Dr. Stanley Goldstein - Author and Psychologist

A Wall Street Journal Article ("Parents and School Shooters/Georgia has charged the father of 14-year-old Colt Gray. Is that fair?"/September 6, 2024) aroused several thoughts: 1. Babies are not born with parenting instructions and knowledge of child psychological development is greatly lacking among parents, doctors, lawyers, and politicians. 2. There is evil in the world which must be punished. 3. The unconscious is very powerful and one must respect its power. 4. Mental illness creates tunnel vision making crazy thoughts seem very real though when out of it one wonders how they could have once believed them. 5. Mildly poor parenting behavior shouldn't be criminalized but where to draw the line can be difficult to determine.

After recent horrendous murders (the Massachusetts mother who killed her three children; the killing and multiple injuries by a psychotic van driver in New York City; several mass shootings) one would hope there would be wider belief in the power of the unconscious but this is not so. Instead, legislators restrict the power of judges to jail dangerous offenders, allowing them to prey until they kill when their danger is finally taken seriously.
I long thought that the best way to increase public safety would be to increase the prevailing psychological knowledge by providing indisputable facts which psychologists have long known. These include that the development of the ego capacities enabling control of thinking and behavior, control of mood, and development of a sense of who one is (one's "sense of self"), occurs in the first three years of life, dependent on a child having experienced a "good-enough" parenting. And that substance abuse nearly always begins in a teenager who fails at mastering the critical adolescent tasks of development (separation from parents; making realistic education and career decisions; dating) and tries to feel better by self-medicating their distress with alcohol or drugs.
Would wider knowledge of these facts really reduce crime? Ultimately, if healthier childhood experiences prevail, and better evaluation was used to distinguish those criminal offenders who must be incarcerated to protect society from those who are needlessly jailed.

Published comments from those having earlier interactions with the alleged Idaho killer of four youths, Bryan Kohberger, are similar to those arising after other mass killings in which common behaviors are considered to have foreshadowed violence. These, for Mr. Kohberger, included student criicism of his harsh grading (which lessened as did his apparent teaching motivation following student protest), and talking down to a fellow graduate student. A quickness of temper was also noted by past acquaintances. All of which can be said of virtually every college teaching associate. For most this task is their first teaching assignment which can be frightening. Losing job motivation and easing grading when confronted with student protest would not be unexpected develpments.
Perhaps part of the human need to quickly comment is our horror at the crime and desire to distinguish between the criminal and ourselves, to emphasize that we could never commit such heinous act.Which is true for virtually all unless addled by drugs or alcohol. Yet this attitude also reflects the widespread ignorance of child development, ego psychology, and especially the powerful influence of early parenting on a child's immature mind, the years when beliefs and impulses are created which become the bedrock of adult personality. And as I never tire of stating, the unconscious is very powerful and one must respect its power.

No psychologist likes working in a prison since even those with supportive congenial colleagues contain difficult characteristics: being unable to keep a personal phone within the institution, and having to exit multiple locked gates before rejoining the normal world. Yet these psychologists play a critical role.
While a county chief psychologist I often evaluated inmates at the local jail. An experience which, perhaps contrary to popular belief, they valued and even enjoyed. An inmate's life in a local jail lacks the treatment and educational facilities of larger state prisons. Thus receiving the undivided attention of another person is a gift not to be spurned. Moreover comprehensive psychological testing, which includes intelligence and personality instruments, is inherently interesting and provides exhaustive information. So much that my reports were nicknamed "magic" though their creation reflected the lengthy psychometric research and study of others.
By helping judges make better informed decisions, my reports always aided these. One young man who violated parole was released when my testing revealed that he was intellectually limited. Another, handsome and charming except when pressed, had much unconscious rage toward women which had already erupted in attempted rape.
Society would be safer and more just if psychological testing played a greater role in the judicial system. 

While guns should certainly be kept from children and the mentally disturbed, behaving simplistically, as politicians tend to do following public distress, accomplishes little. The cause of the recent shooting atrocities is mental illness, virtually all deriving from lack of a "good enough" parenting during earliest childhood when the basic ego capacities governing control of thinking and behavior, modulation of mood, development of a sense of self, and the ability to separate fact from fantasy are formed. Yet no politician spoke this, doubtlessly because few know it since knowledge of child development is minimal even by doctors. What some seem to fear, even more greatly than guns, is awareness of the fearsome power of the unconscious. Can that a gun symbolizes this explain why it goes unspoken following shootings? Hmm...

This week's "murder most foul" was done by a Los Angeles mother who killed three of her children. Being apparently psychotic, she was unlike romantically fanciful Vicky White, the Alabama prison official who ran off with her imprisoned murderer-lover. Psychotic behavior, no matter how horrible, is easier to understand than the self-defeating act of a clearly sane person. While inmates are manipulative, what could have motivated a woman with a stable, established life to run away with a six-foot nine-inch prisoner for whom disguise is impossible. Instead of the suicide-by-cop which a lawman predicted, Vicky shot herself to avoid arrest.
The same week, in my area, Sean Armstead, a ten-year veteran of New York City's Police Department, tracked his wife to a meeting with her lover, then killed him and himself. Why, for if a marriage goes bust isn't divorce the smarter option?
Yet Vicky's and Sean's behavior have (possible) ready explanations: a hunger for love, and the hurt and wounding of self-esteem when it is denied.
Through evolution, humans have become increasingly conscious and deliberative. But the unconscious is powerful and one should not risk ignoring its power.

