Adam Lanza, Travis the Chimp, and the Psychopathology of Violence (original) (raw)

One year or so before he walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School with a gun and murdered, among others, several young children his own mother and then himself, the late Adam Lanza was a call-in guest on an Oregon radio program. 1 For nearly eight minutes, Lanza, using a pseudonym, spoke about the case of a pet chimpanzee, Travis, who went rogue in 2009, killing his owner and maiming another woman. Lanza spoke with clarity and feeling, belying simplistic portrayals of his own attitudes by the mainstream media, and challenging us all to a deeper understanding of the societal violence which percolates into our collective awareness. 2 What is of course most fascinating in listening to the recorded interchange is the clarity and obvious passion which Lanza brings to the subject matter of Travis the chimp. Delving into the social conditioning of the chimpanzee, Lanza discursively addresses some very salient points about human cultural conditioning. Of course, the underlying premise that makes the entire interchange so interesting is the implicit and retrospective knowledge that Lanza was himself planning his own rampage -but even so, Lanza's obvious empathic connection to Travis the chimp stands as evidence of his ability to formulate the internal worlds of others, demonstrating the fallacy of our own attributional thinking about psychopathology and the underlying nature of mass-murderers.

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