Pgchoana\tic Quartnly, LXXII, zoo j

A C R U C I B L E F O R M U R D E R :T H E S O C I A L C O N T E X T O F V I O L E N TC H I L D R E N A N D A D O L E S C E N T S

BY STUART W. TWEMLOW. M.D.

The author describes aspects of social contezct that are ofimportance in the genesis of murdmous aiolnnce in childrmand adolescents. Case presentations illustrate the effects of

family attachmcnt pathology, diffning outcomes in destru,c-tiae child,rm, and, the copycat phmommon. The author con-cludes by summarizing the continuum of responses of chil-drm and ad,obscmts to aarious forms of threat: real attack,unconscious threat, kindled threat, suppressed threat, bul$-aictim-bystandn sadomasochistic ritual attack, and, peer-groufu alidated thrYat.

Today, the choice is no longer between violence andnonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.

-Martin Luther King, quoted in Ayres rgg3, p. r68

I N T R O D U C T I O N : T H E S O C I A L C O N T E X TO F P S Y C H O A N A L Y S I S

As the social face of psychoanalysis develops, the psychoanalytic

therapist must widen his or her field of concern to include the to'

tal environment, in addition to the intet'nal world of the subiect.

This paper was adapted from presentations to the FBI Symposium on SchoolShooters,July rz through r6, rggg, in Leesburg, Virginia, and at the Cincinnati Psy-choanalytic Society, September 22, 2ooo.

6rg

66o STUART W. TWEMLOW

From the social-context perspective, these are not distinctly differ-ent; i.e., the individual is part of and cannot be clearly distin-guished from his or her social context. For the clinician, the mean-ing of this developing context for psychoanalytic work is that it

is increasingly difficult to evaluate and treat anyone outside the

social context within which he or she lives. Thus, in my opinion,

the psychoanalytic therapist of the future will of necessity become

a team member who moves out into the field to better understand

that social context.

The aim of this paper is to highlight some features of the vio-lent child's social context and how it helps to create or destroy a"mind of one's own," in Bion's (rg6Z) sense, which is so defective

in violent children. Each contextual perspective is of critical im-portance in the clinical evaluation of dangerous children. I will

begin with the narrower social context of.the family, widening to

the school where the child is educated, and, finally, to the broadest

possible social context, the world of media and society at large.

Social context, the foundation of this paper, must first be de-fined. Although one approach would be to focus the definition onthe contEnt of that context (e.g., family, school, and so on), in thispaper, I will use a more dynamic perspective, addressing indirect

and unconscious influences on the social context. Of several pos-

sible approaches within that perspective, I have selected two thatI will define and illustrate:

' social bonding and attachment, and' a dialectically determined, open social system.

S O C I A L B O N D I N G A N D A T T A C H M E N T

Fonagy (zooo) approaches the question of social context from thepoint of view of interpersonal relationships and social bonding.

He emphasizes that healthy social systems must function like se-

curely attached families, and that any social climate that under-

emphasizes interpersonal relationships as prime must be resisted.For example, peer bonding (friendships) in schools can aid a childfrom a disturbed family in feeling contained and more secure, pro'

A CRUCIBLE FOR MURDER 66rvided that both the nature of the bonding and the inherent powerstruggles are healthy.'

In a secure social context, the child has a better chance of de-veloping the capacity for self-reflection-the abil ity ro see him-or herself in others in a coherent way, All other things beingequal, a more peaceful and compassionate school climate wil lfacilitate academic learning and achievement and foster a happierchild. There is an increasing need to recognize the unique, sub-jective experience of children within the school context. In theunited sates, teacher training has a strong behavioral emphasis,inadvertently suggesting to the trainee teacher a machine-like viewof the internal world of the child. Thus, school discipline is of-ten based on a reward-and-punishment model, and. teachers fre-quently unwittingly convey to children the feeling that they arebeing managed rather than understood. A child who feels man_aged may cease to function as a whole human being in such asystem' instead funct ioning l ike a col lect ion of behaviors. Al -though teacher training includes formal courses on child devel-opment, teachers are generally quite uncomfortable with stu_dents' psychopathology, often insisting that the teacher's properrole is that of an academic tutor, not a parent or psychothera_pist to the child.

Another of ten-denied aspect of the school c l imate in un_healthy schools, as in pathologically attached families, has to dowith the social behavior of authority f igures. It is a known factthat some teachers bully students, re-creating pathological fam-ily attachments at school, and thus may retraumatize at-risk chil-dren. Even though the number of bullying reachers is quite smallin most schools, the singular authority of the teacher magnifiesthe impact of this phenomenon. My colleagues and I cond.ucteda study of teachers' perceptions of other teachers who bully stu_dents and of students who bully teachers in a town in which sev-

I The containing and holding quarities of the schoor envir.nment, necessaryto create a feeling of safety and well-being in children (in Sandler's Ir96o] sense),are elaborated in more detail in Twemlow, Fonagy, and Sacco (zoozb).

A CRUCIBLE FOR MURDER 66r

vided that both the nature of the bonding and the inherent Dowerstmggles are healthy.'

In a secure social context, the child has a better chance of de-veloping the capacity for self-reflection-the abil iry to see him_or herself in others in a coherent way. All other things beingequal, a more peaceful and compassionate school climate wil lfacilitate academic learning and achievement and foster a happierchild. There is an increasing need to recognize the unique, sub-jective experience of children within the school conrext. In theUnited States, teacher training has a strong behavioral emphasis,inadvertently suggesting to the trainee teacher a machine-like viewof the internal world of the child. Thus, school discipline is of-ten based on a reward-and-punishment model, and teachers fre-quently unwittingly convey to children the feeling rhat they arebeing managed rather than understood. A child who feels man-aged may cease to function as a whole human being in such asystem, instead funct ioning l ike a col lect ion of behaviors. Al -though teacher training includes formal courses on child devel-opment, teachers are generally quite uncomfortable with stu_dents' psychopathology, often insisting that the teacher's properrole is that of an academic tutor, not a parent or psychothera-pist to the child.

Another of ten-denied aspect of the school c l imate in un-healthy schools, as in pathologically attached families, has to dowith the social behavior of authority figures. It is a known factthat some teachers bully students, re-creating pathological fam-ily attachments at school, and thus may retraumatize at-risk chil-dren. Even though the number of bullying teachers is quite smallin most schools, the singular authority of the teacher magnifiesthe impact of this phenomenon. My colleagues and I conducteda study of teachers' perceptions of other teachers who bully stu-dents and of students who bully teachers in a town in which sev-

I The containing and holding qualities of the school environment, necessaryto create a feeling ofsafety and well-being in children (in sandler's Ir96o] sense),are elaborated in more deuil in Twemlor', Fonagy, and Sacco (aoozb).

662 S]'UART W. TWEMLOW

en participating elementary schools recorded their views (Twem-

low et al., unpublished). Sixty percent of teachers said they had

experienced bullying at school while students themselves. These

teachers were asked to describe what they consider characteristic

of a teacher who bullies students. Significant findings were that

teachers who had been bull ied as students were bull ied by stu-

dents in their current classrooms significantly more often, and

reported that they themselves had bull ied students, both inside

and clutside the classroom. Such teachers also had observed more

bullying teachers in the schools in which they had worked' The

most significant perceived causes of bullying by teachers were

burnout, lack of training, and envy of smart students.

Interestingly, rwo types of bullying patterns were revealed by

factor analysis of the data.' One factor described a teacher who

was sadistic, seeming to enjoy humiliating students, hurting stu-

dents' feelings, and being spiteful and envious of smart students,

not dissimilar to Nietzsche's concept of ressenti,ment's Such teach-

ers were envious of children onto whom they projected disa-

vowed aspects of themselves. A second group of bully-victim

teachersrtended to be initially passive, lacked capacities for lead-

ership or self-assertion, and failed to set limits. When disruption

ociurred in classrooms, they felt victimized by the students and

then exploded in a bullying way. From Fonagy's securely attached

school perspective, such teachers may foster disorganized school

attachments in modeling bullying behavior to students. Attempts

to reeducate teachers are being undertaken by many-such as Co-

hen (zoor)-uti l izing comprehensive training under the aegis of

metaphors srtch as social and emotional l i tereq, employed to in-

troduce these issues as part of traditional teacher education, as

r Factor analysis is a statistical technique that groups similar variables.3 Rtssentiment is a term Nietzsche introduced as part of his analysis of the mas-

ter-slave relationship. Nordstrom, Friedenberg, and Gold (r968) extended it to

encomp:uis a social phenomenon rooted in enry and rancor, whereby those who

are impoverished hold an ill-tempered hostiiity toward those with a so-called over-

fullness of life. This free-floating, envious ill temper grows in relation to the need

to inhibit it, as one might expect in the teacher-student relationship.

