FROM THE
"INCOMPREHENSIBLE" MURDER TO THE RAPTUS: MYSTERY OR INCOMPLETE FRAME
OF REFERENCE?
Renato Cocchi, a neurologist, medical
psychologist, and sociologist.
Summary.
"Incomprehensible"
murders and raptus find increasing possibilities of explanation if to the usual
interpretative lines of the psychology and of the forensic psychiatry is adding
the supplies of the neuropsychopathology and of the neurochemistry related to
the reactions of stress, of the intrusive thinking, and of the reverse of
half-brain dominance, mainly in the emotional structures.
According to these
possible contributions, this article outlined the murder of a person, usually a
family one and the related suicide; The multiple murder, of family or of
extraneous persons with or without the relative suicide; The true raptus
itself. This interpretative integration however not absolutely implicates a
facilitation of charging with the murder, but the contrary.
Key words: incomprehensible murders,
homicide, homicide-suicide, serial killer, explosive multiple homicide, raptus,
stress, reactions, intrusive thinking, half-brain dominance, inversion,
adrenalin, cortisol.
Introduction.
Chronicle news reported, with increased
frequency, episodes involving murders, in the form of
"incomprehensible" single or multiple homicides or homicides-suicide,
made by subjects who were sometimes even under psychiatric treatment.
The emphasizing of this last condition has
two possibilities of explanation. As for the first one, we may admit that, in
spite of a suitable psychiatric therapy, managed from a professional or from a
team of experts, the bio-psychological structure of the patient went out of
control, with inauspicious following. "About the brain we know still too little
" becomes the usual fatalistic justification just after the event.
As for the second explanation, the therapy
was surely unfit, because such was even the diagnosis. It remains to see if it
had been possible to do otherwise, too thinking that, in most cases, it would
have been very difficult. We have also to say that before May 1978 it was legal
the compulsory admittance in a psychiatric hospital, in observation, based on a
judgment of social dangerousness. Any, and I less than never, asks to come back
in those days. Nevertheless, I saw how some current psychiatric compulsory
treatments (Trattamento Sanitario Obbligatorio, in Italian) are still
prescribed on the criterion of the dangerousness.
Even if it happens with better intentions,
it is always an indication not previewed by the law for a psychiatric
compulsory treatment. The common sense, sometimes, has the eyes wider than the
law, mainly when it is a debatable and controversial law.
However, it follows that the physician, or a
psychiatrist too, now has fewer possibilities of submitting a person to the
observation in controlled environment during the whole day.
The use of the psychodrugs, popularly
identified only as "the sedatives," is often poorly modulated, and
based on the prevailing psychic symptom the patient reported. When a patient
wants to let his situation not understood, the physician may underestimate his
uneasy state, or his condition, also called "borderline," to the
limit of the psychosis. So the same physician could not target then the choice
of the more effective therapeutic drug combination, if there is one.
Moreover, the cultural stereotype of the
"psychodrugs toxicity" always and over all, drives to a kind of
bargaining with the patient for the doses, the compliance of which then is not
known.
Not always however, the future homicide has
had some contacts with psychiatric structures. On the contrary often the
neighbours were amazed afterwards how a decent and calm person like that could
have committed such an iniquitous action.
If the event occurs, as sometimes it
happens, among police agents, or among vigilantes in general, to the surprise
it is adding some worry. People think over the inaccurate filter of the
enlistment criteria, and the poor attention to the mental health of those
individuals during the years.
The common ground of the
"incomprehensible" crimes.
Three types of crime deal with this
examination: 1. The homicide of a person, usually a family member and the suicide;
2. The multiple homicide, of family members or of extraneous persons with or
without related suicide; 3. The true raptus itself.
Of the first, a subtype may have a
compassionate rational explanation that sometimes justifies it somehow, even if
not approves it, while the second and the third types escape nearly always any
usual logic.
To the base of all three there is an only
mechanism, the loss of controlling the mobility of the thought, a necessary but
always not enough condition.
In several depressive states improperly
defined as neurotic, one can find, if he investigates it, the symptom of the
mobility loss of the thought. The patient says that his brain thinks too much,
thinks by itself, thinks without any rest "as a mill that grinds without stopping."
