MOTHER SPEAKS OUT:
‘I DON’T KNOW WHY HE DID WHAT HE DID’
Aaron Alexis is hardly the only person walking around with a severe personality disorder. His condition is no different than that of people I also know, people who need help but reject the help they need either because of fear of psychiatry , because they think modern drugs will endanger some other property of their personality, or because they fear that exposure as a mental patient will cost them their job. That fear of treatment is a huge problem in a society as armed as our own.This sort of behavioral problem is so common that we accept it as within “normal” until something very bad happens .. a suicide, a physical encounter, a loss of employment, a divorce, or arrest for a crime. Often, perhaps usually, the people hurt by such behavior do not extend beyond the family of the affected individual. Alexis’ case illustrates the tragic fact that this common personality disorder when mixed with the availability of guns in the US creates a public face to what might otherwise have been a family affair.
Family affairs often involve hugely dangerous conflicts with other family members. One good friend is now divorced because of such conflicts despite that fact that it seems clear he still is in love with his wife. Especially horrid in my own family is a history of demonization .. painting others as as evil. Growing up I was told utterly horrid stories about specific cousins, uncles, aunts and family friends. I even witnessed one frightening episode where a family member who was associated with the Mafia threatened to dispose of the target of such a family flame. My Dad, who was doing the flaming , quickly backed down and no harm was done. In another case, a family member undertook “psychological warfare” that has now lasted over five years, created great harm to the family, and cost the rest of us hundreds of thousands of dollars.
One symptom of this illness is fantasies. Psychiatry tells us that severe personality disorders produce fantasies that border on the delusions experienced by the truely insane. We now hear that Mr. Alexis heard voices, how is that different from a Tea Party fanatic who is convinced that President Obama is Hitler or that evolution is a plot? In my own family experience, I have heard accusations stated as fact that were equally bizarre though on a less public level. Frankly, I suspect more than few of the figures in the radical republican “Tea Party” movement are in need of therapy. Commentators who say that Mr. Alexis should have been denied his security clearance, have an unrealistic view of how wide spread this problem is.
The sad thing about all this is that the tools to deal with much of this are readily available. Drugs work as does counseling and psychotherapy with someone like Psych Company. Of course these tools do not always work .. In Mr. Alexis case the care he was getting at the VA, was obviously a failure. What I see. however, is a resistance on the part of many people to seek help. There seems to be some sort of fear that they will be exposed, as if getting help were a bad thing. I still remember the furor when the fact that Thomas Eagleton had been treated forced him of off the McGovern’s ticket. Instead we got Richard Nixon .. someone whose personality disorder was never treated. I have seen the same thing in my own family where family members in obvious need of help are in denial or, even when the acknowledge the need, are afraid to get help because it could harm their careers.
For some the alternative is to turn to religion. Despite being an atheist, I have known some priests and rabbis who are very good at counseling. What worries me the number of people who turn not to some wise minster but turn inwardly to their God. Politicians seem to do this a lot .. or at least say they do. Isn’t it ironic that our society celebrates the role of prayer but denigrates the role of counseling?