Thursday, July 26, 2012

Amnesia...?

The NY Daily News reports that, according to a worker at the Arapahoe County Detention Center, James Holmes is claiming complete amnesia for the night of the massacre.
“He needs to save his act for the jury because no one here is buying it,” the worker said. “Everyone is convinced he is faking it.”
An attempt to fake amnesia may further indicate that Holmes has modeled himself on Batman's nemesis. No matter how many people he kills, the Joker always gets sent to Arkham Asylum, not to prison, because he is always able to convince a court that he falls under the technical definition of insanity. Of course, the way things work in comic books may not mirror the way things work in real life.

2 comments:

affinis said...

He could obviously be faking it. And he probably has sufficient psych knowledge to construct a plausible "crazy" act.
On the other hand....I'd earlier been speculating about dissociation (based on aspects of his behavior). And online, I've seen some speculation about DID (dissociative identity disorder). I used to be skeptical about the existence of DID (even some highly publicized putative cases involved faking), until I ended up encountering someone who had it (a close friend of mine, who I've now known for many years). It's a real albeit rare condition. So I think DID or some form of dissociative amnesia is a real possibility.

Anonymous said...

Why don't you pass the time with a game of solitaire?