Oslo bomber/massmurderer found insane

[YAKMAN is ICHIBAN]

I find the lack of a death penalty unsurprising, given that we're in the minority of industrialized countries that have it. I would expect some sort of criminal exception for people who aren't insane but are too dangerous to release to the public though.

Maybe a looser definition of insanity than we have here is how they compensate for that as shown here? Or maybe they simply haven't had the need before this asshole decided to off a bunch of kids.

[Alex Shelley]

Nov 29, 2011 20:27:46 GMT -5 Alexander The So-so said:

Honestly, while it's definitely true that this guy is clearly not right in the head, this schizophrenia diagnosis stinks of a political work-around.

Schizophrenia means disordered, clustered thoughts, delusions, and auditory hallucinations. It means that the sufferer cannot string together coherent thoughts or reason properly, and is plagued by random delusions and hallucinations. And while those things definitely cause them to act in a dysfunctional way, schizophrenics are rarely actually violent.

Breivik's actions were way too coldly logical and efficient for that. The man knew exactly what he was doing when he spent months in advance planning the massacre. And on the day itself, using the bombing as a diversion to draw attention away from the shooting was much too logical. Furthermore, his motive, while extremely chilling, has some degree of real-world logic (not to say that he's anywhere in the right, but still).

These were not the actions of a schizophrenic. A schizophrenic would be like, say, John Hinkley or Mark David Chapman; spend a little time scoping out your target's likely location, then just walk up to your target with a handgun and shoot, and say that you did it to declare your love for Jodie Foster or that "Catcher In the Rye" inspired you to do it.

In this case, it's got to be either a work-around of sending him to a rehabilitative Norwegian prison (they probably don't have many hopes for rehabilitation anyway), or some other kind of political motivation. But from what I've read, the guy just does not seem like a genuine schizophrenic at all.

Thank you. I'm so tired of schizophrenia being portrayed the way it is. This is just political bull that's going to continue the demonization of schizophrenia.