psychiatric diagnostic (i.e. classifying) perspective. Psychology comes from a more functional perspective, and regards dysfunctional behaviour as lying on a continuum with functional behaviour. All behaviour has a purpose: it is an attempt at coping, survival and maintaining wellbeing and integrity in some way. Functional behaviour does this very well; dysfunctional behaviour does this badly, and may even cause the problems it meant to avoid or ameliorate. This also implies that mental health conditions are rarely discrete and separate --there is often overlap in presentation, behaviour patterns and underlying psychopathology.

This means that the term mental illness could cover all sorts of psychological dysfunction that can range from mild (e.g. phobias and panic attacks) to more serious (clinical depression, PTSD) to extreme (personality disorder) and outright fragmented (psychosis and delusions). Some of it interacts with physical dysfunction in all sorts of complex ways (anorexia nervosa, addictive behaviours, psychoses). From a psychological position, most people are not entirely functional, but not entirely dysfunctional either.

In this particular instance I have been talking about psychological trauma and about personality adaptations, which range from dysfunctional, but not outright disordered behaviour patterns you can find in many people to diagnosed personality disorders, to psychopathy which is the most (far) extreme.

Psychological dysfunction does of course occur in the context of the human being; i.e. an interacting network of all his behaviours, relationships, developmental history, current circumstances, physical and social environment, language, culture, religion/ideology, thinking, knowledge, physical functioning etc. and they all interact. So it takes more than just mental health problems for someone to decide it is a good idea to hack someone to death, just as it takes much more than just being exposed to a certain ideology. Mental health problems can certainly interfere with impulse control or rational behaviour. If you are suffering paranoid psychotic delusions that everyone is out to get you, you may end up harming people in an attempt at keeping yourself safe. Socially dysfunctional behaviour --or at its extreme, anti-social behaviour-- is socially maladaptive survival/coping behaviour disregardful of, or threatening/harmful to others and be regarded as immoral --and hence often unlawful, which leads to the aforementioned statistic of 70% prison population having mental health problems (and 20% being psychopaths).

This is why psychologists are trained in problem formulation, which is basically being able to unravel and describe this network of interrelated factors and being able to impose various sets of interactional models and theories on it to understand what might be going on and where you start changing things. It is a very specific skill.

Yes, actually, it could be. let's put it like this: do you think that being raised in one framework of absolute and unquestioned authoritarian moral beliefs might influence how you approach other ethical or philosophical issues?

Science is nothing if not pedantic.

 

But surely few Christians are raised in a "framework of absolute and unquestioned moral beliefs" as that isn't the approach in mainstream Christianity much as it may suit you to treat them all as simpletons in this way.

 

And statistically, few Christians become terrorists. As indeed few Muslims do --as much as it may suit you to treat them all as extremists in this way. But Christianity has its more fundamentalist branches as any other mainstream religion does. In the US in particular (again, we're talking about a continuum).

You keep looking for that single factor X that turns a normal human being into a raving terrorist. It is not as simple as that!

 

But while there may be a few terrorist acts committed by people that think they are doing it from Christian Beliefs, they are few and far between. I suspect you are lumping in all US-right wing nutters as Christian Terrorists. They are normally Christians, but the motivating ideology for them will have been political rather than religious.
Futhermore, and highly relevantly, they are reposibly for a statistically tiny number of the significant terorist attacks currently, even domestically and none outside the USa, afaik.

So why on earth in a discussion of a really serious terrorist incident that has caused many deaths are you on about supposed US Christian Terrorists, of which I can't find any recently, unless you describe any white Neo-nazi,Conspiracy nutter or other as a Christian Terrorists.

Why are you on about this? IS it your obsession to show that Americans are as bad as anythign bad in the world or something?

No, I'm certainly not claiming that Islam makes people terrorists. Quote where I did if you like.


But I will point out that nearly all the terrorist killings in the world at the moment are by Islamicist groups. You may wish to ignore that elephant, but I needs to be questions rather than ignored.


For context rad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_2014 and see how the world quakes in fear of American Christian terrorists.

 

Thanks for taking the time to write that, it certainly makes things a lot clearer.

It's probably wrong of me to pick your second point but TBH I'm not sure i want, or care to understand there behaviour, i just want them to stop killing people. That's probably not very logical is it.

 

Well, I only go on their claimed affiliations. But it is gratifying to know that you are starting to see all the complex nuances at play here.

Let's recap the conversation:

Chorus:Islamist ideology makes people become terrorists.

Me:It's not just the ideology; there are many other factors involved. Not just fundamentalism but also marginalisation, brutalisation, psychological trauma, mental health issues...

Chorus: Sorry, are you saying that people with mental health issues become terrorists?

Me: No, I am saying that there are many other factors involved. Not just fundamentalist ideology, but also marginalisation, brutalisation, psychological trauma, mental health issues...

Chorus: But you have to admit, most terrorists are Muslim.

Me: Not only Muslims become terrorists. So do people from other religions such as fundamentalist Christianity, and there are many other factors involved. Not just fundamentalist ideology, but also marginalisation, brutalisation, psychological trauma, mental health issues...

Chorus: Why are you on about Christianity? Are you trying to prove America is evil or something?

I mean, Seriously?

Quote where I claimed you claimed that? But you did say:

You don't question it. You just draw a straight cause --> effect line. And that is a gross oversimplification of reality. Islamist terrorists certainly constitute the largest number at the moment, but that may have more to do with the fact that the West has been astro-turfing the region for them since the 80's. Neither the Taliban, Al-Qaida or ISIS could be what it is today without that Western 'support'.

 

Actually it is very pragmatic: understanding is only as good as it is useful. By understanding the process by which people become terrorists, we can intervene in the process, possibly preventatively, rather than having to deal with them once they are killing people.

That doesn't mean by the way that I don't have my moments when I think the best approach to ISIS is neurosurgery by gun.

 

I found a drawing of Nexxo at work:

 

They briefly had 2 of the terrorists on the phone, one of the Kouachi brothers claimed to be financed by Al-Quaida in Yemen and Calibaly said he was with IS.

 

Please make the effort to make the distinction between Islamacist and Muslim.

There is a problem with Islamacist terrorism. This doesn't make it a problem with Muslims.

 

Please make a distinction between Christians and Christianists, and my statement that you are looking at Islamist ideology as a single factor to explain terrorism, not Islam.

But we are making progress! You are starting to appreciate the many complex distinctions.

 

Sorrry but if it is a serious piece of journalism it will be there in text. I don't find the need to go to youtube about current events.