A CRUCIBLI FOR MURDER

wel l as student educat i .n . Such approaches tend to weed outressentiment-focused teachers, as well as those most l ikely to be-come provocative bully-victims. It is to be hoped that this de_velopmental perspective wil l also inform the teacher's perspec_tive on the inner world of the child.

From th is point of v iew, the nature ancl development < l ffriendships in a securely attached school environment may be asimportant to growth and development as attachment pattems arein the fami ly of or ig in. I f the home context dehumanizes rhechild and the child is also locked into an unfriendly envir'nmenrat school, the feeling of being a person and the development ofthe capacity for empathy with others (who are recognized as sep_arate selves having their own intentions, thoughts, and emotions)are further in paired, and the child may develop a fragmentedsense of self, as well as problematic affect modulation. I believethat the converse is also possible-i.e., a school with a healthy,socially bonded climate can significantly ameliorate the effects ofa pathological home environment.

Fonagy ( rggg) examined chi ld-caregiver at tachmenrs andtheir possible relationship to the later capacity to think self-re-flectively in violent individuals. He notes that crime is at hearta developmental issue, and that most cr ime, especia l ry v iorentcrime, is committed by adolescents, with the peak period for thisdecreasing gradually after age eighteen. If crime is primariry de-velopmental, then clearly, families must be involved in that pro_cess. Research has shown that it is the level of parental conflict-not divorce or family structural changes per se (liable to resuk rnsmaller family units, weaker ties with tradirional families, and fre-quent family relocation)-that is related to conduct problems inchi ldren (Fonagy et a l . rggT).

These facts suggest thar examining the qualiry of the atrach_ment between caregiver and child in the early stages of life mighti l luminate later violent criminal behavior. Attachment researchrequires that a theory of violence must explain not only why par_ticular individuals are violent, but also why the majority of oth-ers are not, even those with pathological family attachment pat-

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STUAR]'W. IWEMLO\A/

terns. Fonagy has developed a theory about the functioning of

the minds of v io ient adul ts by explor ing men in p i lo t s tudies

who have been imprisoned for domestic violence (Fonagy 1999).

The personality profiles of these men show an inability to recog-

nize or empathize with the mental state of the victim. Thus, the

victim becomes an object often dehumanized or fetishized (Twem-

low zooo). Fonagy's research over several decades has shown that

disorganized attachments, particularly those in which caregivers

were both frightened and frightening to the infant, and where t}le

home environment included high conflict and negativity and low

warmth and support, impaired a child's capacity to mmtalize. Men-

talization, according to F'onagy (rggg), is "the capacity to under-

stand and interpret human behavior in terms of the putative men-

tal states underpinning it as it arises through the experiences of

having been so understood in the context of an attachtnent rela-

t i onsh ip " (p . , g ) .

Thus, in the violent individual, there seems to be an incapac-

ity to understand the mental states of others or to see others as

thinking, feeling human beings, which might afford the possibil-

ity for the violent act to be interrupted. Fonagy's theory suggests

that v io ient ch i ldren have been brought up in fami l ies where

there is a fundamental failure of the caregiver's capacity to rec-

ognize the child as a separate individual from him- or herself,

and instead the child has become a pawn in domestic confl ict.

The child is thus unable to see him- or herself as a thinking, atten-

tional being with an appropriate internal working model, in Bowl-

by's (r969) sense.

A child's inability to mentalize can impair the development of

an identity and a feeling of responsibii i ty for one's actions, and

may also interfere with knowledge of the consequences of these

actions. Thus, the destruction of the physical object (other per-

sons) may be seen as the onl1, solution to a problem (e.g., allevia-

tion of fear and/or pain). From this point of view, the violent act

represents a necessary defensive survival adaptation in the mind

of ttre individual perpetrator. This theory, grounded in empirical

research, has some similarity to my clinical elaboration (Twemlow

66+

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A CRUCIBLE FOR MURDER

zooo) in which the violent action is seen as an autistic, defensive at-tempt to re-create a feeling of boundedness and a sense of con-tinuity, allowing for reconstitution of the cohesive psychologicalself into a thinking, f'eeling being, rescued from this autistic-con-tiguous regression (Ogden r g8g). Fonagy et al. ( r 997) noted that:

Self cohesion is limited by the deficit in a core psycholog_ical self and by the inhibit ion of [a person's] i"paciry ireflect on and integrate mental experiences; these indi_viduals avail themselves of the opportunity to use bodilyexperiences (alcohol, drugs, physical violence and crimejto provide them with the sense of consolidation and co_herent ident i ty . Ip . r67]

A case is presented below to i lrustrate such a confluence ofcontextual triggers in both family psychopathology and a nonre_sponsive social context.

A case of Disorganized Family Attachrnent pattenrs in a DoubreMurder by an Ad,olescent Boy

While committing a burglary, a young man, aged seventeen,shot and kil led a husband and wife in their bed. He commenredthat, had their alarm nor gone off, they would still be alive, sincehe had been nearly finished. He was unable to perceive them asanything other than a threat to himself, his capacity to mentarizebeing absent at that moment. However, he seemed capable ofempathy for the three young children in the house, all under ageeight. After shooting their parents, he gathered the child.ren to_gether to help reduce their panic, aclmonishing them not to leavethe room where he had led them until an adult arrived.

This young man was not a deprived, inner_ciry child; both hisparents worked and were werr educated, 'ne having a colege de-gree and the other working toward one. In this family, however,marital conflict reached extraordinary proportions. The boy andhis sister had been victims of severe disorganization of attach-ment systems and abuse since tbeir very earliest years. They weresubjected ro violent parenral f ights, incruding physicar atracks

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A CRUCIBLE FOR MURDER 662

slowly enucleat ing hai r fo l l ic les. He a lso l i f ted h is toenai ls ,burned his hands by placing them on a hot burner of the stove,and on one occasion, doused himself with gasoline and set him-sel f on f i re . Tolerat ing pain seemed to boost h is sel f -esteem,giving him a sense of power and satisfaction, accompanied bya temporary relaxation and a pleasurable relief of tension withpostorgasmic qualities. These violent acts seemed to produce notonly a feel ing of cont inui ty , but a lso a grandiose feel ing ofstrength and power sorely lacking in his life, which he describedas a "l iving death." The recurrent seltmutilation reminded himthat he was a continuous being even though a defective one.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, the boy later responded to thehighly s t ructured envi ronment of Death Row by becoming amodel prisoner. He felt contained, secure, and as though he hada sense of purpose, especially since the brutal murders he hadcommitted had attracted a great deal of publicity. He embracedthe death penalty he was given as a blessed release from the mis-ery of his living death, having faced as his only alternative the restof his l i fe in prison without parole.

This young man's tragic history i l lustrates the effects of agrossly disorganized family attachment pattern in superficiallyfunctional parents who were extraordinarily frightening, withthe father having been especially rejecting. Severe physical abuse,neglect, and life with parents whose marriage was highly sado-masochistic created in this boy the incapacity to mentalize. Noneof his personal relationships attained the maturity level appro-priate for his age, and he was incapable of sustaining affection.It is possible that he could easily have been a perpetrator of vio-lence in school, but fortunately for other children, no tradition-al public schools would accept him. His sister did not commitmurder, but was suicidally depressed, unable to hold a job or tomaintain satisfying object relationships, and remains at risk tcrcommit violence if her rage is ever turned against others insteadof herself.

How do such pathologiczLlly attached families function? Smith,Twemlow, and Hoover (tggg) reported the resulls of their research

on rwenty-five randomly selected students from a public elemen-

668 STUART W. TWEMLOW

tary school, who participated in a study of an antiviolence in-tervention based on the modification of power struggles. Thechildren were interviewed using an adaptation of the Adult Attach-ment Interview (Main, Kaplan, and Cassidy rg85). The interview al-lowed bull ies, victims, and bystanders to be distinguished from

control children. All three target groups demonstrated dismissiveattachment patterns, i.e., a tendency to dismiss the importance ofattachment-related experience while instead idealizing unfavor-

able or negative relationships with their parents. In several fami-lies of these children, there had been numerous psychiatric andlegal problems and much violence. There was litt le in the wayof loving physical contact in the families of bullying children. All

the bullies and seventy percent of the victims and bystanders hadwitnessed domestic violence. Thus, these children tended to denyviolence, having little or no experience of loving attachments be-tween parents. In the control families, the attachment patterns

were secure rather than dismissive. without overt or covert vio-lence.

