Inside a Mass Murderer's Mind

(2 of 3)

Narcissism is not the only part of the psychic stew that leads to mass murder. Among the additional risk factors experts look for is a history of other kinds of emotional turmoil, such as depression, substance abuse or some kind of childhood trauma. After the Columbine killings in 1999, the Federal Government commissioned a study of 37 incidents of school violence from 1974 to 2000 in an attempt to sketch some kind of profile of likely campus killers. In general, the investigators found that more than half of all attackers had documented cases of extreme depression, and 25% had had serious problems with drugs and alcohol. "People will often say that the killer was such a quiet boy," says Follingstad. "Then you talk to the family and find out he's had three previous hospitalizations and was mumbling something he was angry about for weeks."

A less well-documented percentage of mass killers have also been physically or sexually abused. Just a day after the Virginia Tech killings, Cho's graphically awful writings — playlets that deal with the molestation of young boys — began appearing on websites. The writings are not proof that he experienced similar mistreatment, but they certainly raise questions. "These things can percolate for years," says N. G. Berrill, a forensic psychologist and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. "Quite often there is an early event where they are submitted to violence or are marginalized."

That last feeling can be the real problem. Where there's marginalization, there's a profound sense of powerlessness, and powerless people tend to hit back. More worryingly, it doesn't take grave abuses like molestation to leave people feeling so minimized. Parental or spousal indifference or dismissal — or at least the belief that it exists — can have a similar effect. If the world outside the home seems to be conspiring in the mistreatment, the sense of invalidation grows worse still. It may be true that none of us suffer a lost job, a busted romance or a failed exam easily, but to someone already highly sensitized to such setbacks, they can be intolerable. "These are people who are already angry," says Samenow, "and when things don't go the way they want them to, they personalize it. They take out their rage not on the person who hurt them last, but on the whole world."

Something like this is what appears to have happened with Cho. When he blew, he blew savagely. Not only was the sheer body count on the campus horrific, but so was the relish with which the victims were killed. Doctors in the hospital where the survivors were treated described their injuries as "brutal," with each of the victims sustaining at least three bullet wounds. Of course, plenty of people fail tests and end romances and even suffer unspeakable abuse as children. And while there are a lot of narcissists in the world, many of whom crash and burn in their personal and professional lives, only an infinitesimal fraction of even the most unstable people lash out in remotely as violent a way as mass killers do. So what should we look for in people for whom such a homicidal rage is a real risk?

Age is an indicator, but an imperfect one. Adolescents and people in their early 20s are not famous for good judgment and sober reflection. Indeed, recent neurological studies reveal that the brain doesn't even finish laying down all its wiring until deep into the second decade of life — far beyond the babyhood years in which scientists once believed this basic work got done. "Adolescents tend to take more risks in general and tend to be more impulsive," says psychologist William Pollack, of McLean Hospital in Boston. "Boys [especially] are socialized into the idea that such behavior is OK."

While teens lack wisdom, however, they're generally spared the long lifetime of frustrations and setbacks that can contribute to murderous rampages in older killers — the fired post office employee or office worker who suddenly reappears and guns down his former colleagues. "We see people with a job or a relationship that defines them," says Dr. Anthony Ng, assistant professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. "When that is shattered, they decide that they have nothing else." Opportunity and unlucky serendipity play a big role too. People with ready access to guns are likelier to use them than people who have to work to get their hands on a weapon. A household in which problems are settled violently, or at least in a volatile fashion, makes acting out less alien as well. What your culture — national, ethnic, religious — teaches you about how to handle rejection or, worse, humiliation can be critical too.