Jared Loughner’s Possible Mental Illness

[IScreamSundays]

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I cannot know if he is the shooter, but his videos do display a garbled mixture of political concerns, and there is a great deal about conscience (“conscience dreams”), about not doing wrong, about the definition of “terrorist”, about “grammar” and “currency”, about “brainwashing” and “mind control”. At times, appears as if he’s grappling with something struggling inside himself.

There are also indications of a sense of multiple internal selves, or a dissociated kind of experience (“conscience dreaming”) that may also mean he had dissociated personality as well. In fact, this combination of dissociated identity and schizophrenia is much more highly associated with violence than schizophrenia alone. Then again, his comments may only appear to indicate such dissociative processes, and be better accounted for by a thought disorder.

If one researches the words “conscience dreaming” online, you will find a YouTube video with that title, not by Mr. Loughner, and no connection with the latter is inferred, except that he may have watched the video. The video concerns three characters, The Agent, The Assassin, and The Dream Maker. There is also one imprisoned anonymous character. I find it quite coincidental to say the least that a phrase the supposed shooter used a number of times links to such a video which has such characters in it.

I would caution against implying any politics to someone who appears so disturbed, as his interpretation of political symbols and phrases are interpreted in a highly idiosyncratic and irrational way. However, if he were susceptible to violence, then the targets available by the given society, i.e., the rhetoric out there in the society, would have pointed him towards liberals, leftists, Muslims, or other minorities, and that kind of rhetoric has mainly been from the right-wing, as has been copiously commented upon.

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http://my.firedoglake.com/valtin/2011/01/08/jared-loughners-possible-mental-illness/

[greyl]

1. What an annoying read. nt

[bemildred]

2. This guy seems uninformed. nt

[leveymg]

3. In other words, he was succeptible to mass brainwashing by the Right into political assassination

I guess that makes sense. I'd like to see some sort of scientific literature to back that up. We all know that "aggitation- propaganda" has been a fixture of mass revolutionary and totalitarian movements for nearly a century.

I wonder if someone convincingly connected the lethal results with a solid expose of the technique, and could show that there was a conscious effort to program unstable people to commit violent acts, maybe one could make a public case against the Right-wing propagandists of the corporate media that would be politically damaging to their cause.

[JDPriestly]

4. I am not a psychologist, but I think that the article explains what happened here.

Loughner was susceptible to believing and perhaps seeking overly simplistic answers to difficult questions. For me, that virtually defines right-wing thought and discussion -- overly simplistic answers to difficult questions. And I might add, repeated over and over.

Many right-wingers are just too lazy and disinterested to puzzle out a long, carefully constructed, logical argument, and come to a meaningful solution, so they use language, often code words, that symbolize ideas. Some examples are "Drill, baby, drill," and "Obamacare." Those phrases allow the speaker to shortcut to a conclusion without thinking things through. That is the mentality of people who sign a contract without reading it. Why bother with the fine print? Just get what you want quickly.

Loughner did not use language in that way because he was lazy but rather because he was mentally ill.

So, let's remember on DU that we have a responsibility for puzzling through the difficult questions. Just jumping to conclusions without exploring facts and ideas gets us in a lot of trouble. And that is where Loughner is.