I believe that children from traumatized families such as theseplay oug power struggles in a variety of concrete actions in theschool setting, due to their capacities for abstraction and self-re-

flection having been impaired by anxiety. Social control for thesechildren is gained not by thinking through, verbalizing, and ne-gotiating, but by coercion and physical threat. A child exhibiting

this type of behavior fulfills Fonagy's criteria for an inability tomentalize.

Flowever, Fonagy's theories seem to underemphasize the bul-ly's aggressive drive and malignant narcissism, perhaps arisingfrom constitutional sources: e.g., the aggressive actions of the ma-

lignant narcissist are often cruelly used to control the worlds ofall those who do not comply with his or her idiosyncratic wish-es. Aggressive people can sadistically control complying victims.

Although in schools, the bully is typically male and bigger and

stronger than other chi ldren, in adul t l i fe , s ize and physicalstrength bear little relationship to the coercion; instead, cunningand intell igence are often more important. The passive, often

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A CRUCIBLE FOR MURDER 66q

pleading, and submissive response of an otherwise assertive in-dividual fuels the sadism in a kaleidoscope of primitive pro-jec-tive identification and counterprojective identification (Twemlow

rggba, rggbb).

A D I A L E C T I C A L O P E NS O C I A L S Y S T E M S P E R S P E C T I V E

Defining this perspective requires a focus on the social contextas a basic aspect of the core concept of the individual, who is de-fined through interaction with other people. That is, at heart, theindividual is a dialectical entity, in the Hegelian sense that theindividual and the individual's context are inseparable from eachother, each paradoxically defining and negating the other (Ogden

r986). The interact ion between the two fuels these co-created

roles and each becomes reflected in the other. Many psychologiesare derived from Hegel's (r8o7) ideas or are rooted in the conceptof the self as a function of otherness. For example, in a reviewof psychoanalytic theories of the self, Kirschner (rggr) suggesteda creative, dialectically embedded definition of the self as the in-tellectual and emotional experience of otherness in the preseDt,allowing the potential for an ever-changing influence of the socialcontext on self-definit ion. The individual as an open social sys-tem was defined psychoanalytically by Menninger, Mayman, andPruyser ( r963) :

The living organism exchanges energy with its environ-ment, its components are materially in flux, and not onlydoes it maintain iuself as a wlrole with a relative degree ofconstancy, but it may also change to different levels oforganizat ion. [p . gz]

' The organism's steady state is a dynamic process aiming for,

but never attaining, equil ibrium. Thus, a dialectical open livirrgsystem cannot be defined as a static entity separate from its so-cial context; and, therefore, the term indiaidual must be recon-ceptualized.

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I

6zo STUART,W. TWEMI-OW

A useful model with which to discuss school violence can be

derived from this approach. However, first, it is necessary to dis-

tinguish fighting from violence and bullying. Fighting behaviors

are not uncommon in children, particularly boys in the first and

second grades, and may rePresent the natural outcome of oedi-

pal s t r iv ings (Coie et a l . t99 l ) .By contrast ' when one or both

of the individuals involved intends to do harm, such an action

can be defined as violent. Bullying is violent, but does not con-

sist mereiy of f ighting. Behavioral scientists l ike Olweus (tggz)

define bullying as the exposure of an individual over and over

again to negative interaction on the part of one or more domi-

nant persons, who gain in some way f rom the d iscomfor t of

victims. Bullying often seems to be a sadomasochistic ritual in

which repetit ive and deeply regressive attempts are carried out

to fetishize the victim and to inflict continuing, humiliating, and

undignified attack; this can occur even in young children (Twem-

low zooo).

Our model suggests that in all schools with a problem of vio-

lence, a power dynamic (PD) is Present, which creates a violent

mindset in staff and students. PD refers to a conscious or uncon-

sciouso"coercive pattern in which an individual or group attempts

to control the thoughts and actions of others' Although at times

this dynamic may be subtle, often the school climate reveals it

through high levels of disciplinary referral and poor academic

achievement (TWemlow et al. zoor; Themlow, Sacco, and Williams

l996). This model extends to chi ldren, teachers, or other s taf f

members who abusively and repeatedly coerce others in a ritual

where humiliation and mockery are central components.

As Gilligan (rgS6) noted, coercion is an act of violence against

autonomy. Bullying usually involves a stronger, more dominant

personality who repetit ively coerces a weaker, more submissive

personality in what rarely involves significant physical injury. In-

stead, the major injury is emotional humiliation. The victim of

this power dynamic is a child or any other school member who

feels dominated or abused by this bullying. Undoubtedly, the by-

stander is significant in supportirrg bully-victim relationships'

A CRUCIBLE FOR MURDER

A variety of bystanding roles can be adopted by individual sru-dents. The bully-bystander role (my term) appears especially sig_nificant in facil i tating coercive power dynamics and may havebeen involved in more than one of the recent school shootingsin the United Srates (Twemlow eooo); such children get vicari-ous satisfaction in seeing other children hurt by someone else.

The victim-bystander role emerges in children who are roofrightened to resist the recruiting bulry, but feel guilt and shameafter witnessing their actions. They may also feel that aggressionagainst others is deserved. Denial of bullying (the avoidant-by-stander role) is often exemplif ied in school personnel, who forpolitical and other reasons deny the existence of probrems. pow-er-hungry bully-bystander children may act as "puppet masters" insetting up victims in crimes for which they wish to avoid blame,as I i l lustrate below in my description of a tragic school shoot-ing. A helpful, more altruistic bystander can recti$, pathologicalpower dynamics, since such an individual is uncommitted to arole that facilitates the pathological pD, and thus has the poren-tial to help others resist those roles.

The bully-victim-bystander interaction is a dialectically struc-tured one, with the bystanding role being similar to that of anaudience ar a biza'e play in which the bulry and victim are themain actors. without such an audience, the actors have little mo-tivation to continue reenacting bully-victim roles. such roresmay be interchangeable, with children adoptin g any or all ofthem at different t imes. But in my experience, when these rolesbecome fixed, serious violence can be imminent. This is illusrra-ted by the tragedy at Columbine High School, where rhe twoboys primarily perpetrating the killings appeared to have spentapproximately one year carefully planning the violent process,after perceiving themselves as continuously humiliated and bul_lied by school athletes and adopting the fixed role of avengingvictims. There is empirical support for their humiliation (see foot-note B, pp. 68o68r ) .

A chi ld in a dehumaniz ing envi ronment may wel l react bynarrowing his or her cognitive and emotional focus in a desper-

672 STUART W, TWEMLOW

ate attempt to preserve failing self-integrity. The world of such a

child becomes more and more restricted by a narrow and obses-

sive fcrcus, perhaps inclusive of a retaliatory wish, as exemplified

in the complex, pathologically coherent, and yet pit iful expla-

nations provided by Klebold and Harris in a videotaped record

of their rationale fcrr the Columbine tragedy, lasting more than

three hours. In this case, the need for retaliation and its justifi-

cation are reminiscent of Erikson's pseudo.speciation (E. Erikson

rq85; K. Erikson r996), since these boys developed a patholog-

ical social group with narrowly defined, self-maintaining, gran-

diose cognitions, which although destructive, helped.to maintain

the integrity of the self.

I place special emphasis on the shame/humiliation dynamic

as an intrinsic part of the sadomasochistic ritual of bullying. Thus,

the bullying dynamic contains three primary components: it is

an autistic defense in Ogden's (rg8g) sense; it is a repetitive sado-

masochistic fetishizing of the victim object; and the action tends

to occur in the presence of a real or fantasized audience of by-stander participants. This voyeuristic component of the bystander,

which.[ have found prominent in children of all ages and also

in adults whom I have treated, seems to intensi$ the manic, tri-

umphant, and excitingly orgasmic ritual of bullying for the bully,

while doubly intensi$ing the humiliation of the victim. The im-

pact of shame and its connection with extreme responses l ike

suicide and homicide is hard to explain as solely a narcissistic in-jrry.