Sometimes he has straight the impression
that his brain goes on thinking even during the sleep.
This kind of intrusive thought is
fluctuating, without a constant content. One of its following in students is
that it drives to the concentration lack, till to drop out (see:
www.stress-cocchi.net/Droping1-it.htm); (www.stress-cocchi.net/Droping2-it.htm)
and (www.stress-cocchi.net/Droping3-it.htm).
Different, and more remarkable for what here
of interest, the intrusive thinking of one theme (to have "fixes" of
the popular culture) either with a persecuting theme or with true or presumed
hopeless.
By excluding the true raptus itself, in all
other cases there is always also premeditation even if of primarily emotional
type. It is the little history of the elephant that, they say, it may take
revenge after months or years of received violence. In case of the
compassionate homicide or the homicide-suicide, we have as evident even somehow
rational premeditation.
About the homicide, or
the homicide-suicide.
Without pretending to be fully exhaustive,
it seems me that we have there four homicide subtypes or homicide-suicide as
the more frequent under this specification.
1. Suppression of the presumed, or sometimes
true persecutor, followed in some cases by the suicide.
2. Suppression of the relatives, followed by
suicide, often because of a downfall delirium, on depressive basic in general
meaning.
3. Suppression of the consort, or of a
child, or of another family member seriously ill, or in the terminal phase,
followed by suicide. Only to this last subtype of homicide-suicide we may
correctly apply the French definition of "homicide-suicide altruiste
familial."
4. Suppression of the other, with whom was
already a loving relationship without any future, or who now, as an ex fianc‚,
he/she wanted to interrupt the couple's link. It may be followed by the
suicide, mainly in couples of lovers with an extra family link. Lately, in
ex-fianc‚s, to difference that in past, they are the men, often young, who
perpetrate the crime, and its frequency seems increased.
For the first three out of these four
subtypes all the features of the raptus are not compatible, being events often
long meditated, even if through distorted thinking. Only the moment of the
murder acting can resemble the raptus, but premeditation excludes this
specification. The fourth type may even have its origin, but not always, in a
raptus that grounds on a fragile and abandon-fearing personality (see later).
Although not necessary in the first, in the
third and in the fourth type, the suicide is somehow a kind of honour to the
law, in those cases: I judge me guilty, I condemn me and punish me with the
capital punishment. The variation without suicide seems to confirm this link
with the law. It happens that the homicide is calling the police by phone, and
is waiting it on the place of the crime. Otherwise, he is going at once to the
police district to give himself up.
The first subtype implies a biological
reaction to stress. To the unbearable situation, since one person cannot react
with the escape, and refusing the inane inhibition, he reacts by the attack:
your death, my life.
In the second subtype, the suicide is
coherent with a downfall delusion, which presupposes an incumbent negative fate
on all the family, the murderer inclusive. Unfortunately it was only a
delusion, and then the solution was falsely altruistic, even if the
homicide-suicide believed it so.
The third subtype is the most
"rational," and then the most comprehensible, even under the view of
the lesser of the two evils, and it clearly implies a hopeless, even religious,
condition.
The fourth subtype is often the more
incomprehensible, owing to the abysmal difference between the motivation and
the fact. Often the young homicides seem to ignore or do not accept that
"After a pope death, another one will be elected." This fact points
up an immature critical ability on this regard.
Among the possible survivors to their
suicide, or in anyone going to give himself up common justification applies: The
homicide affirms that he had to do what he did, and he could not choose
otherwise. That confirms the obliged pathway of thinking.
One would say that the reduced mobility of
the thought implies that the same has exclusive information of negative or
opposite contents (as for examples: hated instead of beloved, white instead of
black, death instead of life, etc.) characteristic of not dominant half-brain,
or of its emotional part (see www.reversebrain.net).
The temporary prevalence of the opposite
half-brain, at least for some functions, does that not only the filled glass to
half is seen as half-empty ( see www.reversebrain.net/RM3.htm), but straight
only empty.
The increase of the stress amount it is not
necessarily of psychological origin, but it may be even physical, as, for
example, the persistent sultry heat, of the summer 2003 (see:
www.stress-cocchi.org). The Italian Criminalpol has in fact reported 20%
increase of family crimes, in the last summer. The sum of stresses till the
overcoming of the individual tolerance threshold, in mostly cases, may mark the
moment of starting the action.
