Intermittent Responsibility Disorder
Robert Lee Vincent, Sr.
...I’m not planning on making it a habit to turn Faint Expectations into a clearinghouse of wanted posters, considering how many wanted criminals there are in this country, but when I came across this story I quickly realized that the perpetrator in question might have a solid defense.
...Law enforcement officials in Gaston, North Carolina, have issued a murder warrant for Robert Lee Vincent, Sr., of Garysburg. Vincent is wanted for allegedly murdering a 12-year-boy after the boy’s father and Vincent had engaged in a verbal altercation along the side of a North Carolina highway. While the men were arguing, the little boy and his mother stepped out of the family’s vehicle hoping that it might calm the situation. Instead, Vincent allegedly grabbed a shotgun from his pick-up and shot the 12-year-old in the head.
...It might be argued that Vincent was the real victim in this incident, since it was announced in early June that people who might otherwise be said to have “road rage” and need to take responsibility for their actions are actually victims themselves, suffering from “intermittent explosive disorder,” which affects 16 million Americans, according a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.
...In early June, Dr. Emil Coccaro, the chairman of psychiatry at the University of Chicago’s medical school, said, “People think it’s bad behavior and that you just need an attitude adjustment, but what they don’t know…is that there’s a biology and cognitive science to this.”
...Ronald Kessler, a health care policy professor at Harvard Medical School, added, “It is news to a lot of people even who are specialists in mental health services that such a large proportion of the population has these clinically significant anger attacks.”
...What’s the condition called when a person becomes frustrated by seeing a new disorder diagnosed whenever someone perpetrates an irresponsible or criminal act? Moreover, is there a name for the condition of thinking that intermittent explosive disorder is a convenient way for the pharmaceutical companies to market a new drug and have psychiatrists prescribe it?
4 Comments:
L.I., would that be in addition to the ubiquitous Ritalin?
Pagal, there have been quite a few times that I’ve weighed the validity of certain ideas that have been proposed in the field. It’s also interesting to see how some people in the field disagree with a lot of it.
While doing my undergraduate work, I had one psychology professor who came from the postmodernist school, suggesting that nothing is real and our entire life is a perception. A few semesters later I experienced a criminology professor who told the class in no uncertain terms that Sigmund Freud was just a successful con artist with a cocaine addiction.
Don’t suggest that there exists an “excessive disorders disorder.” We might start seeing people diagnosed with it and treated with yet more medication.
P.S., I mentioned the postmodernist professor because I wasn’t sure what she believed were valid psychological theories. It sounded odd the way that I worded it above.
Local commentary - Well i don't think he turned himself in yet and most people say he's in the wrong but i bet when they catch him he says something like the kid jumped in front. I can't for the life of me wonder why this women and her son would get out a car in the middle of a road rage attack but i digress.
And yes we have have pro-gun people since thats what we have down here saying he was right to be armed.
I know this post is all over the place just giving local nickel's worth of info.
The part about those two getting out to “calm things down” had me a bit puzzled, too. Perhaps the mother had the view that she was going to somehow spread love and everything would end happily. Even so, she should have told the little boy to stay in the car.
When it comes to gun issues, I’ll continue to think that too many gun control ideas are rooted in naïveté. We’ll always have people who want to kill, and it won’t matter what weapon they use because they’ll always seek a way of carrying out their plans of murder. Take, for instance, the recent Tennessee case where a man stabbed eight people at a Schnucks store with a kitchen knife. Firearms are used more often because of their efficient nature—they’re more accurate and faster than more hands-on weapons such as knives, bats, pipes, tire-irons, etc.
It probably sounds like a cliché by now, but even if we did “ban” guns, the ban would only work if people were willing to turn over their already owned firearms and promise to not purchase any on the black market. Criminals won’t do either anytime soon, and the black market will always have firearms readily available, simply because guns don’t have to be manufactured by corporations; they can be made at home.
Case in point: the BSP 9mm SMG. It can be built in a home workshop using a drill press, hacksaw, grinders, hammer, taper pin reamer, and vice. Law abiding people wouldn’t own one if a ban went through, but criminals couldn’t care less.
For me, the real concern is why Americans are so willing to harm others. When we get angry, the first thing that we resort to is physical violence. It doesn’t help when we add to it the psychiatrists who are too quick to simply call it a disorder and dish out meds as if they were M&Ms.
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