Additionall;', a devastating retaliatory response can be better

explained by invoking the bystander component of the ritual;

the uninvited, "watching" audience invades boundaries like a mul-

tiple, physical assault, increasing the indignity of the humiliation.

The impact on pride is reflected in the socially extreme reaction

of the victim. Coerciveness, even without words and actions that

are clearly humiliating and disrespectful, can gradually lead to a

chronic v ic t imized response, inc luding apathy, hopelessness,

helplessness, and a shameful feeling that the victimization is de-

served. In addition, in an uncanny way, the bully often perceives

A CRUCIBLE FOR MURDER

vulnerable aspects in the victim that are denied by the victim, andthe bystanding audience then multiplies this hurt through publicmockery.

A potentially helpful addition to these speculations is the no-tion of a chronic failure of mentarization in individuals in vio-

, lent environments. A partial failure of mentalization creates forthe witness to the power struggle (the bystander) an avenue to thepleasure of sadism. In order for the individual to be able to en-joy witnessing another's suffering, he or she must be abre to dis-tance him- or herself from the internal world of the other, whireat the same dme benefiting from using the other as a vehicle forunwanted (usually frightening and d.isavowed) parts of his or herown self projected onto rhe victim and./or bully. The bystander,by projecting his or her own aggression onto the victim and,/orbully, and retaining the libidinar aspect of the sadism for pleas-urable excitement, can arso preserve the capacity to mentalize.Bystanders do nor lack empathy, since it is precisely through pro-jective identification with the victim (and,/or the bulry) that thebystanding child is able to experience him- or herself as coher-ent and complete. Thus, affect inconsistent with a coherent senseof self is seen as belonging to the victim or perpetrator of thevicious power dynamic, not to the bystander.

It should be noted that mentalizing is a fragile developmen-tal function that is not fully acquired unti l earry adulthood (ifthen). In most social contexts, it needs environmental supportand a social system to scaffold it, in order to ensure that reflectronon the mental states of self and other is relatively comprehensiveand covers painful as well as neutral mental states,

I D E N T I T Y F O R M A T I O N , S O C I A L G R O U P S ,A N D S C H O O L S H O O T E R S

Before beginning a discussion of identity issues in adorescents asthey impact homic idal v io lence, I would l ike to note that tw 'additional social-system concepts are relevant here. First, the con-cept of vertical social dynamics depicts an unconscious or precon-

6z+ STUART W. TWEMLOW

scious power dynamic present in upper-middle-class social sys-

tems, where there is a strong emphasis on competition-and es-

peci:rlly in defeating the competitor. Bullying is a way to defeat

the enemy and is often unwittingly encouraged by school staff in

upper socioeconomic schools, inc luding coaches and parents,

who are unhealthily committed to the outcomes of certain school

activit ies, such as athletics and debate'

It is interesting to note that horizontal social dynamics, seen in

working-class or lower-socioeconomiclevel school situations, are

not as obviously fiercely competitive, and are usually not supPor-

ted by strong parental influence. Thus, in the horizontal dynam-

ic, survival is the central issue, not beating the opponent' For

gangs, protection of members is the goal, and although individ-

uals may commit homicide and suicide, it is not usually in re-

sponse to the coercive vertical social dynamics so often seen in

middle- and upper-middle-class situations. An investigation of

complex social groups, especially those in high schools, wil l of-

ten assist the analyst in assessing a climate that could quickly be-

come unhealthy if not seriously psychopathological.+

E. $rikson's (rg7+) hypothesis that one can judge a culture by

the way it perceives its children descriptively identifies the dilem-

ma as follows:

Our knowledge of children, as well as of young people,

will remain rather fragmentary (to them as well as to us) if

we do not know what we would like them to become, or

even what we would like to be*or to have been. Without

this, we feel vaguely guilty, whether we are permissive or

punitive. Feeling guilty, we wil l overdo both. [p' rzr]

The core pathology is therefore seen from a social-context

perspective as an identity i l lness, with premature foreclosure of

an avenging-victim identity. Factors possibly influencing this pre-

inature foreclosure are. in summary:

4 A way to conduct this assessment is outlined in Twemlow, Fonagy, and Sac-

c o ( 2 o o l a , z o o r b , z o o z a ) .

CRUCIBLE FOR MURDER

' information input, which can easily overload a grow_ing and rapidly changing brain;

' internal demands, experienced as irresistible, to as_sume responsibil i t ies and to separate;

. shocking shi f ts in hormonal balance and growthspurts in brain and body, with great f luctuations inenerg.y level and mood;

. emerging sexuality, with its mood swings and socialimplications; and

' an urgent need to develop significant int.erpersonalsk i l ls .

Under this overload of (regressive) pressure;. early primitive behaviors can em

ing; lvs us'.vr(rrs carl emerge' e'9" scapegoat-

' premature pathological identities may be forced onroa vulnerable child who exhibits evidence of an intense.social, "herd" aggression;

' pathological subservience and grand.iose behavior canemerge as the superegos of the individual group mem_bers come under control of the leader's y3lug5_1hus,the pressure to foreclose on a group_selected identiry

. becomes enormous;' bull ies often accurately perceive aspects of a victim

that he or she l ikes least about him_ or herself, thensadistically attack that sensitive area;

' bystanders multiply the assault on narcissism; and' fantasies of suicide for honor and homicide for re_

venge are frequently in evidence.

I t is worth remember ing that adul ts of ten underest imate howimportant peer relationships are to the adolescent, and how scn_sitive teenagers are to being j i l ted by boyfriends or girlfr iends.

The question of why all school homicides in the United stateshave been committed by boys is often asked. Most such homi_cides have been planned and ritualistic in nature. Ritual, accord-ing to E. Erikson (r956), creates a psychosocial moratorium in the

626 STUART W. TWEMLOW

development of ego identity and thus contains aggression and

ambivalence. From this perspective, homicidal revenge as a so-

lution to extreme humiliation is more socially justifiable as a rite

of passage and more psychically acceptable for boys than for

girls. Girls tend instead to direct aggression internally, manifest-

ing it in depression, self-destructiveness, and suicide attempts,

rather *ran in overt violence toward others. J. Post (zooz) sugges-

ted that in most cultures, for men, such phall ic power demon-

strations are indeed a rite of passage.

For those who study cult extremism, a paradox long unex-

plained is why some of the more malignant political movements,

such as Nazism, manage to entrain apparently normal individu-

als to get caught up in the group's thinking, leading to tragic

and bizarre outcomes. It is known that Adolf Hitler experienced

shame and humiliation as a youth, and that this may have played

a major part in his hatred of the Jewish people and other groups.

Whatever the dynamics of pathological charisma-including phys-

ical and constitutional characteristics and the impact of shared

traumatic background-the puzzle is why the group members ig-

nore ,,!heir own moral values, their reality testing and common

sense, and become essent ia l ly mindless v ic t ims of the leader 's

often obviously pathological narcissism.

According to Olssen (zoor) , one h ighly in te l l igent woman

who slept through the Jonestown Massacre commented that when

she awoke the next morning surrounded by dead bodies, what

was most traumatizing to her was that she was left behind. Ols-

sen suggests that a myth is cocreated by leaders and their f<rllow-

ers in which the actions of the malignant "pied piper'Ltfpe lead-

er in some way fulfill the desires of the followers. He feels that

the explanation of why some people are susceptible to this cult

effect and others are not is to be fbund in group dynamics. De-

st ruct iveness is t r iggered by the group fantasy that members

of the group, having strength in numbers, can actualize its fan-

tasy about the leader in spi te of the Ieader 's defects. Olssen's

theory implies the presence of a deep potential malignancy in

each of us "normal cit izens.'

A CRUCIBLE FOR MURDER

The pressures on the good judgment and superego func_tioning of a bystanding group encourage pathological identif i_cation with the sadomasochistic fantasies of the bully, amplifiedby the victim's mindset, already hopeless and helpless. The vic-tim is susceptible to the contempt of the group, reinforcing thefantasy that nothing good is left in him or her and that thereis no help and no hope. Thus, the bystanding audience helpscreate a mindset in the victim for which there seems no end_point, as in a Faustian hell where one never gets used to thepain. If the humiliation wil l never stop and if there is no worthin the victim, then there is nothing for the victim to l ive forbut revenge. The object of the revenge can be either the indi-vidual's own body, others' bodies, or both in quick succession.The immediate motive for the avenging homicidal attack is tostop the hurt by removing its perceived cause. Suicide removesthe object of the attack from further hurt.5 In this way, the ,,aveng_

ing object relations unit" functions as a destructive introiect.

