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walkitouthttp://www.npr.org/2011/01/14/132909487/fame-through-assassination-a-secret-service-study
"But, as Fein points out, the way these people sought to address what they saw as their main problems — anonymity and failure — wasn't inherently crazy.
"There's nothing crazy about thinking that if I attacked the president or a major public official, I would get a lot of attention. I would get a lot of attention. My goal was notoriety," Fein says. "That's why I bought the weapon.""
I went back up and checked. Fein is the psychologist. There's nothing crazy about thinking that if I want attention, attacking someone is a reasonable way to get it? Excuse me? Yes, it will work. It is reality based. But it is _still_ crazy. Crazy isn't _just_ not-being-reality-based. Quite the contrary. Crazy is a cultural construct and at times, being reality based is regarded as being mentally ill.
The stuff about being organized indicating not-crazy is so pathetic I don't even know what to do with it. If anything, needing a high degree of organization is itself a sign of The Crazy (we call it OCD and clump it with the anxiety disorders).
"But, as Fein points out, the way these people sought to address what they saw as their main problems — anonymity and failure — wasn't inherently crazy.
"There's nothing crazy about thinking that if I attacked the president or a major public official, I would get a lot of attention. I would get a lot of attention. My goal was notoriety," Fein says. "That's why I bought the weapon.""
I went back up and checked. Fein is the psychologist. There's nothing crazy about thinking that if I want attention, attacking someone is a reasonable way to get it? Excuse me? Yes, it will work. It is reality based. But it is _still_ crazy. Crazy isn't _just_ not-being-reality-based. Quite the contrary. Crazy is a cultural construct and at times, being reality based is regarded as being mentally ill.
The stuff about being organized indicating not-crazy is so pathetic I don't even know what to do with it. If anything, needing a high degree of organization is itself a sign of The Crazy (we call it OCD and clump it with the anxiety disorders).
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Date: 2011-01-15 05:50 pm (UTC)I think Fein's explanation only makes sense if you take it that he's using "insane" in a private sense meaning "completely detached from reality" (which is not the way most people use it, as he ought to know), and everything else he's describing, while "crazy" overall, is "not crazy" in the sense that it does rely on real cause and effect, and isn't magical thinking of some kind. Maybe it's because he's used to courtroom senses of "insane," where it has to imply "didn't know right from wrong." (I may have the insanity defense thing wrong, of course, having fortunately never had to worry about it very much.)