On the multiple
homicide.
The multiple homicide, of family members or
of extraneous ones with or without related suicide has to be divided, to his
time, in at least two subtypes:
1. the multiple homicide with dilated times,
a victim at a time, made from a person then called as a serial killer;
2. The multiple homicide with close times,
when the initial explosion may be a multiple homicide, followed or not by the death
of other single victims, in a short time.
On the serial killer.
Even in the serial killer there is surely a
control loss of the mobility of the thought, but nearly certainly preceded by
opposite half-brain dominance, with prevalence of the evil for the evil (the
cruelty, according to the point of view of normal half-brain dominance). There
is even the hide-and-seek game with the investigators, and conviction to get
always away with it, as confirmed by the media that amplify his homicides and
of which the serial killer is a careful follower. It doesn't occur of any
suicide after crimes.
The moment of the homicide, with a casual or
ritual victim (a person with the same physical or other features), seems to
obey to a contingent need. The serial killer is not usually a systematic one as
for the moment of the crime, if not the day of the week, or the hour or the
place of the scene does not have a share in the ritual. Perhaps he kills
following some internal impulse of himself, when "he cannot do otherwise."
Therefore if the action becomes a kind of
temporary "compensatory self-medication," the enough fragile
compensation could be maintained even for long times, weeks or months. Some
serial killers confessed mandatory, hallucinatory voices that had forced them
to act the crime with an urgency they could not postpone. The ritualism can
appear even only after the homicide, with removal of the same part of the
victim's body, or other repetitive action of a havoc of the dead body.
The adrenalin and cortisol incretion of the
homicide aggressiveness does not lack but it does not become the only aim.
Eventually, a serial killer of his family is fully unlike.
The explosive multiple
homicide.
How already mentioned, the explosive
multiple homicide may be of family members or of out family persons.
The family multiple homicide often has a
motive that seems vengeful in a broad sense, when it occurs as final action of
a denied reconciliation after conjugal separation, or of a "wrong"
divided estate or family goods.
It seems a kind of "Die Samson with all
Philistines" where however, after killing the "Philistines," the
new Samson postpones his death and often avoids it by transforming it as jail
(a civil death).
If the wife-killing would reenter into this
scheme, but that of the children, often of very early age, does not succeed to
find any room within this frame of reference. It is easier to explain it with
mechanisms of the neuronal network functioning, which drive to "identity
by similarity" and "identity by contiguity" and to
"opposition." Because similar and in contiguity to the consort, the
children become assimilated to this last (identity by similarity and identity
by contiguity ) and equally hated (opposition).
By leaving a letter that will be found after
the suicide, or the use of a weapon already prepared, and brought with himself
from out of the scene, hardly does classify this multiple homicide as a pure
raptus. That doesn't remove that sometimes it can occur as uncontrolled
reaction to a contingent frustration. In a case like that, the homicide uses
something found there, as a weapon. However, to speak of raptus, we do not have
to discover any external element that denotes a preparation of the multiple
family homicide, followed or no by the suicide.
In fact, the homicidal sequence may follow
the frustration from denied reconciliation, but the often violent nature of the
homicide, as primary cause of the judicial separation, it is only a partial
explanatory element. To that it should be adding the loss of the mobility of
thinking, the fear of the abandonment, and as the last, the inversion of
half-brain dominance, at least for its emotional component. If the beloved
becomes hated, even the children can be killed, as often it happens.
Catullus, the Latin poet, experienced the
emotional presence of the opposite, for Clodia/Lesbia by himself: "Odi et
amo", I hate and I love. "Perhaps you will ask me how it is possible.
I don't know. I feel that happens and I excruciate myself" (excrucior). But
in him negative and positive feelings balanced and to the end he resolved it as
poet. "That Lesbia . . . now in the crossroads and in the alleys milks the
magnanimous nephews of Romulus."
In our case even the feelings of affection
for his guiltless children are all suppressed because the opposite becomes
dominant.
