Euthanasia vs Execution of Companion Animals Continued
I thought I would follow up on some of the comments from last week. This are in no particular order, I am just throwing my thoughts out there.
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Neva Vegan:
"Dogs don't process time and conditions in the same way we do. So for a dog,
being in a cell all day long is torture. He wouldn't know why he was there, he
wouldn't realize he'd hurt anyone, he wouldn't be able to read or study for his
GED. His whole existence would be staring at the walls, bored and lonely"
This is such a good point and I cannot believe I have never considered it that way. Even a dog that has an absolute hatred for humans (and I have seen dogs like this) doesn't realize that the way s/he is acting is wrong. They are just following their instinct.
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Gary:
"Resource constraints aside, I believe a "doggie prison" could be constructed in such a way that it would be worlds better than execution. We have seen countless times that even the most hardened and violent individuals can change drastically with love and guidance. Doesn't everyone deserve a chance? This seems like the compassionate ideal we should strive to achieve. They say the pen is mightier than the sword; kindness - not to be confused with passivity - may be mightier still."
Gary, although I do think this is a fantastic idea, I am still not sure about it. I am not sure that the most hardened criminals can "get better". Unfortunately, I don't know much about serial killers or rapists, so my thoughts may be weak. I know I have heard or read some where that many of the criminals I speak of are mentally ill. Or were abused (Ed Gein, Jeffery Dahmer) and Neva Vegan mentioned this as well. This is also why I am so against the death penalty.
Gary:
"In the case of human executions, I also often detect a feeling of retribution, and I feel that ultimately perpetuates our violent nature rather than eases it."
You have summed this up so much better than I could have. This is why I will never agree with the death penalty. Even survivors who have watched their son/daughter/husband's murderer be executed have said it didn't provide the closure they were looking for.
It is an odd thought that nurture can have so much to do with it. We often talk about socialization of puppies. Poor socialization is often what may lead to an aggressive dog. Why wouldn't it be the same for humans?
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Neva Vegan:
"I have worked with a lot of animals that were called "monsters" by other people, and while I have met some animals with aggression problems that couldn't be fixed, I've never seen anything in an animal that remotely resembled a human psychopath.
You are very lucky then Neva Vegan. I can think of at least three dogs that something was very wrong with them. One of these dogs was Yoda, who I personally had to escort to the bridge. It is a very hard thing to explain, but these dogs just had something missing in their eyes. It was like a completely blank look. I don't know what it was caused by, but it was scary as hell.
Nearly all the animals that I encountered had fear-aggression, which means that if they feel threatened they sometimes attack. That threat might be something we would not view as a threat, like getting too close or trying to pet them, even maybe being in the same room with an animal who has been severely abused."
Razz (one of my foster dogs) has severe fear aggression. She was terribly abused. We have done a lot of work with her, a lot of counter conditioning along with lots of positive reinforcement training and she is so much better than she was when she first arrived. Something in her will always be on "trigger", as she is very territorial. But as any one who has met her knows, she is fantastic. I train with a clicker. Maybe I will do a post on it some time! ;)
"A few have had fear aggression plus food aggression. Food aggression is 'don't get between me and my food or else.'"
Yoda was also very food aggressive and we did have some success with him, but unfortunately there was too much else going on to hope for a successful rehabilitation.
"Human psychopaths hurt people because they enjoy hurting people and lack the capacity to feel empathy, so they attack without feeling threatened or really having any trigger at all."
This is also an interesting thought. I know that a lot of the interviews that I have read with or about serial killers indicate that they were delusional. One I can think of was a disorder that causes a person to believe they had a relationship with some one (usually some one famous) that didn't exist. The whole relationship was built on one simple smile or wave or an autograph. This is apparently a very common delusion in stalkers. Could it be said that even though we may not recognize a trigger, it may be a trigger for that delusional individual?
3 comments:
You make some interesting points and I can't really comment much on dogs where something was severely wrong, having not encountered that situation. Though as I say, I have met dogs that would attack for little reason from our view, but it usually did have to do with their own perception of some kind of threat. Though some dogs have a higher prey drive than others and it seems possible that some dogs might under some circumstances view humans as prey, but I have not encountered that particularly.
As far as human psychopaths go, I have unfortunately had some experience. I am anti death penalty because I don't believe it's possible to have a culture where we emphasize that killing people is wrong if we allow the government to kill. I also recognize that the death penalty is unevenly applied and more likely to be given to minorities. Additionally I believe that there is always a possibility of wrongful conviction, we've already seen it happen enough.
