Charl de Souza

Circus Breivik – Norway’s Trial of the Century has started. The trial guide in a nutshell.
All you need to know to understand what is happening ...
and why.

Anders Breivik’s political manifesto is not about politics, but the psychological self-defence of a narcissist. His psychology is exposed and explained here.

If you read one article on Breivik, this is it! The core issue is not politics or an Islamic invasion of Europe. It is about Breivik’s ego and his girlfriends 17 years ago.

He had difficulty expressing his emotions verbally as a four-year-old although his speech development was otherwise good for his age.

There is a possibility that Breivik had some level of attachment difficulties in his relationships as his relationships were superficial. Children with Attachment Disorder develop it in their first two years as infants, but go on to have difficulties with relationships throughout life. The key to Breivik’s killing spree can be traced to relationships with girls in his late teens. Any attachment disorder in Breivik is probably sub-clinical, but may be a significant part in the development of his pathological personality.

The political issues that mainstream media are filling columns with are not what drove Anders Breivik to go on a spree-killing rampage. That was a response of Breivik’s teenage immature, emotionally undeveloped, yet overinflated ego. He felt slighted when girlfriends preferred hip-hopping Muslim youth to him. Remove the political fluff and smokescreen and Breivik’s actions are easily understood. It helps us to see him for what he is.

Most media is stuck in the trial’s day-to-day details of who said what. The significant factors are lost in those details.

The Purpose of the Trial.

The purpose of the trial is not to find out if he is guilty. That is beyond question. There is absolutely no chance of an acquittal. There is a twofold purpose.

1. It is necessary for Norwegians to get closure.
2. The question that the court has to decide is whether Breivik can be held responsible for his actions or whether he can be declared criminally insane.

Most Norwegians would feel comfortable with Breivik being declared criminally insane, as they have difficulty accepting that one of their own, a sane blond ethnic Norwegian, can commit the acts he did. This reaction has happened before. The Norwegian Nobel Literature prize winner Knut Hamsun was a Nazi sympathizer during the time Nazi Germany occupied Norway in World War II. Norwegians could not accept their national hero could have such sympaties and be sane. The solution was to declared him insane.

If the trial was only to decide if he was guilty and to sentence him it could have been over in five minutes. Using Breivik’s own words (cut and paste) that he uttered from the witness box during the first two days of his trial, it could have gone like this:

Judge Wenche Arntzen:

How do you plead?

Breivik:

I did it, but I plead self-defence defending Europe from an invasion by Islamic hoards allowed in by multiculturalists.

Judge Wenche Arntzen:

Do you regret what you did? Do you feel any remorse?

Breivik:

I would do it again if given the chance. The intention was not to kill 69 youth, but to shoot all of them. The bomb was a fiasco not enough people were killed. I also wanted to slit the throat and cut off the head of former Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, film it and put it on the Internet. But unfortunately she had already left the island when I arrived.

Judge Wenche Arntzen:

Have you got anything more to say before I sentence you?

Breivik:

21 years in prison is pathetic. The death sentence would be reasonable.

Anders Breivik committed the crimes:

• Setting off a truck bomb in a government building in central Oslo, killing eight people.
• Killing sixty-two innocent unarmed Norwegian teenagers and young adults and seven youth leaders in a shooting spree.

Breivik’s View of His guilt:

• He admits committing the crimes. He not only admits doing it, he brags about it.
• Breivik has described in gruesome detail in court how he went about shooting his victims, what he thought while doing it and how he felt at the time.
• He feels no remorse, saying he would do so again if had the opportunity.
• He stated in court that his intention was not to kill sixty-nine young people, but to kill all of them.
• He even told the court in his opinion the fitting punishment for his actions (he does not consider them crimes) is the death penalty. He told the judge that 21 years in prison (the maximum sentence possible under existing Norwegian law) is “pathetic.”
• He said in court that he intended to kill Gro Harlem Brundtland (former Norwegian Prime Minister), by slitting her throat and beheading her while filming the gruesome act, and then uploading the video onto the Internet. Ms Brundtland had left the island by the time Breivik arrived.

Breivik’s Political Views Are Irrelevant

The political manifesto and all the multicultural and anti-Islamic rants are merely a psychological smokescreen, to avoid facing the fact that he felt slighted as a teenager and feels like a failure.

Breivik is not a Christian. He admitted in his “manifesto” that his “Christianity” is cultural and not spiritual or theological. Spree killing Christians do not exist. Jesus was not political and avoided politics.

“Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and give to God the things that are God’s.”