D E S T R U C T I V E C H I L D R E N :G O O D A N D B A D O U T C O M E S

Elsewhere, my colleagues and I (Twemlow et al. zoor; Twemlow,Sacco, and Wi l l iams r996) descr ibed a psychoanalyt ica l ly in-formed intervention that focuses on power struggles and pow-er dynamics as they affect the school as a whole and all the chil-d ren i n i t , no t on l y ch i l d ren des igna ted as d i s tu rbed . I n arandomized, controlled pilot study of nine elementary schools,we implemented an intervention of our own design in order to re_

5 Thanatos as a metaphor {br the death instinct is depicted in mythologyby a monk wearing a cowl. Thanatos was a gentle force, not a satanic one, perhapsthe guardian of a merciful sleep to end misery, not unlike the benign dipictionof Shiva in Hindu mythology: Death is the supreme liberation, destroying formwithout annihilating essence. Freud did not use the nretaphor of rhanaios, rnspite of its designation as the counterpoint of Eros being attributed to him.

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balance coercive power dynamics.' The result was a dramatic re_duction in out-of-school suspensions and disciplinary referralsand a s igni f icant increase in scores on standardized academicachievement test scores in the experimental schools as comparedto conrrol schools (Fonagy er al., unpublished). Findings ar rheend of the second year of this three_year project suggest similareffects: a strong reduction in experienced victimization (as per_ceived by teachers), with a marked increase in helpful bystanderbehavior of ch i ldren and empathy for v ic t ims of bul ly ing. Inclassrooms where teache.s modeled helpful behavior and diJ notvalidate aggression as a legitimate way of solving conflict, chil_dren exhibited similar views and showed more empathy for vic-tims.

Case Presentation of a Good Outcome

An eight-year-old, behaviorally disturbed boy had been a ser_ious problem in school , wi th many suspensions that had oc-cupied a great deal of the staff and consulting mentar hearthprofessjonals' t ime. He came from an extremely dysfunctionalbackground. His mother, beginning at the age of fourteen, hadhad a total of ten ro twelve chirdren by different fathers. Themale role models in this boy's rife were erratic, and the motherins is ted that he cal l a l l o f them "Dad."

His skept ic ism aboutthese boyfriends was il lustrated in a session in which he wasforced by his mother to draw his latest "dad"

as a member ofthe family. He drew him behind bars, commenting playfully_to his mother's chagrin-that "Dad was in jail, wasn't he?" Thechild's home behavior included serious fire setting, breaking ofwindows, and kicking holes in the walls, as well as extensive day-and n ight t ime enuresis and encopresis . His pediat r ic ian pre_scribed 6o mg. of Ritalin and o.z mg. of Clonidine per dav us

6 Thi, *"s the Peacefur schoors project of the Menninger clinic, Topeka, Kan-sas, codirected by Peter Fonagy, ph.D.; Stuart W. Tweml.w, M.D.; arrd Eric Vernberg,Ph.D.

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A CRUCIBLE FOR MURDER 6zq

a maintenance regimen, but had reached a point of desperation

at the time of referral.

The boy was highly intelligent, with no evidence of psychot-

ic i l lness, but he had been severely traumatized and made no

bones about h is level of agi tat ion. He seemed very aware of

his mother's inadequacies. Over a semester, he became an assis-

tant instructor in the Gentle Warrior Program,T carefully moni-

toring the instructor's behavior. He was proud of his participa-

tion, upholding a code of respect and concern for others and self

in a clear illustration of Kohut's (rg8+) alter egolnvinship phase

of healthy development.

He gradually developed good self-observational skills and was

able to administer his own much-reduced dose of medication

when the family was too disorganized to arrange it. Each morn-

ing, he would reintegrate himself into the school climate, becom-

ing a temporarily well-adjusted child. It was obvious that this boy

funct ioned more normal ly whi le in the school envi ronment ,

changing when he returned to the negative home environment.The impact of this change over time was that the mother became

much more involved with his care, seeming to appreciate that

her son was learn ing at school and appeared to enjoy going

there. She became a parent volunteer.

This child's improvement seemed to emerge from an alter

ego/rwinship identifrcation with his Gentle Warrior Program in-

structor, a strong and gentle man with impressive martial arts

skil ls, as well as from containment of the boy's chaotic aggres-sion within not only that relationship, but also within a secure-ly attached school. He was not in psychoanalytic psychothera-py, so that deeper unconscious issues could not be observed or

used in a formal way. However, his emerging psychic equil ibrium was signaled by gratefully received behavioral changes atschool. in addition to fewer crisis calls and much-reduced medi-

7 A gentle uarrior is a child who embodies self-control, respect for self andothers, and who helps others. The Gentle Warrior Program is taught in a martialarts-based program that substitutes for phlnical education classes in some elemen-tary schools.

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STUART W. TWEMLOW

cation needs for the pediatrician to handle. In addition, the boy's

acquired skil ls enabled him to avoid power struggles and to

achieve reduction of his considerable agitation' Mentalization

clearly improved as he began to see and use personal relation-

ships to feel better, to achieve more for himself, and especially

to have fewer conflicts with his mother.

These improvements occurred in the context of an informal

social psychotherapy provided by the securely attached social

context. The Gentle Warrior instructor, although not a therapist,

intuit ively recognized the emerging capacities for empathy and

abstract thinking in his young charge, and responded therapeu-

tically. For example, the instructor tended not to wear his seat

bel t whi le dr iv ing, which became of considerable concern to

the boy; the instructor knew not to respond as though this were

none of the boy's business.

Although it is certainly true that seriously disturbed children

will not be cured by a shift in school climate alone, it is also

fallacious to assume that no child wil l make lasting changes at

home if experiences in the school environment are positive. Of-

ten, the six hours or so a day at school are the only time when a

child has contact with healthy, functioning adults, since many

children do not see much of their own parents or parent sur-

rogates, even in the evenings. It is also possible that children,

especially intelligent ones, may be able to effect change in their

parents. One such child, whom I saw for fail ing grades and in-

school suspensions, was accompanied by her parents to the eval-

uation. During the init ial session, when the parents began to

fight, she winked at me and then left the room. She was not

seen again by me, but had managed to get her parents in to

much-needed marital therapy!

Case Presentation of a Bad Oulcorne 8

A school climate can create an atmosphere of social aggression

that seems to propel susceptible children into a homicidal mode.

6 Information for this vignette was derived from a fiveday working group con-

vened by the FBI at its Symposium on School Shooters, July rz through 16, lggq'

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A CRUCIBLE FOR MT]RDER

One example is the case of a r6-year-old boy who, on the morn-

ing of October r , rgg7, in a h igh school in Pear l , Miss iss ippi ,

shot and k i l led an ex-g i r l f r iend and her f i iend and wounded

seven other students. Prior to going to school that morning, the

boy had beaten and stabbed his mother to death.

His profi le was typical of the recent spate of white middle-

class school shooters: a solid "A" and "8" student, a reader, and

somewhat of an introvert who fancied himself a philosopher,/

musician,/thinker. He was also an ROTC platoon leader. He reg-

ularly and angrily complained about being disliked and unfair-

ly excluded by his peers. He felt that people hated him; he ap-

peared to be an injustice collector. In a manifesto, he wrote: "I

kil l because people l ike me are mistreated everyday. I did this

to show society, 'push us and we will push back.' I suffered all rny

life. No one ever truly loved me. No one ever truly cared about

me . "

He did not have a history of serious disciplinary problems

and had only one suspension in elementary school, as well as a

couple of f ights. He was a pudgy boy who was picked on and

had at t imes been called gay. He had a constant l i tany of self-

pitying statements and feelings and felt consistently misunder-

stood by people. He felt that even his girlfr iend did not care

for him and that she taunted him by hanging out with other guys.

