More on How Recent Murder-Suicide Relates to "Attachments..."

Here's a link for the case we discussed last night.

http://ktla.com/2017/03/14/man-killed-daughters-before-telling-wife-to-live-and-suffer/

Here I'm copying directly from that report:

In a nearly eight-minute recording, Randall Coffland is heard admitting to the murder of his two daughters and shooting his 46-year-old wife.

“I just shot and killed my two kids and I shot my wife and I’m going to shoot myself now,” the father is heard telling the dispatcher. “My two girls are dead and I’m killing myself.”

He then tells his wife, “I want you to live and suffer like I did.”

Herman thinks Randall Coffland's suffering was exasperated by the absence of the "absolute essential building blocks of the human psyche, which are unconditional availability, acceptance, understanding, and appreciation-- just as basic psychologically as nutrients are to the physical well-being of the body."

Herman writes that as infants we internalize the maternal functions, and if we don't received them, we seek the fulfillment of these infantile attachment needs in our significant other.

"When these relationships fail, the results are catastrophic," he says.

The suicide notes presented in his book Attachment and Suicide provide insight into the startling intensity of these needs and how incredibly painful it is when they are frustrated.

"This is because our psychological and physical survival depend on their fulfillment.  Pain turns into rage, which is usually self-directed but in some cases is directed toward the significant other who they kill before killing themselves."

Herman thinks that the lack of insight into their own needs and motivations is dangerous and thinks more awareness would lead to fewer suicides and fewer suicide-murders.

Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living, and Herman says "These cases teach us that the unexamined life can be deadly."

In the case of Randall Coffland, the attachment figure, his wife who was leaving him, was the catalyst for his committing suicide.

"However, he didn't merely kill himself to punish his significant other as was the case with most of those in the population I studied.  What he did was worse.  He killed their children  and wounded his wife before killing himself so that she could live with the pain she was inflicting upon him by abandoning him. "

http://tinamartinsanfranciscovistas.blogspot.com/2017/05/more-on-how-recent-murder-suicide.html