The delirious aspects, which often remain in
those family multiple homicides not suicides, is the witness of a condition of
utmost biopsychological brain stress. It is a great deal probable that even
here stress-producing external elements (sultry warm, as for an example) can
influence the moment of starting the action, for the adding mechanism above
mentioned.
The explosive extra family multiple homicide
may distinguish in at least three different types;
i. The para family or social multiple
homicide, with or without suicide of the murderer.
ii. The para family or social multiple
homicide followed by a flight with the way studded by other victims.
iii. The "random" multiple
homicide.
The para family or social multiple homicide
(or the type I) has, as victims, groups of persons who have some familiarity
with the murderer (teachers and schoolmates, coworkers, etc.) the homicide
feels somehow persecuted or not accepted by them. The persecuting idea concerns
the group, as together, and not the single victims. In multiple homicides acted
by teenagers, a couple of them can do it, by sharing the same interpretative
ideas of self-affirmation and of revenge need.
The suicide of the murderer is not the more
common final action. More frequent, even in relationship with the younger age,
a delirious postexplosive state. Fragility, hypersensitivity, loss of the
thought mobility, a kind of "folie ... deux" in the homicide couples,
sum of stresses, even physical ones, and reversion of the half-brain dominance,
at least for emotionalism, are all the elements for which the fact happens in a
not random moment.
Although the explosive aspect could drive to
think otherwise, the raptus does not occur.
The type II multiple homicide does not differentiate
from the type I, if not for the fact that the homicide or the homicides, during
the escape, kill persons they meet or for no reason or because think them,
somehow, as obstacles to the same flight. This second part of that multiple
homicide is not explosive even if, in the killing for no reason of individuals,
it seems that homicide drive goes on with a kind of repetition mechanism, as if
it were the need to consume an excess of energy that the explosive episode did
not have exhausted. The killing in person judged as obstacles to the escape,
had instead a perverse but comprehensible justification. Even here, exact
premeditation covered a possible component of raptus, if it rose up.
The "random" multiple homicide
(the type III) is that where the choice of the victims does not usually have
any type of relationship with the murderer.
It is a multiple homicide made by fire
weapons and where the murderer shoots on anyone being within rang from a hidden
place (EG. A window on a plaza).
It is evident, here, that the victims are
only mobile targets, because what counts for, is the violent action in itself.
The homicide is a habitually violent person or one who needs violence. In USA
he may be a veteran that, having left the army, not does not have socially
acceptable human targets as available (as the enemy, at war ). In Italy he may
be a frequent guest at rifle range, places that at a certain point become
unsatisfactory to restrain his aggressive drive.
It happened that the first target was a
person with whom the homicide had an affective relationship. It is my
impression that the choice of such a person is only that of a more comfortable
target, of facilitation. It is hard to admit that there is a component of
raptus in such sequence. This doesn't want to say, as already premised, that
the mental competence was intact.
The raptus.
To the end I need to write on the raptus, an
idea understood in various ways and surely too abused as explanation of
"incomprehensible" crimes. Already in the 1969, Forrer did write that
it was a poorly frequented topic.
Even the recent Milanese conference on the
raptus (2001, never printed proceedings, but texts available on Internet), did
not bring new interpretation lines, less than never of the type here tried.
From it I quoted here some excerpts, mainly
of defining type.
"The raptus is, I think, what appear
suddenly and may be explained only after it happened in certain circumstances.
We speak of raptus when a person commits an
action, usually a crime that not seems to represent his intentions. Then it
points up a temporary inability of self coordination. When a person acts under
the domain of a raptus, he can do irreparable actions." (Stella, 2001).
"In the Italian jurisprudence the word
"raptus" has its use only for the "epileptic raptus" that
is the conclusion of fully sudden behaviour, absolutely unclear (There are two
or three sentences), as fact that follows and happens within an epileptic
phase." (Bertolino 2001).
Even in a broader meaning than what anticipated
from the Italian jurisprudence, the raptus cannot own any premeditation
elements.
The crime weapon, as it occurs in most
cases, has to be retrieved on the place by the homicide, or it has to be
something that habitually he brings with himself (a knife, in certain
populations, could be even the weapon of some raptus).
