FROM THE "INCOMPREHENSIBLE" MURDER TO THE RAPTUS: MYSTERY OR
INCOMPLETE FRAME OF REFERENCE?
Renato
Cocchi, a neurologist, a medical psychologist, and a 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.
Cases
Theoretical and research bases
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.org/Droping1-it.htm);
(www.stress-cocchi.org/Droping2-it.htm ) and
(www.stress-cocchi.org/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.org/TGF3.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
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
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.
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@libero.it
Cases
Theoretical and research bases