© Heiko Junge/APP s y c h o p a t h
Anders Behring Breivik, the Norweigan extremist who confessed to killing 77 people in a bomb and shooting rampage in Norway is not criminally insane, a psychiatric assessment found on Tuesday, contradicting an earlier assessment.
The conclusion comes just six days before Breivik is scheduled to go on trial on terror charges for the massacre on 22 July 2011. Though not definitive, it suggests Breivik may serve the maximum penalty of 21 years in prison rather than being detained indefinitely in a secure psychiatric institution.
It conflicts with an earlier examination that diagnosed Breivik as psychotic, and therefore unfit for prison. The first, much criticised review, concluded he was a paranoid schizophrenic.
Some experts questioned whether someone with a grave mental illness would be capable of carrying out attacks requiring such meticulous preparation.
The new assessment was made by psychiatrists Terje Toerrissen and Agnar Aspaas on a request from the court after widespread criticism against the first diagnosis.
"The main conclusion of the experts is that Anders Behring Breivik is found to be not psychotic during the time of his actions on 22 July, 2011," the Oslo court said in a statement.
Breivik has confessed to setting off the bomb at government offices in downtown Oslo, killing eight, and opening fire at a youth camp outside the Norwegian capital, killing 69. But he denies criminal guilt, saying the attacks were necessary in what he calls a civil war against Islam in Europe.
This latest psychiatric report is not definitive - only at the end of the 10-week trial will mental health experts decide once and for all whether Breivik is fit to serve his sentence in a normal prison or whether he should be committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Last month prosecutors said they considered the 33-year-old to be psychotic and would seek a sentence of involuntary commitment to psychiatric care instead of imprisonment unless new information about his mental health emerged during the trial.
Breivik has portrayed his victims as "traitors" for embracing immigration policies he claims will result in an Islamic colonisation of Norway. The attack on the camp was where the youth wing of the governing Labour party was holding its annual summer get-together.
He has been charged under a paragraph in Norway's anti-terror law that refers to violent acts intended to disrupt key government functions or spread fears in the population.
...to life on earth.
1) When someone does something "bad" we want to "punish" them for it. Yet this has never been demonstrated to have any remedial effect on either the suspect or society.
2) Criminals (I mean psychopaths) have often found ways to use the justice system for their own purposes. An example of this is the "insanity" plea. If we assume that the capability of making such a plea is decided by psychiatrists, then we could conclude that psychiatrists invented this device as a way to acquire test subjects or return mind control victims to their control after "doing a job."
The actual state of mind of the subject is not actually important to his victims, his captors, or his psychiatrists. If it were, there would have been broader acceptance by now of techniques that have been demonstrated to rehabilitate perpetrators.
His victims want him punished. His captors want him to stop being a problem to them, and the psychiatrists want him released, in the last analysis. Thus governments, if left alone on the subject, would often respond in the most sane way to the problem of crime. And they have done so in some instances.
"Crimes of passion" are obviously the result of psychic deterioration.
Planned crimes are less obviously so, but they basically are, too. And non-destructive "crimes" are simply labeled as such to keep the justice system busy.
What bothers me is that no one really cares. This suggests an apathy on the subject. And that would be the product of psychopathic pressure.
So in the end, crime of all kinds and sorts traces back to psychopathy. This is the cause point of societal deterioration that must be handled.