Well, given the specific evidence that the culprit dressed up and identified himself as the Joker and informed the police that he had booby trapped his apartment, I’d assign a high probability of schizophrenia, but I wouldn’t write off preference based reasons for a sociopath to gun people down at a movie theater in general. It could be motivated by a fantasy rather than a delusion of the perpetrator. Winston Moseley, for instance, sexually assaulted and killed Kitty Genovese and two other women because he had violent sexual fantasies. Alyssa Bustamante (who I read about recently while looking up information on young female murderers,) committed premeditated murder by her own testimony because she wanted to know what it felt like. Personally, I sometimes find myself frustrated at the ineptitude of both terrorists and the Department of Homeland Security, and have thoughts along the lines of “that’s pathetic, I could show them how it’s done,” (I consider this to be one of the manifestations of my imp of the perverse,) but I’m not inclined to do it because I don’t want to terrorize the population. If I were a sociopath, on the other hand, I might actually be tempted to do it.
Other people’s preferences are not necessarily going to be relatable. Even if there’s no potential for profit or cause for vengeance, for the right sort of person, murder could be a thrill activity, like skydiving (another example of something people do for pleasure that other people can’t imagine why one would ever want to do it.)
Well, given the specific evidence that the culprit dressed up and identified himself as the Joker and informed the police that he had booby trapped his apartment, I’d assign a high probability of schizophrenia, but I wouldn’t write off preference based reasons for a sociopath to gun people down at a movie theater in general. It could be motivated by a fantasy rather than a delusion of the perpetrator. Winston Moseley, for instance, sexually assaulted and killed Kitty Genovese and two other women because he had violent sexual fantasies. Alyssa Bustamante (who I read about recently while looking up information on young female murderers,) committed premeditated murder by her own testimony because she wanted to know what it felt like. Personally, I sometimes find myself frustrated at the ineptitude of both terrorists and the Department of Homeland Security, and have thoughts along the lines of “that’s pathetic, I could show them how it’s done,” (I consider this to be one of the manifestations of my imp of the perverse,) but I’m not inclined to do it because I don’t want to terrorize the population. If I were a sociopath, on the other hand, I might actually be tempted to do it.
Other people’s preferences are not necessarily going to be relatable. Even if there’s no potential for profit or cause for vengeance, for the right sort of person, murder could be a thrill activity, like skydiving (another example of something people do for pleasure that other people can’t imagine why one would ever want to do it.)