Citation

Knoll JL. J. Am. Acad. Psychiatry Law 2010; 38(2): 263-272.

Affiliation

IV, Division of Forensic Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, SUNY Upstate Medical University, 750 East Adams Street, Syracuse, NY 13210. knollj@upstate.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, Publisher American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

20542949

Abstract

In Part I of this article, research on pseudocommandos was reviewed, and the important role that revenge fantasies play in motivating such persons to commit mass murder-suicide was discussed. Before carrying out their mass shootings, pseudocommandos may communicate some final message to the public or news media. These communications are rich sources of data about their motives and psychopathology. In Part II of this article, forensic psycholinguistic analysis is applied to clarify the primary motivations, detect the presence of mental illness, and discern important individual differences in the final communications of two recent pseudocommandos: Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech) and Jiverly Wong (Binghamton, NY). Although both men committed offenses that qualify them as pseudocommandos, their final communications reveal striking differences in their psychopathology.

Language: en