If the crime action happened by
strangulation, the raptus can be accepted. For suffocation it does already more
doubtful, because it requires, somehow, a preparation that badly accords to a
short circuit neuropsychological "storms." In killing by striking, a
not infrequent fact, there is no premeditation.
If we stay on the neurochemical aspects of
the homicide - but this doesn't want to be justification - the raptus seems a
defence mechanism through adrenergic and cortisol incretion. This defence is
directed towards the body of the homicide. It deals with a massive stress, so
because a such one, or relatively massive, because the tolerance threshold of
the homicide, was lower. The risk of an imminent and perhaps fatal collapse,
due to a hypervagal and parasympathetic reaction, can only be contrasted by a
sympathetic answer that raise again the blood tension, even only temporarily.
Out of the three well-known reaction mechanisms to the stress, escape, attack,
and conative impotence, the attack fits the purpose.
In the brain of the actor of the raptus, a
homicide or only a trashing person, an other modification seems to happen as
for the acetylcholine, centrally inhibited and peripherally increased.
From that it comes the still visible
delirious aspects post factum, and equally the increased muscular strength,
which justifies the dreadful violence of the raptus.
Is it possible that, subsequently, the
homicide forgets entirely what he did, or that, in other words, the raptus
happened in conditions of absolute no communication between the two
half-brains? I would not feel to deny it, but I think it much unlikely.
Even in the raptus from opiates withdrawal,
where there are already vagal and parasympathetic symptoms, and in contemporary
compensatory sympathetic symptoms, the refusal of money to purchase the drug
can rouse the homicidal violence, mainly towards elderly parents. It seems to
me, however, that a state of absolute amnesia after the crime has never been
reported.
In the particular case of the maternal
homicide of his son/her daughter, may we always speak of raptus?
Already in past we tried to give an answer
to this question by pointing out the "role the children for some reason
emotionally and somatically fragile do. So they attempt not only to the image
of the good mother, so important in our society, and soundly for the woman,
especially for a person with a weak personality for other reasons. Above all
they attempt to the same ability of the woman to maintain compensated own
structure, even if in the narrow limits of current precariousness, or
preexisting, or induced by the behaviour of the child himself." (Belacchi,
Cocchi and Canestrari, 1983).
The thrown child from the window, because
since many months at night he continuously cried, so avoiding his mother to
sleep, it can be ranked as raptus without any difficulty. In other cases, even
when they happened in the immediate after delivery, there rest many doubts.
Conclusions.
"Incomprehensible" murders and
raptus find increasing possibilities of explanation if to the usual
interpretative lines of the psychology and of the forensic psychiatry is adding
the supplies of the neuropsychopathology and of the neurochemistry related to
the reactions of stress, of the intrusive thinking, and of the reverse of
half-brain dominance, mainly in the emotional structures.
This interpretative integration however not
absolutely implicates a facilitation of charging with the murder, but the
contrary.
References:
AA.VV. (a cura di Aparo A.): Il Raptus:
un'assenza che ne compone molte altre. Convegno intervenuto il 9 giugno 2001,
Auditorium S. Fedele, Milano.
<www.trasgressione.net/pages/raptus/atti_raptus.html>
Belacchi C., Cocchi R., Canestrari O.: A
proposito del figlicidio materno. Rass. Studi Psichiat. 1983, 72: 1-9
(numerazione dell'estratto).
Bertolino M.: Intervento. In: AA.VV. (a cura
di Aparo A.) Il Raptus: un'assenza che ne compone molte altre. Convegno intervenuto
il 9 giugno 2001, Auditorium S. Fedele, Milano.
<www.trasgressione.net/pages/raptus/atti_raptus.html>
Forrer G.R.: Raptus: a neglected
psychophysiological phenomenon. Mich Med 1969, 68: 895-897.
Stella F.: Intervento. In: AA.VV. (a cura di
Aparo A.) Il Raptus: un'assenza che ne compone molte altre. Convegno
intervenuto il 9 giugno 2001, Auditorium S. Fedele, Milano.
<www.trasgressione.net/pages/raptus/atti_raptus.html>
Printed in Italian on Lo Spallanzani, 2003,
17: 82-88.
Author's address: Dr. Renato Cocchi, Via
Rabbeno, 3
42100 Reggio Emilia
email: renatococchi@aliceposta.it