The extraordinary Netflix documentary, "I Am A Killer," evidences several truths: the powerful effect of childhood experience on adult behavior which can later go awry with tragic consequences; the critical importance of having good legal counsel; the destructiveness of alcohol and drug use; and the great power of the unconscious over behavior, particularly when substance abuse affects self-control.
The criminal behavior that sent these interviewed prisoners to Death Row may be said to be as heinous as the childhood ordeals which predetermined their commission.

The Killer Across The Table, by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker describes the interviews of noted serial killers during which childhood and psychological similarities were found.
All had a troubled childhood, having experienced a far from "good-enough" parenting with much cruelty and/or sexual abuse and, often, a particularly damaging relatioinship with their mother. Which is not surprising since the mother-infant interaction is paramount when the basic ego capacities governing impulse control and thinking are formed.
These killers had a remarkable ability for psychological "splitting," separating and walling-off one aspect of their thinking and emotional life from another. Thus they could murder and bury a young child but later volunteer to join a search party while being concerned that their child get to school.
Rage and power were the domineering factors even in killings with a sexual element. The killer of a young girl from a neighboring home, who came to the killer's house to deliver Girl Scout cookies, knew from the moment he opened the door that he would kill her. This man, a high school teacher who lived with his mother, was told that she would refuse to see him and cut him from her will if he married. This caused him to break his engagement and added to his two types of rage. One that he could control, as when a driver cut him off. But the second he could not, as when the unlucky girl came to his house.
Another killer repeated his crime after being paroled following his rape and murder of a young woman. That these killers are not insane (which is a legal term) is evidenced by the care they took during the murders and in disposing of the bodies to avoid being caught.
This book evidences: the crucial need for more accurate assessment of those who are arrested; to consider even such unlikely suspects as family friends and loving relatives as the potential culprit; and to take reported suspicions seriously since many killing sprees would have been ended earlier had this been done, particularly those in hospitals by medical staff.
According to the authors: all serial killers have psychological conflicts between grandiosity and inadequacy; a sense of personal entitlement causing them to feel that they need not follow society's laws; and the ability to choose, making them deserving of capital punishment.

The recent murder of a Pentagon police officer was made more shocking upon learning the prior behavior of his killer. In April, twenty-seven-year old Austin W, Lanz was arrested for trespassing and burglary after breaking into a neighbor's home where security cameras recorded him leaving inappropriate pictures and messages in their mailbox. He took nothing but spoke of police aircraft flying over the neighborhood and his phone being tracked.

While being booked into jail and without provocation, he attacked and seriously injured two sheriff's deputies, then asked that his restraints be removed so he could fight the deputies one-by-one. After being charged with aggravated battery on police, making a terrorist threat, and rioting in a penal institution, he was released on $30,000 bail, ordered to submit to a mental health evaluation, and barred from using alcohol or drugs and possessing firearms. For all the good this did!

While hindsight has 20/20 vision as the adage insists, one can't help wondering why Mr. Lanz wasn't hospitalized or jailed since the failure of court restraint against impulsive, disturbed people is countless as evidenced by the killing of the divorced by their former partners and road rage and street assaults on strangers though these can't be wholly stopped. A psychiatrist once told me of a colleague eating in the cafeteria who had been attacked by a patient with whom he had no prior contact.

The only possible explanation for these frequent crimes is that many still don't believe that some people are, perhaps temporarily, inherently dangerous. Failing to respect the power of the unconscious over behavior despite its continuing reminders.

During my first job, as a psychologist at a psychiatric hospital, I told my psychoanalyst/supervisor my adolescent patient's statement. "That's psychotic," the doctor replied. Though able to define "psychotic," until that moment I hadn't grasped the power of this condition.

Similarly, when the latest horrors become public, the perpetrators are usually viewed with surprise since they look so normal, lacking the twisted features of horror film characters and speaking coherently though of bogus beliefs. Columnists then ask the usual question of "why," and provide their usual answer that "no one knows" but this is not true. While predicting violence cannot be certain, it correlates highly with several factors: failure in life; substance abuse; the psychological (ego) capacities governing thinking and behavior being inadequately developed; and having a fragmented "sense of self" (sense of who they are).

The killer's frequent decision, to suicide in "glory," is considered preferable to their continued painful existence.Though their act is horrendous, these individuals are not often considered "insane" which is a legal term determined by state statute. Most usually whether a person can distinguish "right" from "wrong" and, contrary to popular belief, rarely succeeds as a defense.

But to describe these individuals as sane does not imply that they possessed normal control over their behavior. Still, except for those possessing extreme psychological limitations, this should not influence their punishment. There is evil in the world and some succumb to its temptation. Yet even for others, the unconscious is very powerful and one must respect its power.