I reviewed a videotape of the FBI interrogation of this boy,

in which he repeatedly swi tched between lov ing statement .s

about his mother and negative ones about her, since he felt that

she had asked for her own death by not giving him a gun arrd a

car. The murder of his mother i l lustrates the use of autistic de-

fenses (repeated violent acts) that have a perceptual-sensory func-

t ion, employed to reestabl ish a sense of being bounded by a

in Leesburg, Virginia. The g<lal was to come up with recommendations to assistin assessment of children who threaten to commit homicides in school. This group,in which the author participated, included experts from around the world: dis-t r ic t at torneys, FBI prof i lers, and pol ice of f icers, as wel l as school personnelfrom eighteen school districs where there had been homicides or serious threaLsof violence,

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skin or limit (Twemlow zooo). The murder occurred within theperspect ive-narrowing context of a socia l ly inst i l led, v io lentmindset. This mindset had been created out of the young man'sschool exper iences and, in par t icu lar , h is exper ience wi th agroup of bully-bystander friends called "Kroth" that occurredon the anniversary of the breakup with his girlfr iend a yearearlier. The boy had little closeness with his father, who had di-vorced his mother five years previously. The young man waslikely pathologically possessive and jealous of his mother andher dates.

On the morning of the shootings, he arose at b:3o e.u. andfirst beat and suffocated his mother, then stabbed her multipletimes, and frnally spat on her. There was no sexual assault. Hedescribed his mother as never having loved him, having calledhim lazy and stupid. Then he impl ied thar he had not real lywanted to kil l her: "I wanted her to understand, and now shedoes and has forgiven me," he said.

In the cognitively narrowed world of the humiliated andshamed individual, violence is a justif iable act of revenge-i.e.,the actio{.I is a symbolic equation (H. Segal rg6+). This boy's feel-ings of being ostracized and excluded were partially sublimatedinto an intense and pathological group of outsiders who orga-nized themselves around a "Dungeons and Dragons" game. Asnoted, this group called themselves "Kroth" and consisted of aIeader and five other boys, all of whom were later charged withconspiracy to commit murder. The boys had tattoos on theirarms to symbolically denote that they were outsiders. The lead-er of the group was a sel f -proc la imed Satanist who admiredHitler and referred to himself as the father of Kroth. The mottoof Kroth was "We cannot move forward until all our enemies aregone."

In a "tryout" killing, the leader of Kroth and the boy describedtortured his dog to death. The boy's comments on this were that"[they] sounded almost human [the cries of the dog], We laughedand hit him more." The dog was encased in a plastic bag anddoused with l ighter f luid, incinerated, and then thrown into a

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A CRUCIBLE FOR MURDER 68.s

pond while sti l l alive. The boy wrote that the sinking bag was"true beauty." In this case, the intensity of the sadism in a high-

ly vulnerable child was very much aggravated by what I believe

to be the puppet-master variant of the bully-bystander, with the

boy functioning as a bystander to the Kroth leader. It was the

ieader who facil i tated the kil l ing of the dog and even planned

a specific date for the school kil l ings, which were to have oc-

curred on Hitler's birthday. I feel that the boy became in part

an instrument of this pathological bully-bystander group.

Although there are many complex individual family and so-

c ia l factors involved in k i l l ings l ike th is , i t seems c lear that

some children are particularly vulnerable to the intense social

pressures of pathological power dynamics. A school c l imate

where such dynamics are not effectively dealt with can indeed

become a lethal one. In addition, media reports have a poten-

tially catastrophic impact on a child seeking revenge and recog-

nition, since publicity feeds the child's sense of omnipotence and

can serve as a forum to justify revenge. In this way, the social

system seems to function like an abdicating bystander by unwit-

t ing ly promot ing grandios i ty wi thout acknowledging any re-

sponsibil i ty for the consequences.

T H E C O P Y C A T P H E N O M E N O N , P O W E RD Y N A M I C S , A N D S C H O O L V I O L E N C E

Perhaps the most striking example of the impact of social con-text on school shootings is the copycat phenomenon. The FBI

was overwhelmed by cases of copycat school threats following

the Columbine tragedy zoo in the space of one month(O'Toole zooo), one of which was the most closely followed story

of the decade.

A copycat crime is any criminal act that emulates a crime

porfayed by the media in fiction or in reality that has been high-ly publicized (Surette rggo). The criminal justice l iterature oncopycat crimes includes accounts of copycat fire setting; copycatproduct tampering, such as the Tylenol cyanide threats; and imi-

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A CRUCIBLE FOR MURDER 68r

part of normal identification and growth. Kohut (rg8+) acknowl-

edges the developmental importance of mimicry in his theory

of the alter ego,/twinship growth phase, described below.

In the analysis of Ms. F, Kohut came to appreciate the impor-

tance of merely h is presence when. he d iscussed wi th the pa-

tient his upcoming protracted absence due to vacation. His at-

tempt to validate her in a mirroring sense was unhelpful. He

noted that "this patient's need, by contrast, was for a silent pres-

ence. She would talk to the twin but the twin did not have to

respond to her" (p. rg6) .According to Kohut , long per iods of

s i lence d id not represent res is tances, but rather in ter ludes in

which silent (and growth-promoting) communion was occurring

in the protective presence of the other (pp. tg6-t97).

This is reminiscent of Guntrip's (t968) case of a bipolar man

who slept through most of a therapy session and then achieved

a significant insight. Guntrip reports that the patient came into

the session and said, "I've only two things to say." He said them,

adding, "Now I want to relax" (p. 16r). He lay on the couch and

sank into a doze for about forty minutes. At the next session, he

said, "Last session changed something in me. I fee l somehow

calmer and st ronger" (p. r6r) . He cont inued to progress and

eventually terminated without significant backsliding.

It is noteworthy that Guntrip used developmental language

to d iscuss th is , observ ing that "cont inuous development re-

placed cure" (p. 16r). This process took place after the pa-

tient had exhibited a paranoid resistance to dependence on Gun-

trip, and the turning point occurred when the patient's trust

permitted analysis of the schizoid core. Similarly, Kohut's pa-

tient, Ms. F, had long had a memory of kneading dough with

her beloved grandmother. The significance of the memory es-

caped her understanding unti l the beloved mother,/analyst was

about to be absent. Kohut implied that in normal growth, the al-

ter ego,/twinship represents a deep and basic need for the valua-

tion of a sense of humanness by imitation, in which the child

reaffirms the l ikeness of the selfobject and is strengthened by

its quietly sustaining presence.

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68+ STUART W. TWEMLOW

tation of the Kurt Cobain suicide by a fan (although the typical

copycat crime is a property offense rather than a violent one).

There is no conclusive evidence that noncriminals are induced

to commit crime by the media, but there is a suggestion that

at-risk individuals can become involved in serious copycat crim-

inal activity. Note that immediately following the Cobain suicide,

there was only one other suicide in Seattle, where he had lived

and died; and in this case, strong public preventive efforts were

mounted to g ive in format ion to young people about how to

deal with suicidal ideation and where to get help.

Pease and Love (r984) suggested a phenomenological sub-

division of copycat criminals, designating as mod.e copiers those

criminals who gain information from watching the media about

how to commit crimes. These individuals are unlikely to be emo-

tionally dysregulated or necessarily mentally ill per se. Terrorists

and other violent threateners form another category of copycat

cr iminals. But i t seems that the coPycat cr ime phenomenon

seen in cases of school violence does not easily f it within either

of these categories: here we are dealing with children, not career

crimi4als, and generally, the killing is a first offense.

In what follows, I will provide an outline of a psychological

theory of school-violence copycatting derived from self psychol-

ogy. I wil l apply this theory to both a high school shooting in

Georgia and in a more detailed discussion of a case referred to

me in a clinical context.

Imitation is a normal developmental phase and a time-hon-

ored way of learning, institutionalized most strikingly in the Ori-

ent. For example, in traditional sumi brush painting, the adult

novice spends years copying masters before being allowed to

create his or her own original work. In our culture, imitation

and learning by imitation are clearly evident in children, who

of ten c losely mimic every minute gesture and habi t o f thei r

parents. A young boy who accompanies his father in mowing the

lawn with a toy lawn mower is a party to the coPycat phenome-

non in its most benign, enriching, and growth-promoting form.

