Current media is reporting a relative of Cho, the VT murderer, as saying he was "autistic". I'd like to see a formal diagnosis, because the so-called "autism spectrum disorder" (ASD) scale is, in my view, a ragbag of etiologies based on an overall similarity of symptoms. But suppose he had something like high-function Asperger's...
My son has this, and so do I. Both of us spent our school years being bullied and rejected by our peers, although he had it a lot worse than I did until fairly recently. And both of us tend, when the pressure is too great, to strike out to get away. I always hit walls (once breaking my knuckles in the process) rather than people - my son just tries to get away from the pressure in order to calm down.
So I can well understand how, if Cho was bullied the way he insisted in his video, this could build up to a murderous rampage. But since only a very few such ASD sufferers ever do this, there needs to be more to explain why he did it, and not all the other ASD sufferers. For a start, Cho obviously had these murderous impulses for a long time. Secondly I wonder how much his Korean heritage played a role here? Some cultures, like east Asian societies, Sicilian families, middle eastern societies and the American South have a hypertrophied sense of honour. Such values lead to family feuds, and cultural and ethinic rivalries that persist for hundreds of years. A "man of honour" feels every slight more keenly, and is more aggressive in its defence, than someone for whom honour takes a second place to justice or fairness.
So, if Cho was bullied, and had ASD, and had strong exposure to overstressed notions of honour, and had access to weapons, this tragedy is quite explicable. Remove any one of these, and it becomes harder to explain, and less likely. Of course, this need not be the only set of conditions that would lead to such a mass killing, but it is very likely in this case from what I have read.
Update: IHT is reporting that Cho's mother was advised to have him tested for ASD, but that she instead chose to pray for him in church...
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I was at last night's pre-screening and reception at the Writers Guild Theatre for the long-awaited Harlan Ellison documentary "Dreams with Teeth" and its critical
commentary by Neil Gaiman, Robin Williams, and Werner Hertzog.
Harlan explains at length how, as the shortest kid in class, a wise-ass with a loud mouth, Jewish among goyim, in small -town Ohio, he got the crap beaten out of him every day. Repeat: every day. He explains why he became angry at the world. Why he and the Army (drafted 1957) mutually decided to part company. Why his short stories and teleplays name the villains after the bullies who beat him up.
Harlan's literature is immortal. But everyone has their own response to bullying. Some use a gun. Some use a typewriter.
See also how Theodore Sturgeon turned the agony of being abused by a stepfather into immortal prose.
Read and weep.
Thank you for this. I have also been wondering a lot about the role of culture in regard to Cho---not only of his being from South Korea originally, but also of his family having immigrated to the US when he was 8 years old. This Guardian article talks about how children in South Korea are more likely to be diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder (RAD) rather than autism, "because the condition simply blames the mother, rather than the entire family.
I believe nobody who knows anything blames the parents for ASD in their children any more.
Thanks for writing about your personal experience. Too few of us are willing to be that open, and that's just what's needed to change attitudes.
Thanks for writing this. I had thought just the same a few days ago, but there was no evidence at that time.
I find your very last sentence particularly fitting: let's remember that not all cultures face mental illness in the same way. Add to that access to guns and the pressure of being constantly bullied and emarginated, and it all starts making sense.
My son's best friend has been diagnosed with high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome and he is a great kid. He is fortunate not to be bullied and it may have to do with his size, but he does have great difficulty making friends. Other kids just aren't sure how to "take" him.
Thanks for writing about this, John. I have read your writing for many years, and I can attest that yes, indeed, you are "high-functioning."
(I was also going to mention my suspicion that Garrison Keillor also has Asperger's syndrome, but this is my own untrained diagnosis from having watched him backstage. Either that or he is extremely shy.)
But even if in fact Cho did suffer from some level of autism, if he was bullied as a kid, if his parents put too much pressure on him to perform and he obviously had trouble making friends, and if he was in fact abused, I still place the responsibility for his awful deeds on his shoulders.
And so do I. Personal responsibility is only mitigated when the person is not an agent - that is, when they have no alternative choice but to behave that way. Cho did. He made it clear that he did. And millions of ASD sufferers, or whatever deficit he had, have not acted as he did.
He was responsible. He and he alone takes the guilt. But we can still explain what happened and take steps to prevent it.
I think that this is one of the most frustrating aspects of spree-killers taking their lives. They leave us with a patchwork of clues, and we can't ask any clarifying questions.
I have read that Cho was in deed diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at eight years of age but no intervention took place. It wasnt autism that killed people in Virginia Tech but an individual that had exhibited symptoms of a learning disability at a young age and the people that came in contact with all the years in school did nothing to intervene. Why ..because he was smart, a loner and Korean.. and probably because his own family didnt accept the diagnosis (this isnt so unusual is it?)
I think it is wrong to deny that Cho exhibited autism traits... It is not autism that killed people but this individual Cho who never received help or interventions for years..........
This is so important for parents to remember and a lesson for all people who try to deny children services/support or say they are too smart to receive services at all... even though they have a diagnosis. All the years that Cho was in school, all the teachers that had in class didn't see that he had a disability and did nothing speaks volumes to me. It is not so unusual to hear about kids that are smart, shy, lacking social skills that continue to get pushed through the system for a myriad of reasons......schools don't want to provide services, parents don't want to accept the diagnosis, parents don't know their rights under law for interventions, and some parents have issues that compound getting help for their own child...
If we don't accept that Cho was diagnosed with autism and learn from this, we are compounding the problem of getting help for thousands of children now and in the future. While I admit that children on the autism spectrum are not usually violent, keep in mind this young man was someone who never had intervention and who knows what it was like for him to deal with day to day issues..which I am certain most people didn't even know as he didn't share his feels.. How many kids on the autism spectrum have challenges with sharing their feelings?
