Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Twenty-Six

Sept. 12, 2006

A. Liz/Tamgoddess asks:

Here's a question that came up in conversation last night.

I just read yet another story about a guy who killed his whole family and then himself.

Often, the scenario is that the woman is leaving him, and he decides he can't live with that. I have personal knowledge of this scenario, as this happened with someone who worked at a place where I ended up working later. His wife was leaving, and he was just this regular guy, seemingly. He seemed to be coming to grips with it, and then he just shot everyone in his family and then himself. From what my coworkers told me, he'd been in to work the day before, and seemed not at all different, except having accepted the situation, as often happens with suicidal people who have made the decision and are "at peace" with it. He had no history of domestic violence, as far as anyone knew. I found this so disturbing, that it could happen seemingly to anyone.

This seems to be something that men do and not women, though of course there are exceptions. When a man does it, it barely even makes the news anymore. Do you understand why this happens? Why do these men feel the need to take everyone with them?

Also, this seems to happen much more frequently now. Do you think there is some social reason that it's become more acceptable in these men's minds to do this than, say, 50 years ago? Is it just that they've seen it happen with other men, and they get the idea that it's the best way out?

I do have some ideas about this, but I wanted to see what you think before I comment on it. Thanks.

Liz

Robert answers:

I don’t have any kind of conclusive answer to the questions you raise, since each such murder-plus-suicide situation has its own unique formative elements, but I do think that there are some factors worth considering:

(1) Increasingly pervasive cultural stress, in deadly combo with an overwhelming level of personal stress. Those who don’t handle this so well usually find “solutions” that, sooner or later, simply compound their distress. A breaking point is reached, which may manifest in all kinds of ways, including, at the extreme, murder and/or suicide. I’m not saying that stress causes a man to kill his family and himself, but that there’s a positive correlation between extreme stress and “out-of-character” acts. Put just about any of us under extreme pressure for long enough, and who knows what will be uncorked?

(2) Twisted logic, coupled with heavy stress levels and emotional overload. The father in question may have thought along these lines: “I don’t want my family to have to live with the pain of having a father who’s committed suicide, so I’ll spare them that pain by ending their lives before I take my own.” An irrational rationalization for sure, but a rationalization nonetheless. Or he may have thought something like: “I don’t want to separate my family.” This is not an uncommon thought, especially amongst those who are in a situation that may be leaning toward unwanted separation.

So keeping the family together by killing them all at the same time may become an appealing notion for one who is at an extreme edge. Enough distress may fuel the kind of thinking that concludes that the family is better off dead. (This may be made all the more palatable if we hold religious beliefs along the lines that we’ll all literally be together again, pretty much as we are, in some kind of heaven-world -- so what real difference does it make how we get there?)

(3) Violence remains a common “solution” to certain difficulties, especially among men. And the greater the stress, the greater the aggression, whether it’s turned toward others, or toward oneself, or both. Even the “nicest” guy may turn into a stalker (whose self-loathing only further fuels his ultra-possessive behavior) when his wife leaves him, submitting to the most primitive of territorial imperatives. Or he may enter the uglier dimensions of aggression because of extreme shame -- think of how we, at least in a cinematic sense, almost expect the shamed hero to revenge himself on those who have put him down. Revengeisus.com.

I mention shame because of how intensely it can arise in those who are being left, or are about to be left, by their partner. In women, this shame often manifests as toxic self-deprecation, an aggression turned inward, but in men it more often manifests as as an equally toxic putting down of the woman, a blaming of and aggression against her. Hostility plus.

Also, a man who is about to be left by his wife may be so opposed to her being with another man, not to mention their children also being with a new dad, that he’d rather kill them all than endure such a situation; he might not have considered suicide before killing them, but once he has, suicide may seem to him to be the only way out of the horror he has brought about.

(4) An extremely compelling sense of no-exit despair, no way out, no alternative. When someone has reached this point, suicidal thoughts are common. If significant others are being considered at such a time, it likely won’t be with any real clarity. Those who are seriously considering suicide are, with few exceptions, in immense pain, stumbling through a darkness beyond darkness. At this point our psychophysiological default will assert itself with great force: We might shut down our vital signs (as we probably first did when under unbearable stress) and sink into the “safety” of depression; we might get overly absorbed in obsessive thought-loops, finding some distance from our emotional pain through doing so; or we might try to simply disappear (which may have been part of how we survived our childhood), going in the direction of extreme dissociation or in a more overtly physical direction, like suicide.

If a man’s family is central to his sense of identity, and he is totally opposed to having it come apart (as through the departure of one member, including him), even as he simultaneously feels certain that he is going to leave via suicide, then his backed-into-a-corner solution may be to take his family members with him into death. Such may be his answer -- however bizarre it may seem to less troubled others -- to keeping his family together, brushing him, however fleetingly or ambiguously, with a trace of moral triumph in his last desperate moments.