| | |  | Information Security | Home » » Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters | | | | | | | Description: | | Ten years after the school massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, school shootings are a new and alarming epidemic. While sociologists have attributed the trigger of violence to peer pressure, such as bullying and social isolation, prominent psychologist Peter Langman, argues here that psychological causes are responsible. Drawing on 20 years of clinical experience, Langman offers surprising reasons for why some teens become violent. Langman divides shooters into three categories, and he discusses the role of personality, trauma, and psychosis among school shooters. From examining the material evidence of notorious school shooters at Columbine and Virginia Tech to addressing the mental states of the violent youths he treats, Langman shows how to identify early signs of homicide-prone youth and what preventive measures educators, parents and communities can take to protect themselves from the tragedy.
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Peter Langman PhD | | Hardcover:
| 256 pages | | Publisher:
| Palgrave Macmillan | | Publication Date:
| January 06, 2009 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0230608027 | | Product Length:
| 9.54 inches | | Product Width:
| 6.48 inches | | Product Height:
| 0.9 inches | | Product Weight:
| 0.89 pounds | | Package Length:
| 9.1 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.4 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.0 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.65 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 27 reviews |
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6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
 The most comprehensive analysis of the psychology of school shooters yet publishedApr 29, 2009
By Jeannie Z. Holloway
Dr. Langman's clear and logical analysis of the minds of school shooters peels off layer after layer of information about these young men until he exposes the complex psychological torture with which they lived. He meticulously analyses the lives of almost a dozen school shooters. We learn that the shooters were all severely mentally ill, and not just the products of bullying or peer isolation - which were just the tip of the iceberg. We learn in depth how these young people fit into different categories of mental illness and their common symptoms. The advice that Dr. Langman gives us all on identifying symptoms of dysfunction in our young people is invaluable. His book does not just pertain to the Columbine tragedy; it delves into the minds of the school shooters up until the present time. [...]
13 of 16 found the following review helpful:
 What happened to context?Jul 02, 2009
By Ralph W. Larkin
"Author of Comprehending Columbine"
I have read Dr. Langman's book with great interest. What he does is take 10 cases -- those with the greatest media coverage -- and attempt to classify the school rampage shooters using categories of psychological dysfunction. To this end he develops three major types: psychopathic, psychotic, and traumatized shooters. To begin with, Dr. Langman begins with one major, seemingly reasonable, assumption: school rampage shooters are psychologically troubled. Well, yes. This is hardly news breaking information. However, as Dr. Langman notes, there is no straight line from psychopathology, psychosis, or psychological traumatization to school shootings, which are extremely rare occurrences. Therefore, Dr. Langman has the same problem as all psychological profilers: false positives. There are hundreds of thousands of American adolescents that fit into Dr. Langman's categories who are not violent in the least way. Therefore, the explanatory power of his paradigm is nil.
As with all typologies, there are border problems. Dr. Langman's typology leaks. His problem is Dylan Klebold. Dylan, an obviously depressed teenager who has problems related to his sexuality and religious/ethnic identities fits none of those categories. Therefore, Dr. Langman defines him as borderline psychotic with the schizotypal label. A person with less investment in identifying school shooters as psychotic or severely abused might identify Dylan Klebold as a teenager dealing with normal problems of self-esteem, sexuality, identity, and social location. Dylan was shy, not sure how to deal with the female gender, felt unattractive, had a Jewish background he tried to hide, was not well regarded by his peers, was not terribly athletic in a hypermasculine environment, and was a member of an outcast adolescent subculture. However, he was bright, self-aware, articulate, had a small group of friends, and an intact, supportive family.
The 800 pound gorilla in the room for all psychological profilers, including Dr. Langman, is why school rampage shootings emerged as a social phenomenon in the early 1980s, rising to a peak in 1998-1999, and tapering off in the United States after 2005, with the last rampage shooting in October, 2007, by Asa Coon, in Cleveland, Ohio. To this, Dr. Langman's research does not speak, nor can it, because he fails to deal with context. Even if there were some explanatory power in his paradigm, he does not explain why certain psychopaths, psychotics, and traumatized youths chose school rampage shootings as an expression of their "existential rage" (his term) during this period of American history, while such acts were nonexistent or isolated incidences in previous eras.
Dr. Langman's book demonstrates the problems of psychological profiling. First, it is reductionistic by assuming that school rampage shootings can be attributed to a single cause. In this, he shares the same flaw as Dave Cullen in his book, "Columbine." Second, school rampage shootings are complex phenomena that are caused by a confluence of factors, only one of which is the psychological makeup of the shooter. Dr. Langman's work has nothing to say about why school rampage shootings are more prevalent in the American South and West than in the Northeast or why they are almost always located in rural and suburban schools rather than urban ones. It is surprising that a psychologist would give short shrift to motivation. In his examples, Klebold and Harris had very specific motivations: to get back at jocks for the humiliation they received at their hands, to strike back at a social system that relegated them to the bottom strata, to show evangelical students who were the "gods," to assert a hypermasculine identity, to become an inspiration to other "oppressed" students, and to become famous. However, Andrew Wurst and Kip Kinkel could not articulate why they engaged in their rampage shootings. How do these important psychological phenomena fit into Dr. Langman's typology? The problem with Dr. Langman's work is that it is essentializes personality disorders, attributing causality to them, rather than examining the relationships between individuals and their environments.
Comprehending Columbine
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
a well written important bookMay 07, 2009
By William J. Hirschman
I have just completed reading "Why Kids Kill" by Dr. Peter Langman and feel that this book should be read by all thinking people. It is an intelligent, well reasoned book on an extremely important subject which should be read by all school faculty and school psychologists and parents. If we can better understand our children and recognize aberrant behavior we can hopefully prevent these horrible events from devestating our children again.
What happend in Columbine and elsewhere must and can be prevented. This book is a MUST READ by all!
Bill Hirschman,
Ardsley, NY
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Very informativeApr 24, 2009
By Interested Reader
"Interested Reader"
I thought this was a fascinating book that is easy to read. It gives a window into the psychology of a school shooter that the media never delves into when these tragedies occur. I found that I learned something on every page. I can understand the parents of these tragedies wanting full and complete answers, and even though this book doesn't satisfy all those answers and may conflict with some core hypotheses, I think the book has tremendous value to help us detect and hopefully curtail any potential killers.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Excellent book about a difficult topicMay 24, 2009
By J. Mackey
"SauconReader"
Dr. Langman takes a difficult topic and discusses it in a user-friendly manner. I was fascinated by the psychology of the children who commit these heinous crimes. I particularly liked the last chapter which gave concrete ideas on how to prevent school shootings. This book is a must read for parents and educators alike.
See all 27 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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