Remember this individual Cho does not represent Autism - he was diagnosed with it and no one did anything to intervene.
Can you imagine being diagnosed with cancer when you are eight-years old and then no one does anything for years, even though they suspect something is wrong? Then you "suddenly" do things from rage...because you are dying inside and no one did a thing to help.
I am not trying to justify what Cho did as right, what I am saying is that this individual needed help, was diagnosed with autism and lived without any treatment/therapy for years not able to have friends, social issues, etc. along with other emotional problems that compounded his mental state.
Where are all the experts that saw the signs and symptoms which Cho exhibited for years and did nothing but push him through the system?
By denying the diagnosis now, people will further contribute to others not getting the help they so desperately need
Monica Moshenko, Parent, Advocate
Host DisAbility News & Views Radio
www.disabilitynewsradio.com
Article Cho Was Autistic: Family
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/cho-was-autistic-family/2007/04/21/…
Monica, Cho was not diagnosed - a general practitioner suggested he be tested. So the problems were even worse. However I do agree that it is not the autism, if he had it, that caused this, but some complex of factors that played off against the autism. I suspect pressure from family, peers, teachers and authorities for years had something to do with it, having observed the expectations and pressures on my own son and daughter and myself. They simply never got that we are not being disobedient when we failed to understand what everyone else did. It becomes very easy to stop trying to communicate. I was lucky, and I hope my son has been too.
I also agree that there is, at least in this country, a lack of support for high function autistics, because they have a high IQ, and are thus expected to be able to cope. On general statistical principles, we should expect there to be as many of these kids as there are developmentally delayed kids, but the support services are a fraction for them.
Where there is a stigma, as it appears there is in Korea, support will be even less, leaving the parents to struggle as they can.
Cho Seung-Hui: From autism to psychopathic
it was not autism which led to the violence, it could be the autism-unawareness led to school bullies while he was in elementary, middle, and high schools. The bully and humiliation of the emigrated and language-disabled kid excerated his withdrawal from this society, the life long experience of being humiliated and lone had tortured his mind, and led to an extremely psychological developmental impairment. Living in a society with violent culture, the psychopathic young man full of hatred and facing new chanllenge of college-graduation and experiencing difficulty in seeking loving partner, all these factors drove this young man's evil act in Virginia Tech. From the video of his manifesto, we saw a fierced young man, unclearly speaking with a little Korean accent, we saw an eruption of long-term depression and hatred to the society, we saw the massacar was carefully planned for a long time.
According to the WashingtonPost's reports, Cho was quiet, rarely talk in middle school, when he did talk, his speaking was unclear, it was like there were something in his mouth, classmates started to laugh, and humiliated him by saying something like "Go back to China", apperantly peers didn't even know he was from South Korea. His classmates even rewarded dollar bills to get Cho to talk. Cho didn't response when he was greeted by people, he didn't even respond when his name is called, the mean students teased Cho by calling his name in hall way, they knew Cho would not respond. It is not hard to understand why he signed his name as a question mark when he signed in to class, this is a guy who had been humiliated for too long for not talking, for not responding by name, he was fully aware of his own problem, so he was scared of being called in the class.
I'm curious about any medication/s he may have been on. Quite a few Aspie's seem to be very sensitive to medications and if he was put on anything for depression, bipolarism, or such - they could have had an awful outcome.
Well, we Aspies do have anger issues: usually bullied during childhood (it happened to me, I only overcame it as a young adult, and I think being more than 6ft tall and weighing more than 190lbs helped), labeled as nerdy, and so, ostracized during adolescence, I still find it, in my early 40s, very difficult to deal with people, and frustration for not being understood and for seeing people behave in a way that is irrational to me, can be very aggravating. Like John, I hit walls and furniture when I'm really angry. That, added to me being a big man, and very outspoken (I think it's a reaction to being bullied during childhood) makes many people fear me and label me as aggresive, although I don't insult people. I live in Mexico, and high functioning autism is something people don't know about, and having a cognitive/social impairment is considered to be shameful. I only learned that I'm an Aspie less than 5 years ago. Any similarities to South Korea, perhaps? John, have you had some kind of therapy and/or medication?
This is turning out to be very therapeutic for me.
Ribozyme (are you related to ribosome?) - no I have had no therapy or medication - when I was growing up, nobody had ever heard of Asperger's. A general practitioner tried to prescribe Ritalin for my son once - I stomped on that. Bad enough to have an adolescent brain developing, with Asperger's, but to shove amphetamines into it without any idea what they do... *ugh*.
I used to say I had an overexpressed Justice gene. I too get annoyed (now, angry, once) with idiocy.
I think the reaction of his great aunt is very revealing. She is reported to have called him an SOB and an @hole, saying that he deserved to die with his victims. She also talked about his childhood in an extremely negative way. I think there should be very little doubt that he was regarded as an embarrassment by at least some of his family. If this continued for the first years after the onset of ASD it would have certainly had devastating effects. Another thing that has been absent from the media reports is the likelihood that his emotional age would have been much youger than his chronological age. Imagine a 10 yr old trying to live on his own. This case really shows that nothing is done for autistic kids unless the parents fight for them. And not much gets done for adults either unless they can fight for themselves or someone establishes a support system for them. I think it also proves that there are no experts. There are people who know nothing and people who know a little bit.
Does anyone think the networks will delve into the possibility of mercury causing ASD while they take in so many advertising $$ from the drug companies?
Jay Serna