To the Editor:
Re "What Drives Suicidal Mass Killers?" (Op-Ed, Dec. 18):
Adam Lankford argues that suicide terrorists like the 9/11 attackers or other jihadis share a triad of psychological peculiarities: mental health problems, a sense of victimization and a desire for glory.
I've interviewed failed and would-be suicide terrorists, their families and friends across Eurasia and North Africa. Apart from desire for glory, highly developed among jihadis and their ilk but less so among lone-wolf killers like the Newtown murderer, there is little similarity.
Field interviews and controlled psychological experiments indicate that members of violent extremist groups are motivated by a cause (but so are millions of others who fail to act), and kill and die for and with their friends and fellow travelers. They show no reliable history of psychopathy, suicidal tendencies, personal humiliation, sociopathy or any of the other psychosocial problems frequently associated with lone-wolf killers.
We must make every effort to understand what motivates mass murder in order to stop it, but simple and superficial comparisons will not assist.
SCOTT ATRAN
New York, Dec. 18, 2012
The writer is a presidential scholar at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a visiting professor of psychology and public policy at the University of Michigan.
To the Editor:
I have long believed that mass killings by a lone gunman such as Friday's horrendous event in Newtown, which more often than not end with suicide, are at their core about the suicide.
These perpetrators share some form of mental illness that manifests itself in lack of social skills, lack of appropriate emotional development, an inability to connect in normal society.
The cause of that mental illness is complex and does not always lead to violence. But when it does, I believe that the primary goal is taking one's own life.
Some may call suicide a coward's way out, but on some level it takes a certain sort of twisted courage to pull it off. Now imagine that same lost soul with an automatic weapon, an unsuspecting group of innocent people (whether moviegoers, mall shoppers or even the unthinkable — first graders), and a continuous stream of bullets spraying into the crowd.
Now it's easier to end your own life. The suicide can be accomplished only with the momentum and chaos of others dying around you so that it becomes inevitable. If we could somehow screen for suicidal ideation early and often, especially for those who seem socially isolated, we might get a handle on stopping these horrible crimes.
DAPHNE CASE
Norwalk, Conn., Dec. 18, 2012
To the Editor:
Adam Lankford makes an important point about the similarities between those who kill others and then die themselves for political purposes and those who do so for personal reasons. But he glosses over one basic difference between the two groups, a difference that has important implications for both explaining and preventing mass killings.
That difference is that those who kill and die for political purposes are typically members of a community, while those who kill and die for personal reasons are typically alone and isolated.
The communities of most politically motivated killers not only value the killers' actions but also encourage, train and arm them, and then venerate them as martyrs and reward their families.
Personally motivated killers like Adam Lanza typically live in a very different world. They live lonely, constricted, isolated lives. Rather than ending their lives as martyrs, they are defined after their deaths as monsters, and their families and communities are left to grieve and suffer.
DAVID LEVINSON
Southbury, Conn., Dec. 18, 2012
The writer is a cultural anthropologist and author of "Family Violence in Cross-Cultural Perspective."
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