Mimicry is probably underestimated in psychoanalytic theory as

f r i f ! r T r r r y t l t T { ! r t t t r i t i l ! i l t r i i t r [ ] T l T f l I t t l l l

686 STUART W. TWEMI,OW

Wolf ( r988) suggests that th is quiet can be d isrupted for

some adolescents who lack an alter ego selfobject experience

from affirming peer-group idols. He also suggests that in such

circumstances, the normal, growth-promoting adolescent adver-

sarial needs for encouraging opposition from selfobjects become

instead an alter ego, "in the likeness of the adolescent's self . . .

thus confirmfing its] deficiencies and faults" (p. Sg). Moore and

Fine (rggo) note that an "as-if'personality trait or behavior forms

a part of many disorders and even of normal adolescence. These

authors define as-ifness as "persons . ' . who create an illusion of

convict ion and involvement , a l though they lack commitment

to the thoughts and emotions they express. Absences of depth

in emotional experience and a tendency to imitate are important

features of this pattern" (P. 28).

Kernberg (rg8+) considers that the chameleon-like, ever-shift-

ing pseudohyperemotional and pseudoadaptive qualit ies of the

as-if personality reflect secondary defenses against a Patholog-ically grandiose self. He feels that this constellation can protect

the patient from severe paranoid fears, and occasionally, from un-

cons6i,ous guilt. Meissner (rgB8) emphasizes the internalization of

what he calls the victim-introject (p. 5o), and hypothesizes that

as-ifness is an adaptation to problems with aggression and asser-

tive independence through the retreat to a Passive victimization.

All these authors emphasize a defective sense of psycholog-

ical self in as-if personalit ies' In instances of copycat violence

committed by children, this particular set of traits may be pres-

ent in the perpetrators, often defending the child against severe

paranoid fears, possibly guilt, and horrifying feelings of emp-

tiness, meaninglessness, and unboundedness-in short, the au-

tistic-contiguous position described by Ogden (tg8g).

Drawing on my work with psychoanalytically influenced, open-

social-systems models and their use to explain school violence,

I feel that the copycat child is a special variant of the bully-by-

s12ndg1-ene who voyeuristically and perversely identifies in fan-

tasy with the media-depicted perpetrator. Vicarious excitement

and triumph permit temPorary avoidance and denial of actu-

A CRLICIBLE FOR MURDER

al responsib i l i ty and consequences for the v io lent act , whichposes as an enacted fantasy; the perpetrators are sometimes de-scr ibed as being spaced out af ter the cr ime is commit ted, orout of touch as though in a dream.

In sum, from a self psychological and social_systems perspec_tive, the copycat phenomenon may represent a perverse formof the alter ego,/twinning selfobject transference of Kohut (rgg+).The pathological copycat situation is located in the deeper lay-ers of the unconscious, the mimicry of a hating, uncaring pa_rental f igure. This bully-bystander dynamic is a perverse andvoyeuristic identification with the hating power of the destrucdvebully parent, thus indirectly creating a perverse sense of securi-ty as an effective "human

among humans" (Kohut r9g4, p. zoo).

case lllustration of the copycat phenomenon: A successfut crisisIntnuention

This view of the copycat phenomenon can be applied to thedata available about the shooting spree of a rg-year-old studentat Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia. He entered hisschool with a highly powerful, lethal handgun and a much low-er-powered .zz rifle. Ultimately, he used only the lower_poweredrif le to injure six of his fellow students; ihere were no deaths.This boy had been bull ied, was parhologically jealous, and feltrejected by his girlfr iend. FIe was a skilred marksman: his srep-father, who was very interested in hunting, had been teachingthe boy how to shoot at targets. On the day of the shooting, theyoung man aimed low, as if trying to injure rather than kill. Af_ter emptying twelve shots from his rifle, he knelt to the ground.,pulled out the much more powerful .3bZ magnum, and preparedto commit suicide.

An assistant principal (the healthy parental object, reversingthe perverse identification in the twinship), standing nearby, saidto him, "It's going to be all right." The boy immediately collapsed,shaking, and said, "Oh my God, I,m scared.', The shooting ir.*attention to his power without it having to become lethal. al_

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STUART W. TWEMLOW

though one child was seriously injured. I speculate that by thetime the boy had emptied his rif le, the horror of what he haddone became obvious to h im, br inging at tendant gui l t . Thesensitive awareness of his desperate situation by the assistantprincipal saved this boy's l i fe, Although information about thisparticular case is sketchy, it would be interesting to review allcopycat incidents, including those that have been aborted., rodetermine to what extent as-if, imitative, bully-bystand,er andtwinship patterns were operative in the perpetrators. such qual-it ies of personality and patterns of interaction might be useful

' in determining which children are at risk for lethal violence.

Case-Illustration of the Copycat phenomenon: An Exampte fromM1 Own Practice

This phenomenon is illustrated in greater depth by the caseof Henry, a r 5-year-old who had serious violent intent based ona pathological alter-ego twinship (Twemlow, Fonagy, and Saccozooza). Henry was referred to me at the insistence of the princi-pal of t*.re parochial school he attended, although his parentsthought the referral unnecessary. His family practitioner had puthim on Zoloft, with little behavioral change, and he was in dan_ger of being expelled from schoor after having been suspendedfor a total of thirteen school days in the previous year.

His parents were both religiously and polit ically conserva_tive, his mother working as a l ibrarian and his father as a carsalesman who was on the road a great deal of the t ime. Hisfather displayed an openly aggressive manner, was interestedin the brutal aspects of ice hockey, and was proud of his coilec-tion of guns and knives. Since Henry was an only child, manyof the family wishes and expectations were invested in him.

Henry l iked video games, particularly violent ones, and es_pecia l ly "Doom,"

which he cal led a . ,sp lat ter game." He a lso

l iked rap CDs, which were the ant i thesis of what h is parentsdesired him to listen to. prior to the referral, he had download-ed material from a website on how to make pipe bombs and had

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A CRUCIBLE FoR MURDETT 68o

developed a h i t l is t o f ind iv iduals who bul l ied h im. He hadalso created drawings indicating that he would shoot them vio-lent ly . Beginning about a year ear l ier , Henry had decided, ashe said, "to get people's attention even if I can't be popular" (hismother said that Henry's friends merely "put up with him"). Hehad noted the publicity around the Columbine tragedy and wasopenly jealous of the attention focused on this carefully engi-neered slaughter.

Although Henry described himself as endlessly bull ied andpicked on, the role that he played in his relations with peers waswhat I describe as bully-victim-that is, that of a provocative vic-tim: he would often act passively, then provoke others into re-sponding to him in a bullying wal, after which he wouid bullyback. Discussion wi th teachers indicated that , as one teachersaid, "When the predator is looking for prey, Henry is it." Hewas described as an open target, as if he invited abuse; bullyingof him included sexual taunting and being jeered at for hav-ing been held back in kindergarten (this had occurred at the re-quest of his parents, who had believed he was too emotionallyimmature to progress with his peers). He had been on Ritalinfbr many years to treat a form of hyperactivity, and had been ahigh-performing student, although at the time of referral, he wasdoing poorly in school.

When I met wi th Henry, he spoke most ly about how un-popular he was, about not having girlfr iends, and said that heenvied boys who were athletic and handsome, even though hehimsel f was not unat t ract ive, though somewhat gangly andrather clumsy. As he began to trust me, he spoke more abouthis problems, a major one being that his father constantly puthim down and called him stupid. I had an opportunity to ob-serve the father in action; I noted that any disagreement wasseen by this ver:y dominating, bullying man as a failure to un-derstand what he, the father, wanted. Mother, although quite ag-gressive in her own right, adopted a very passive stance with herhusband and would often burst into tears, especially when herhusband was sarcastic with Henry.

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Henry mostly bull ied girls since he was stronger than theywere, and of course, this did not increase his popularity amongthe girls, other boys, or teachers. The parochial school he atten-ded had a serious problem with coercive power dynamics; therewere many power struggles that were denied by the staff, with arather naively pclsit ive attitude taken in spite of the occurrenceof quite serious fights among students. References to faith inGod and religion were often used to avoid dealing with the fun_damental power struggles.

This depressed young man would brighten visibly when hespoke of how good a salesman he was: he had sold a great manyitems for the Boy Scouts and had received a prestigious award.A friend of his father, an insurance agent, had commented that"Henry speaks l ike a lamb and sells l ike a l ion." The attempt toidentify with his father's strength as a salesman was very clear,but when Henry talked about this in family sessions, his fatherwould sarcastically downgrade his actions as if he were enviousof them.