That said, there isn't just one kind of human killer. Some are severely mentally ill and delusional. Those are not the ones we call psychopaths/sociopaths/antisocial. The reason is that delusion is an actual symptom of mental illness. It can often be treated with anti-psychotics. A sociopath has no such hallmarks of stereotypical mental illness. They understand reality. They might have "delusions of grandeur" where they over estimate their own importance, but often no more so than many "sane" people do. They understand what is going on around them; they don't imagine relationships that don't exist. They also understand right and wrong, they just choose not to follow society's rules.
One way to understand this a little better is to think that there is a dog who wants to kill a person and there is a sociopath human who wants to kill a person. The dog lunges and growls and at the first opportunity he attacks. He would do so in front of a huge crowd even. This is because on a fundamental level he just doesn't know it's wrong to want to kill a person. The human sociopath stalks his victim for several days and figures out when she's likely to be alone. He waits for an opportunity to attack when there will be no witnesses--maybe even waiting until his victim is asleep so she can't defend herself. He may keep her alive for hours, even days, slowly torturing her before he kills her. Then he will take great care to cover his tracks to avoid being caught. He might try to hide the body so it won't be found until much of the evidence has deteriorated. So, he understands it's clearly wrong to kill this woman, he realizes there are consequences, and he is enough in control of his behavior to attack in such a way to minimize the possibility that he will be caught.
Naturally there are many patterns for sociopaths--not all kill, some just lie, cheat and steal their way through life, because they have no feelings for anyone but themselves.
Although we would clearly say there's something deeply wrong with anyone who kills multiple people just for the joy of killing, it's also not something clearly defined as a mental illness in our current understanding of mental illness. Therefore legally a sociopath is held accountable for his/her actions, while someone with paranoid schizophrenia who believed his victim was the devil might be put in a mental hospital.
Continued... That was getting long.
There is some debate within psychology and criminology about the nature of antisocial personality disorder (ie psychophaths/sociopaths) and mental illness.
Not every serial killer out there fits an exact pattern. Some books I've read put Jeffrey Dahmer in a different type than others, positing that he was far more mentally ill than someone like Ted Bundy. Jeffrey Dahmer was less adept at covering his tracks, but prejudices from law enforcement regarding homosexuals allowed him to come very close to getting caught and still get away.
Some studies have recently shown that individuals with personality disorders have different brain patterns than "normal" people. So there may really be something organically wrong with the structure of their brain.
Just this past weekend I was talking to a friend about what happened when I was attacked. I have been uncomfortable discussing too many details with most people I'm close to, and it just all gets really icky. However, we are talking about an individual who did a very good job of convincing everyone that he was the sweetest kindest human being alive and then he turned into this violent monster when he thought nobody else was around. One of the worst things for me to remember was coming to from being knocked out and as my eyes came into focus again I saw his face and it was one of the worst things I've ever seen in my life. His facial expression was the strangest combination of malice, aggression, and pure joy. He was very happy to be hurting me--it was very pleasurable to him. That's terrifying.
Much later I was walking home from doing my grocery shopping and a man stopped and asked me for directions. This was someone completely different, but then when I tried to give him directions he tried to force me into his car. I saw that same expression malice and joy combined in this awful twisted expression.
I know that describing my own experience is totally subjective, but I don't think I'm far off in my recognition of those emotions, and I have never seen anything like that in any animal ever. Perhaps it exists somewhere, but I still feel that if an animal does something horribly violent and cruel they do it without recognition that it is wrong, so it is a somewhat different thing.
Also, to return to human sociopaths, there is confirmation that some of the worst serial killers were abused as children. There is also confirmation, as far as we can tell, that some had normal childhoods. Thousands of kids are abused and most never become sociopaths.
While I can recognize that there is something deeply wrong with such a person, I also don't feel it's safe to invest too much empathy in someon who on a fundamental level is dangerous and harmful and because there is no treatment, they will always be dangerous. Most psychiatric and therapy methods fail on sociopaths (and other personality disorders). In fact therapy tends to make them worse. We are talking about master manipulators and they are very quick to learn what people want to hear and what people expect. If they think that talking about abuse will get under your skin they will sob about how they were abused for hours, but at the first opportunity they will hurt someone else. Sometimes those abuse stories might be true, but they will also make them up. Some serial killers have studied psychology and pretended to have other mental illnesses (and it was proven they were faking) to avoid prosecution. They are good at apologizing and pretending to feel bad for what they've done, if they think the courts want to hear that. But at the first opportunity they will hurt someone again. They don't feel remorse ever, but they are very good at faking it.
I used this as an opinion source for a bliography for our school euthanasia debate....
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