Lanza and Asperger's

The Newtown, Connecticut school shooting is one of those events that tend to grip the psyche in a stranglehold of questioning and a demanding of answers as to how such a thing could occur or how an individual can do something that the majority of society finds so utterly heinous.  It's frequently at these times that news agencies will grasp at whatever abnormality may have existed with the killer in order to be the first one to provide a simple answer to those questions.  In the case of Adam Lanza, the disorder that became the focus of potentially creating killers was Asperger's.  Many do not understand what Asperger's or autism is and, with the tendency towards what I call having a blank face, it's all too easy to view someone with autism as being totally deadened emotionally, rather like a sociopath.   However, the key difference between someone who is a sociopath and someone who is autistic is that there is a world of difference in feeling.  A sociopath may have little care or feelings.  An autistic child is deeply sensitive to all their feelings and senses. 

I am a mother of a teenaged son with Asperger's.  He permanently dislocated my jaw when he was just 2 years old and slightly damaged the tendons of my right knee when he was 11.  Now these injuries would immediately cause people to be concerned that there is a relationship between violence and autism that would readily explain Adam Lanza's gruesome act.  However, as the person who was injured in both of these events, I can readily say that that is still the wrong impression.  My son dislocated my jaw by repeatedly rocking while sitting on my lap.  All it took was his head forcefully snapping backward one time to crack it into my jawline.  He didn't even know what he had done.  The injury to my knee was the result of an argument about school and whether or not he was doing his homework.  He and I had been going round and round and, out of pure frustration and overload, my son kicked out at me, striking my right knee. He was nearly inconsolable and horrified at his response.  He has never done anything similar again.

It's easy to assume that, if a violent response to an argument can occur, it can very easily recur. Again, that would be a mistaken assumption as it does not take into consideration what it is like to have Asperger's.  Probably the most notable thing about Asperger's that I have witnessed with my son is his extraordinarily rigid adherence to society's rules and laws.  We lived on the Navajo Nation for 7 years, where the possession of alcohol on reservation lands was strictly illegal.  When my son's former stepfather was prescribed a glass of red wine each day to help control a cardiac issue, he was, every evening, confronted with my son, verbally recriminating him for engaging in an illegal activity and lecturing him, by rote, the dangers and evils of alcohol as instructed to him by his school.  My son could not perceive of any exception, not even the the prescription of an authority figure also living on the reservation, that would allow for the ownership and consumption of alcohol.  Most of us do not actively think of what society's rules and laws are.  For my son and many others with Asperger's, those rules and laws are the rigid frame of their existence.  Although my son broke one of society's rules when he kicked out at me in frustration, his shame at the act and the rule breaking was such that he is likely never to repeat it.  Furthermore, even his response at striking out is not an uncommon one with non-autistic boys who are going through the throes of hormonal changes.  I just had the misfortune of not being a wall. 

My son is 16 now and, no different from Adam Lanza as a highly intelligent kid, he just started college.  One of the major reasons why I allowed my son to start college early was that I saw potential dangers growing at his high school should he continue to attend there.  It was not fear for the other students that I felt.  On the contrary, my rigid 6 ft tall built-like-a-barn son had taken society's rules and laws in regard to assault to such a strict adherence that he was walking into fights that were occurring at the school and pulling them apart.  Once he had pulled them apart, he was lecturing the two "law breaking" classmates with all the decorum of a professor, calmly berating them for "behaving like children".  From my maternal eyes and my awareness of what society can be like, it was only a matter of time that the unthinkable, for a mom, could happen--my son was going to get punched in the face.  Worse yet, his view of society was getting abysmal as he was coming home frustrated and likening his peers at the school as being like "animals in a zoo".  I never once was worried that my son would somehow come to loathe society so much that he would lash out at it.  My concern was that instead, with his habit of forming rigid opinions on a variety of matters, he would form a rigid opinion of society as a whole that would leave him permanently isolated from the whole of humanity. 

An individual with Asperger's already has a hard enough time not feeling isolated from others.  A highly intelligent individual with Asperger's can so easily regard society, between their deep thinking, calm demeanor, and deep sensitivities, as being morally repugnant for we do things that defy reason, rationality, and explanation.  We break rules all the time whether it's going 60 mph on the highway or pushing it a little too far at a stop light.  We disregard human suffering as we walk by the homeless and hungry on the street.  We get excited over inanimate objects like the latest iPhone when, for my son, he gets excited over learning something new that inspires him to see the world in a completely different way.   Although those with Asperger's may not always be able to express either visually or verbally what it is that they feel, I would hazard that they are feeling and thinking on such a deep level as to deaden the expression.  It is not until you give my son pen and paper that you can see how deeply his humanity lies.  For these reasons, I do not see Asperger's as any sort of mental defect or disorder or something that could, on its own, produce a potential killer.  On the contrary, I see Asperger's as nature's doing for society requires that we have some individuals that can witness and describe our behaviors as a society in a manner that brings us to reflect on those aspects of ourselves that are irrational, law breaking and logic defying. 

As a mother of a highly intelligent son with Asperger's, I find it deeply confusing as to how Adam Lanza came to be if he did, in fact, have Asperger's.  It is not to say that it is impossible that, given a series of faults along the lines of his development, that Asperger's couldn't have potentially played a role.  His actions, however, absolutely contradict the severe tendency towards rigid rule adherence so common with Asperger's.  The only way that I could see it as possibly occurring is if Adam Lanza was, through society or perhaps through his mother, given an altered set of rules that do no exist within normal society.  However, attempting to change or adapt the rules of society is one of the most difficult things to do with someone who has Asperger's--even if it's as harmless as drinking red wine to save a life.  If Adam Lanza was, in fact, diagnosed as having Asperger's, then, contrary to all the news agencies who wish to point a finger at Asperger's and autism as being the simple answer, there is no simple answer.  If it did, in fact, play any role, then the circumstances to create Adam Lanza had to be so severe and profuse as to contradict Asperger's very nature and tendencies.