Böcker av S Lee Funk

How Rampage Killers Interpret Their Worlds addresses a question that recently has become disturbingly persistent: "What compels a person or a pair without notice and seemingly without any foreseeable benefit to attack numerous individuals, many of whom are strangers, in a single setting?" It considers that query from the vantage point of psychological circumspection - not as evidence of social fragmentation or historical turbulence. In doing so, it fills in the sketch for the seemingly random stimuli for rampage assaults by tracing the sequential development of motivators: the constitutional mindset of the murderer, the disenfranchisement from humanitarian norms, vindictive obsession, fantasy-driven planning, willful (though detached) engagement, and finally the bloody aftermath. The integrative design links the perspectives of three populations that have typically been treated as distinct - school annihilators, workplace avengers, and public executioners. Further, as expert educator Dr. Funk demonstrates, such mass violence is rarely utilitarian but frequently performative. Throughout the work, carefully sourced theory, scientific data, and analytical biographies inform the premises, observations, and conclusions. Synthesizing research from multiple disciplines with carefully constructed case studies, the work once and for all puts to rest the prevailing mystique of the sudden rampaging assailant and reveals the predictable, premeditative nature of the crime. Central to the criminological autopsies are analyses of the words and deeds of the murderers themselves - before, during, and after their massacres.

Until now, the influential agents in rampage killings have been described with unsatisfactory generalizations or chalked up to unconscious impulses. Instead of simply attributing lethal decision-making to distorted thinking, Why Rampage Killers Emerge proffers a conceptual tableau to explain the genesis of the mentality that engages in sudden acts of mass violence. As an experienced educator, Dr. Funk applies a multi-disciplinary perspective with case study methods and statistical tools to define the external circumstances and excavate the internalized misconceptions necessary for the formation of a rampageous mindset. Given the breadth of the construct and the anecdotal patterns supporting its categorization, there should be little doubt that an autogenic assailant will conform to the descriptive model diligently surveyed in this text. While by no means excusing the perpetrators of unprovoked mass attacks, this study does offer an explanation for the origins of the foreboding thought processes at work and contains valuable diagnostic implications. As such, it will be useful to mental professionals, school administrators, law enforcement professionals, business managers, and the public at large in the prevention of repeated acts of deadly spectacle. Dr. Funk's premises are studiously supported by rigorous scholarship and engagingly written to attract attentive readers.