murderbythebook wrote:
I remember a documentary on brains of psychotics who have a gene that has been isolated for them which is hereditary. Anyway, the person doing the documentary, had a brain scan and had the brain of a psychotic and the gene. It was so funny when he panicked. He went to his grandmother and asked if there was any mentally ill people in their family, and she said yes.
LOL, he panicked even more asking her why she never told him.
It was determined that many people have the same type brain and the gene, but don't go off the deep end because of their upbringing. He was brought up with a lot of love.
Very interesting, yet scary MBTB! I love reading that kind of research, so thanks for sharing.
I do remember the paper here did a huge series on murderers and what caused them to become the way they were. Your documentary was about "nature" and this series became about "nurture." Their research concluded, like yours did at the end, that despite abuse or any other terrible childhood conditions, having at least ONE person who loved you unconditionally (can be anyone - mother, father, grandparent, aunt, uncle) was the key to why some criminals became murderers as opposed to those who didn't.
After studying many, many people, they came across ONE exception. One killer was raised by his horrifically abusive young mother. I couldn't even bear to read the details, it was so bad. BUT, he had his grandparents. Once a month, he would stay the weekend at his grandparents and they would do all the normal, fun, loving things. Trips to Disney World, dinners, new clothes - the works! The researcher spent many hours with the grandmother and came away saying there was no mistaking her unconditional love for this boy.
After exhaustive digging into this family, they couldn't understand what went wrong and then gave up, deciding this boy was the exception to their research results. He HAD the "unconditional love" of his grandmother, full force, yet still turned into a killer.
On the last day, packing up to leave, the interviewer suddenly decided to ask the grandmother - "If you knew your grandson was suffering the way he was with your daughter, why did you never take custody of him?"
The reply? The interviewer, knowing the absolute torture/hell this boy had suffered said he would never forget her answer: "We asked her to allow us to have custody of him, but when my daughter refused to allow us to get the tax write-off on him, we didn't."
They were proven right again - there was no one for this boy with unconditional love - it was very conditional. I will never forget this story.
Login
FAQ
: 
Do not go gentle into that good night.
