Charles whitman why did he do it

In the last decades of the 20th century, ironic references to Whitman were the norm. He was the Marine and Eagle Scout who turned into a mass murderer. This view seems to indicate a belief that such lone mass shooters crave publicity for suicidal stunts; that they are cruel and indifferent narcissists.

But the fact is that we still do not know what makes someone carry out a mass attack. Is curiosity and the desire to understand mass murderers a symptom of the modern media circus? Is empathy only available to people at a distance?

Does a need to start paying more attention to the victims and the survivors mean that we have to stop trying to understand the perpetrators? Charles Whitman suffered abuse as a child, anxiety as an adult, and serious physical and mental illness in the months and maybe years before he slaughtered 16 people, wounded 32 others, and traumatized many more. He sought help from an unfeeling psychiatrist for the violent impulses that terrified him.

Should we spare some sympathy for him? Or, do we talk about how he was an Eagle Scout at age 12? During the next three days, Located on acres in Arlington, Texas, the park was the first to On August 1, , sprinter Michael Johnson breaks the world record in the meters to win gold at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Three days earlier, Johnson had also won the meters, making him the first man in history to win both events at the Olympics. Four years earlier The act was intended to revive the sagging spirit of detente between the Soviet Union Union General Ulysses S.

Within a few months, Sheridan drove a Confederate force from the Shenandoah Valley and destroyed nearly all possible sources of Rebel supplies, helping to seal the fate of the Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. The University of Texas tower remained closed before reopening for tours in These are all terrible things that anyone with common decency would not wish upon anyone else, but they are also common on all college campuses and workplaces.

She should spend more time with her students: who among them, or us, has the luxury of dealing with one problem at a time? In terms of hardship, how does Charles Whitman compare to the survivors of the Holocaust or whole countries ravaged by Hitler or Stalin? These abominations did not produce generations of mass murderers.

Whitman's problems tell us why he was angry and why he wanted to die, but they do not provide absolution for murder any more than jealousy excuses a delusional husband for killing his innocent or guilty wife.

Another example: We know WHY those idiots in Jasper, Texas dragged a poor black man to his death--they were hateful and incorrigible racists--it doesn't entitle them to a pardon or turn them into patients innocent of murder.

And we know, beyond not just reasonable, but any doubt, what he did, and how and when he did it. During that period no significant amount of time is unaccounted for.

He could not have done what he did without controlled, thoughtful, serial decision-making in a correct order to accomplish a goal. Nothing he did remotely appears undisciplined or random. Indeed, if a commando had been assigned to do the same thing, he would have assembled much the same arsenal, packed the same supplies, and behaved the same way. Was he under the control of a tumor or drugs or in a state of rage when he went to a convenience store to buy the canned goods he intended to eat while on the deck?

Right about that time he had lunch with his wife and mother at a cafeteria. Is that not control? Future research should evaluate more robustly the degree to which these and other psychological capacities are truly impaired in patients with lesions in this network. When moving from the question of free will to issues of moral responsibility and legal guilt, it is important to evaluate each case in light of the wide array of factors beyond neurologic injury that influence behavior.

Previous research has demonstrated that criminal behavior is impacted by genetics , childhood mistreatment , low self-esteem during adolescence , lack of parental support , social and economic disadvantage , and racial discrimination.

The lesson is that human behavior is complex and a brain lesion is neither necessary nor sufficient for criminal behavior: after all, there are nearly , people living with brain tumors in the US and approximately , people have strokes every year , but the known cases leading to criminal behavior number in the dozens.

The fact that violence can be a symptom of brain disease shows not that free will is an illusion, but that free will can be injured just like other human abilities. These rare cases of dysfunction allow us to see more clearly that our healthy brains endow us with remarkable capacities to imagine, reason, and act freely. He studied neuroscience and philosophy at Yale University and the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American.

Create your free account or Sign in to continue.