12 of 121 DOCUMENTS The Boston Globe August 06, 2006 Sunday THIRD EDITION CAN HATE BE HEALED? BYLINE. JACK LEVIN AND ARNOLD ARLUKE SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. C9 LENGTH: 4149 words LAST WEEK, a 30-year-old Pakistani- American, Naveed Haq, went on a shooting rampage at a Jewish Federation office in Seattle. After a forced entry, he shouted, ''I am a Muslim-American, angry at Israel'' and opened fire, killing one woman and wounding five. Haq had frequently told colleagues that he despised Jews. His parents told reporters that their son had long suffered from bipolar disorder. Cases like this happen close to home, too. In February, an 18-year-old man went on a crime spree, assaulting patrons inside a gay bar in New Bedford and killing two people in a gun battle with Arkansas police before killing himself. Jacob Robida, the killer, hated gays, blacks, and Jews. He collected Nazi memorabilia and filled the walls of his bedroom with swastikas. Robida had also been severely depressed. We deplore such acts of hate as perpetrated by Robida and Haq in part because they are considered to be purposeful. According to some psychiatrists and psychologists, hate is also a mental illness causing bigots to become totally irrational and destructive. Most hate is cultural. Normal people learn to hate from an early age from parents, teachers, friends, co-workers and the media. They might never translate their bigotry into behavior beyond using stereotypic epithets and telling bigoted jokes. But some hate is pathological. It becomes so severe that it takes control of a person's life, causing him to become isolated, fearful, self-destructive, and dangerous to others. Haq and Robida seem to have suffered from pathological hate. Mental health researchers now propose medicalizing the most extreme and dysfunctional forms of prejudice by treating pathological hate as an official psychiatric diagnosis. Edward Dunbar, a psychologist at UCLA who has treated dozens of patients for ''racial paranoia,'' suggests that dangerous forms of hate can be reduced by administering an appropriate form of psychotherapy. Alvin Poussant, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, argues that patients who suffer from pathological hate might benefit from antipsychotic medications and other forms of therapy. Opponents assert that this diagnosis would only allow bigots to evade responsibility for their nasty and illegal behavior. They express a concern that the hatemongers would be treated as victims rather than perpetrators, even when they are tried for assaulting members of the groups they despise. But it is already the case that a defendant's mental illness can be a mitigating factor in a judge's sentencing decisions. For example, killers may get a lighter sentence, even when not diagnosed as hatemongers, if they can show they were abused as children. It is the plea of ''not guilty by reason of insanity'' - not a diagnosis of mental illness - that allows defendants to avert criminal responsibility. And only 1 percent of all felony defendants attempt the insanity defense. More important, the threat from individuals like Haq and Robida would be reduced by treating pathological hate as a mental disorder. First, it would help to discredit and stigmatize the prejudices of individuals whose persistent fears of other groups are regarded as a product of disease rather than rational thought. Their stereotyped views of blacks, Muslims, Jews, or gays would be viewed as delusional, entirely lacking in any reality, rather than as a normal case of prejudiced thinking. Also, extremely hateful individuals would no longer be ignored by the mental health profession or treated only for depression, but would be more likely to receive the attention that they so sorely need to combat their delusional beliefs. Even if Haq and Robida had received effective treatment in the form of psychotherapy or antipsychotic medication, they would probably still have held bigoted views. But they might not have gone on a rampage. LOAD-DATE: August 9, 2006 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH NOTES: JACK LEVIN AND ARNOLD ARLUKE Jack Levin is director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict and Arnold Arluke is a professor of sociology, both at Northeastern University. GRAPHIC: DRAWING PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company |