If you’re a psychologist, psychiatrist, or a related field, please check in here.

[raccoon]

Why do people do things like this? Why do some people enjoy hurting other people?

There must be more to it than "they must be fucking crazy."


He said: "During the time me and Barker were raping Abeer, I heard five or six gunshots that came from the bedroom.

"After Barker was done, Green came out of the bedroom and said that he had killed them all, that all of them were dead."

Cortez added: "Green then placed himself between Abeer's legs to rape her. When Green was finished, he stood up and shot Abeer in the head two or three times."

The entire crime took about five minutes and the girl knew her parents and sister had been shot while she was being raped, the hearing heard.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6384781.stm

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=265000

[Midlodemocrat]

1. I can't even begin to give you an answer to your question.

I think, off the top of my head, that PTSD has to be involved in some manner, or maybe the guys were sociopaths BEFORE they went to Iraq.

:shrug:

[Mandate My Ass]

2. Green was noted to have been diagnosed with a personality disorder

That poor girl was nothing to him once he'd raped her and terrorized her.

[maxsolomon]

3. war is dehumanizing

how that translates into an erection, i couldn't tell you.

but i'm not a therapist, i'm a therapee.

[raccoon]

4. This sort of thing just makes me want to throw up.

The Iraqis wouldn't be human if they didn't hate Americans, after things like this, and Ali Ismail Abbas.

[murray hill farm]

5. Classic Sociopath.

Not a human that is capable of putting himself "in the place of the other". No cure! Although much research showing that involvement in "born again" religion does moderate...or can moderate such behavior because these folks cannot know for themselves what such pain feels like..emotional and physical to the other, the strict behavioral guidelilnes from the born again faith does allow them to know what rules must be followed in their social interactions.

[meldroc]

6. Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Google for those two psychological experiments.

In the Milgram Experiment, subjects were asked to deliver electric shocks to people who answered questions wrong (the shocks were fake, but the subjects didn't know that.) They were goaded on by authority figures in white lab coats. A very high percentage of the subjects didn't refuse or question their instructions, and pushed the button to deliver what they thought was a potentially lethal shock.

The Stanford Prison Experiment divided subjects into two groups: prisoners and guards, and set up a mock prison in the basement of one of the university buildings. The guards got more and more vicious and brutal with the prisoners, and the experiment had to be stopped to prevent subjects from being harmed.

Put into the role of prison guard (we effectively turned all of Iraq into a prison for psychological purposes,) and given orders to do terrible things, it isn't surprising that so many atrocities occur.

[Mandate My Ass]

7. My friend's baby brother is a prison guard in Iraq

He's 20 and he joined up last year and got there in the fall. My friend said his letters have gotten increasingly disturbing over the months. Initially he was cool with everything happening there and with the people. Now his letters say he's tired of people throwing rocks at the prison guards when they're outdoors. He now carries his gun everywhere he goes and expresses increasing disgust and anger with the Iraqi people.

[aikoaiko]

8. Plus Zimbardo's Deindividuation Experiments.

Zimbardo found that when you reduce accountability, increase anonymity, and increase antagonism toward the victim, you can get all sorts of malicious behavior.

Its really not that pathological.

[EST]

9. Actually, there is little more to it than

"They're just fucking crazy."
People are different creatures when they are in groups from the way they are separately. For all our much vaunted reasoning and thinking ability, we are not particularly good at reasoning or thinking.

Consider the war in Iraq. I would say and you would probably say, given the available experience to draw upon, nobody in their right mind would go into Iraq and do what we did-yet we did and there are still those who still maintain that it was a good idea and we were perfectly justified in doing so.

The thin veil of "civilization" that we maintain is so very thin. Consider the urge of your pet puppy who, upon discovering some feces while on his daily walk is possessed of the overwhelming urge to roll in it. He doesn't do it because it covers his scent or anything like that; he does it to attract attention-to say "look at me!"
People suffer from the same malady, only we try to train them differently as children and then hope they will stick to that training when they become accountable to no one but themselves.

Unfortunately, the notion of accountability slips away from some of us more easily than we would like to imagine. It only takes a few weeks of basic training to turn otherwise kind, tender hearted young humans into killing machines, accountable, if that, only to their new "adopted" family. We have a long way to go.

[meldroc]

11. Here's the scary part.

When it comes down to it, it's not a few isolated psychos that are capable of these brutal atrocities. It's ordinary people. As Milgram demonstrated, an authority figure and a strong peer group can cause almost anyone to commit unspeakable acts of violence. It takes someone of the caliber of Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa to refuse.

Yes, you or I are capable of this sort of thing if we were pushed hard enough to do it.

[EST]

16. Also remarkable is the fact that each of us shares the

private conceit that we would be the one person who would resist such influence.

[NoodleyAppendage]

10. Simple. If you are taught that people are less than an animal, then killing carries no weight.

It is the job of ANY MILITARY training to boost moral while simultaneously dehumanizing the other party in the war. It is far easier to kill "something," than "someone." Also, individuality is discouraged in military training to assist in group cohesiveness, but this also has the problematic consequence of individuals having a hard time standing up for what is morally right when it may threaten the command structure or fellow compatriots.

Humans have the capacity for good and evil. War is an excuse to use our worse nature to meet a group goal.

J

[Bobbie Jo]

13. Bingo.

The thinking process is altered intentionally through training to serve a purpose. Some of these guys coming into the military have pre-existing character and/or psychiatric issues. Although manageable under normal circumstance, the extreme environment, combined with prolonged exposure, creates a breaking point for these type of "non-human" acts.

Certainly no justification, but I think the military bears some level of responsibility for screening, and anticipating these factors before they put people in these extreme situations. Beyond that, there are no words....it's just tragic.

[verse18]

12. It's about power and control

Soldiers are in a situation that is out of their control and they believe they do not have the power to change their circumstances. But they can control a young girl and her family who are in fear of their lives.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

14. Most likely a sociopath - a person with no remorse.

n/t

[Holly_Hobby]

15. The military is a cult

They shave their head. Sleep deprivation. Keep them away from friends and family. Dress them alike. Humiliate them. Convince them to be a martyr.

Have you ever talked to someone fresh out of the service? They sound like a programmed robot.

[mitchum]

17. Bingo!