Columbine

Columbine by Dave Cullen

From The Washington Post's Book World (Reviewed by Gary Krist):

Drawing on almost 10 years of research -- including hundreds of interviews, 25,000 pages of documents and the journals, notebooks and videotapes of the perpetrators -- he has assembled a comprehensive account of what really happened at Columbine High School on Tuesday, April 20, 1999. And his conclusion is arresting: namely, that the public's understanding of this supposedly archetypal mass shooting is almost entirely wrong: "We remember Columbine," Cullen writes, "as a pair of outcast Goths from the Trench Coat Mafia snapping and [then] tearing through their high school hunting down jocks to settle a long-running feud. Almost none of that happened. No Goths, no outcasts, nobody snapping. No targets, no feud, and no Trench Coat Mafia. Most of those elements existed at Columbine -- which is what gave them such currency. They just had nothing to do with the murders." Far from feckless pariahs, in fact, the two shooters in the Columbine case -- Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold -- were smart, reasonably popular kids who doled out more bullying than they ever suffered. Their shooting spree was not some precipitous act of revenge against specific tormentors, but more like an elaborately planned theater piece, worked out almost a year in advance, designed to demonstrate their innate superiority by indiscriminately killing as many victims as possible.

This is a fascinating and highly readable book which I would recommend especially to those in mental health, education and law enforcement. Cullen paints a picture of two seemingly normal teenage boys who spend a year plotting not just the shooting, but the destruction of their school. (Shooting was actually the minor part of their plan. They had placed bombs that-- had the bombs detonated-- would have pushed the death toll to upwards of one thousand. Dylan and Eric just planned to shoot the students who fled the inferno. Thankfully, the bombs never went off.)

According to Cullen's research, Dylan was primarily depressed and suicidal. He was rather unmotivated, and although classified as gifted, he was an underachiever. (Interesting tidbit: Dylan was accepted to the University of Arizona in Tucson and had sent in his deposit to secure his space.) Without the influence of Eric's friendship, it is unlikely that Dylan would have done anything like this. Dylan was interested in death, but primarily his own.

Eric, on the other hand, can best be described as a psychopath: "Psychopaths are distinguished by two characteristics. The first is a ruthless disregard for others: they will defraud, maim, or kill for the most trivial personal gain. The second is an astonishing gift for disguising the first.... The come off like Hugh Grant, in his most adorable role" (240). He killed because he wanted to and to prove his superiority. He found it interesting. He looked forward to the extinction of the human race. Ironically, it's quite possible that Eric couldn't have pulled his plan off without Dylan either:

Rare killer psychopaths nearly always get bored with murder, too. When they slit a throat, their pulse races, but it falls just as fast. It stays down-- no more joy from cutting throats for a while; that thrill has already been spent.... An angry, erratic depressive and a sadistic psychopath make a combustible pair. The psychopath is in control, of course, but the hothead sidekick can sustain his excitement leading up to the big kill. "It takes heat and cold to make a tornado," Dr. Fuselier is fond of saying. (244).

So...what makes a psychopath?

"Early in his career, Dr. Hare recognized the anatomical difference [in how the psychopath's brain processes emotion]. He submitted a paper analyzing the unusual brain waves of psychopaths to a scientific journal, which rejected it with a dismissive letter. "Those EEGs couldn't have come from real people," the editor wrote.

Exactly! Hare thought. Psychopaths are that different." (242).

Functional MRI (fMRIs) have further highlighted this difference.

As with many psychological conditions, the debate continues as to whether psychopathy is the result of nature, nurture or a combination of the two. There is compelling evidence that at least the propensity for psychopathy is inborn. And, although the parents of Eric Harris have generally eschewed the press and the police, there is no evidence that Eric's home life was anything out of the ordinary.

Unfortunately, psychotherapy generally makes psychopaths worse because it teaches them how to more effectively manipulate and con people. However, Dr. Hare is working on a program that helps psychopaths adapt to society: "The program he developed accepts that psychopaths will remain egocentric and uncaring for life but will adhere to rules if it's in their own interest" (246).

What we really want-- a specific reason why the shooting at Columbine happened or a way to screen kids and know if they're harboring this kind of hate-- we don't have. However, Cullen offers two main clues that should not be ignored (323).
1) Advance confessions-- In school shootings overall, "81 percent of shooters had confided their intentions." Pay special attention to specificity and any action taken to carry out the plan.
2) "Preoccupation with death, destruction and violence" (323)-- He advises adults not to freak out about every story, poem or drawing with death-related imagery but to keep an eye out for persistence, pervasiveness, "malice, brutality, and an unrepentant hero."

In addition to describing the psychopathology of Eric and Dylan, this book also offers portraits of impressive resilience, represented by all those who survived the shooting, as well as the families, churches and community that have resisted being defined by this one awful day.

Patrick Ireland is one of the critically-injured survivors of the shooting. He was in the library when Dylan began firing and was shot in the head and foot while trying to apply pressure to the wound of a friend. When Ireland regained consciousness, he dragged himself over to the shattered window (the only escape he could see) and tumbled out from the second story while the SWAT team scrambled below to reach him. Despite severe damage to his brain, Ireland worked tirelessly in physical therapy, returned to school and graduated as one of his class's valedictorians. He gave this speech at his commencement, just over a year after the shooting:

It had been a rough year, he said. "The shooting made the country aware of the unexpected level of hate and rage that had been hidden in the high schools." But he was convinced the world was inherently good at heart. He had spent a year thinking about what had gotten him across the library floor. At first he assumed hope-- not quite; it was trust. "When I fell out the window, I knew somebody would catch me," he said. "That's what I need to tell you: that I knew the loving world was there all the time" (302).