Henry felt that the diagrrosis of Attention Deficit Hyperac_tivity Disorder had always made him different, He hated goingto the,:rurse to get his Ritalin, since he was often called ,,crazy,,

by the other children. Yet in class, he frequently acted l ike aclown, making noises to draw attention to himself. He would.rather have the teacher report him and suspend him than experi_ence a lack of attention.

Henry of ten obsessed for many hours about h is home_work, despite exhibit ing a "don't-care" atritude toward school_work, and would then, of course, become ser iously s leep de-pr ived. At n ight , he t r ied to drown out t roubl ing homic idalthoughts by playing his boom box loudly. This was followed byhis fall ing asleep in the classroorn the next day. On one occa_sion, he artracted the attention of a police officer. When the of_ficer asked what he l iked to do with his spare time, he repliedthat he l iked to play violent video games in order to take outhis anger on them. The officer reported this to his parents, andonce again, Henry fe l t misunderstood, because he thought hehad been taught that it was good to get his anger out.

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A CRUCIBLE FOR ML]RDER 6 g r

His mother conveyed quite clearly that she was frantic that

her efforts had produced "this monster,' and she conveyed this

to Henry in comments that were extraord inar i ly contemptu-

ous. She whispered to me in h is presence, "How did we pro-

duce a child as sick an this?" As the contemptuous abuse at home

and the peer bullying and stigmatization by teachers, the admin-

istration, and school resource officers mounted, Henry became

increasingly sadistic, destroying property and overtly bullying

chi idren who were in te l lectual ly l imi ted or had physical de-

formities; he openly expressed satisfaction when he could domi-

nate and hurt them, thus appearing less l ikeable and more sa-distic.

Psychoanalytic evaluation revealed a boy with many as-if per-

sonality traits. The intensity of his rage at his father's bullying

and his mother's passivity resulted in a pattrological identif ica-

tion with his father's phallic destructive interests through bully-ing, and with his mother's expressed helpless desperation at thefami ly s i tuat ion through provocat ive ly v ic t imized passiv i ty .His personality lacked depth and conviction, except during thelong nights of cyberfantasy, rap music, and trying to do hishomework. His defective sense of self was clearly protected by aparanoid grandiosity enacted at night in the privacy of his room.During the day, he retreated to an as-if passive victimization thatMeissner (r988) would likely call the aictim-introject.

Henry responded well to psychoanalytic expressive-suppor-tive psychotherapy and aggressive physical outlets, such as mar-tial arts, which were used with him in a therapeutic way. He wastransferred to a public school, where he did quite well. His self-esteem improved and his need to receive copycat recognitionby both adults and peers decreased. As he grew less and lessneedy for attention, he became more attractive to girls and wasable to have normal dating relationships. The initial transferenceto me was quite stereotyped; he clearly did not expect assistancefrom anybody, as if he had virtually given up on adults and anyother potential sources of help.

His one outstanding skill was selling, and that had grown out ofan attempt to mimic and gain admiration from his father. Family

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therapy was very helpful in bringing to his father's attention ihe

necessity to avoid contemptuous, bullying behavior and to en-

courage development of the boy's skills. Henry acted out in the

transference his well-established pattern of having to please the

male, and he became fairly open about his belief that women

were.worthless, passive, and weak. His oedipal defeat, acted out

in both home and school settings, could be more usefully tra-

versed in the transference once he began to be capable of see-

ing defects in his father; he could take his father's hostile words

and actions less personally as the negative oedipal f ixation was

resolved.As Henry became less murderously angry he also lost inter-

est in doing martial arts, but thanked me for having interested

him in them, indicating that he felt his participation had helped

him. Gradually, his interest in violent video games changed and

he seemed to enter a more normal adolescent growth pattern.

His parents did not themselves fare well as he improved, howev-

er, and their relationship became cold and hostile; but the hold-

ing of the therapeutic relationship helped Henry traverse his

parents' marital distress without becoming enmeshed in their psy-

chopathology. He was seen in treatment unti l he finished high

school, and as expected, left the distressed home at the earliest

opportunity.

A C O N T I N U U M O F R E S P O N S E S B YC H I L D R E N T O T H R E A T : A

B I O P S Y C H O S O C I A L I N T E G R A T I O N

In investigating the determinants of selldestructive and other de-

structive behavior in children and adolescents, the common ob-

servation of clinicians has been that such children, instead of de-

veloping and reporting subjective states of discomfort, tend to

first act out their destructive impulses in behaviors that are often

very difficult to handle. Many clinicians feel that there has been

an increase in such behaviors during the decade of the r99os.

There certainly has been an increase in bizarre behavior seen

among children in school settings'

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Thble r on the next page summarizes a biopsychosocial continu-um of possible responses to threat. In the case of real attach in ahealthy individual, fear stimulates adaptive ego responses, inclu-ding avoidance or a fight to ensure survival. The victim-victimizerregressive d ia lect ic is not involved. In the sense descr ibed byFreud, unconscious threat and signal anxiety lead to a variety ofrepressive and other defensive reactions of the ego, with patho_logical transferences in object relationships resulting in neurosisand other forms of psychiatric i l lness. such resp.nses are oftenseen in adults and in mild to moderately disturbed children.

In the case of children with more severe psychopathology,several other mechanisms may contribute, especially ones thattend to modif or exaggerate the initial threat to the ego. Resultsof research at the Menninger clinic with children exposed toclips of violent movies (Nichols zooo) indicare rhar numbing outor suppression of the child's response to violence fosters accommGdation and prevents regression. Affects commonly seen in suchchildren are inappropriate humor and a numbed feeling. It ismy opinion that this pathological suppression of the ego's re_sponse to such threats can lead to a deeper unconscious level ofprimitive defensiveness, with operations l ike splitt ing and om_nipotent denia l . In such c i rcumstances, behaviora l act ing outtends to occur , and chi ldren may d isconnect f rom thei r peergroups because their behavior alienates others.

To this scenario may be added the more recent concept ofhindling (2. B. Segal et al. r996). First applied to the rreatmentof patients with migraine and epilepsy, kindling models have re_cently been used to explain a variety of psychiatric disord.ers, in_cluding Bipolar Disorder and Post-Traumat ic Stress Disorder(Post et al. r996). In the kindling model, the number and inten_sity of psychosocial stressors necessary to precipitate the disor-der is reduced as repeated episodes of the disorder occur. Thekindl ing model then postu lates that the bra in becomes sensi -tized by recurrent cycles of anxiety, requiring fewer and fewerstressors to respond with full-blown psychopathological malad.ap_tation.

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The kindling model helps integrate a psychoanalytic under-

standing of ego defenses and their interaction with the observa-

tion of pathological object relationships, including transferences

and the b io logical substrate, s ince a feedback loop of patho-

logical transferences may modify the neuronal substrate, lower-

ing the threshold for violent outbursts with successive episodes.

One such kindled stressor could be coercive power dynamics, with

each exposure requiring less coercion to precipitate a destruc-

tive outburst.

The continuation of a bullying sad,omasochistic ritual causes a

deeper level of regression to the autistic contiguous position of

Ogden (rg8g); rage and shame are strong affects, which lead to

retaliatory attack and defeat, with possible suicide and homicide.

In bullying, the response to the threat occurs via a deeper level

of regression than that seen in suppression and kindling, leading

to explosive rage fueled by the real or fantasized bystander. com-

Ponent.Finally, peer-group-valid,ated, threat can lead to complex and

even more intense, groupamplified dynamics and destructive fan-

tasies, with group-enhanced megalomania and manic triumph

resulting in destructive actions. The above-mentioned case vig-

nette involving a school shooter illustrates the groupenhanced ef-

fect <)n a susceptible child.

C O N C L U S I O N S

With dangerous children, the peer group has a developmental-

ly exaggerated influence. Adding the actions of influential adults

to the mix can intensify pathological, paranoid transferences in

these children that then interact with complex social phenomena,

like copycatting and media influences on children's growth and

development. Also, sadomasochistic bullying rituals are perhaps

unwittingly encouraged by middle-class vertical social dynamics.

This perspective compels the analyst who elects to treat serious-

Iy disturbed children to work in an interdisciplinary way within

the child's social context.

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Acknowledgments.. The ideas elaborated in this paper owe much to the autholsdiscussions with Kai Erikson, Ph.D.; Peter Fonagy, Ph.D.; Steven Marans, ph.D.;Frank Sacco, Ph.D.: and Robert Welker, Ph.D.

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e-mail : STwernlnw @ aol. c on

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