Jesus Christ

Breivik’s strategy to protect Norwegian culture and way of life, is typical fanatical Muslim political strategy. It is Al-Qaeda to the core, from multiple shock attacks to filming beheadings.

The Court Setup

There are two Judges, Wenche Arntzen and Arne Lyng, and three lay judges. One lay judge was replaced on the second day when it became knows he had written on FaceBook that Breivik should get a death sentence.

Anders Breivik has shown himself to be a skilful manipulator and the court setup is designed to prevent him hijacking the trial.

One prosecutor, Inga Bejer Engh, is the creative force, while the other prosecutor, Svein Holden, is the organizer holding their plot together.

Behind the scenes, in a room with a video link, is the policeman who interrogated and has had most contact with Breivik. His role is to listen for a change in Breivik’s testimony and comments. He then reports to the prosecutors at every break whether Breivik is changing his story.

In front of the judges’ bench are four psychiatrists who observe Breivik to determine his sanity and if he can be held legally responsible for his actions.

Understanding Anders Breivik

The key to understanding Anders Breivik is that he is a spree killer.

• There is a minority in society that use physical violence. Most of us do not hit people. We have a natural inhibition for physical violence. We use our voice and words, not fists.
• There are fewer people who murder. Most murders are committed either by a friend or acquaintance, or within a family; the result of spousal abuse or stopping a spouse from leaving a controlling and abusive partner, or honour killing. Less common is murder while committing a crime.
• Even less common are mass murderers who set off bombs that kill many people at one time.
• Even less common are serial killers. These are people who kill one person at a time over a long time span and return to a normal life between murders.
• Even less common than that is the spree killer. Spree killers kill many people in one situation; usually it is at schools, such as Columbine. These are usually planned, but carried out in a chaotic way as the spree murderer is in an emotionally confused and chaotic state.
• Extremely rare is the adult spree killer planning a spree murder rampage, with the cold calculating precision that Anders Breivik showed, knowing he would murder his victims while having eye contact with them, and preparing himself for that.

Not even Taliban crazies fall into this last category. These individuals are usually found working for a government and have been given the go-ahead to do their evil deeds. Joseph Mengele, the German SS officer and physician in Auschwitz, is an example.

So how did professional psychiatrists get it so wrong that one group says he is crazy and the other that he is sane?

Psychiatrists cannot make an objective test to see if someone is insane. They rely on what the patient says. In the first assessment, Breivik’s ego was firing on all cylinders, he had no contact with the outside world, media, and radio etc. He was doing his best to act out his fantasy. Result: he was considered to be suffering from schizophrenic paranoia.

The next assessment was done after his media restrictions were lifted and after he had learned of the results from the first assessment. He was more careful about what he said during that assessment.

Then there are the problems with diagnostic criteria. To test if someone has diabetes is possible, but hypertension is problematic. Where does the line go between sick and healthy. The Body Mass Index (BMI) is, by consensus, the standard measurement of body fat to assess if someone is underweight, normal or overweight.

Body mass index (BMI) is:

• Underweight = Less than 18.5
• Normal weight = 18.5–24.9
• Overweight = 25–29.9
• Obese = BMI of 30 or greater

This man on the left is Mariusz Pudzianowski, five times winner of the World’s Strongest Man title. He has a BMI of 38.
Is he obese, as his BMI would suggest?

Psychiatric diagnoses are similar to the BMI example. There is a general rule, based on statistics, but the individual diagnosis must be done considering the specific individual being assessed. Statistical averages are useful when talking generally about a large population, but can be irrelevant when considering an individual. Applying statistics based a population of millions, mindlessly onto one individual, is foolishness not science. Unfortunately this happens daily.

Psychiatry on trial

It seems like psychiatry is on trial and not Anders Breivik. He sits emotionless, more like an observer than a defendant. Psychiatrists and psychologists are defending their diagnosis, misdiagnosis and changing opinions. The weakness in psychiatric diagnosis is the level of subjectivity as opposed to objective diagnostics.

Using a personality disorder as an example, which is fitting as Breivik has at least one personality disorder, we can look at a Borderline Personality Disorder patient’s perspectives. In this example (an actual example) it is a patient who has been encouraged by family to seek therapy.

The Patient’s Perspective:

The psychologist listens to the borderline patient and relies only on the borderline patient’s own story. The psychologist then comes to the conclusion that the patient does not have Borderline Personality Disorder. The motivation is that he has seen borderline patients before and the man in front of him does not fit the impression the previous patients had given, and the psychologist says that Borderline Personality Disorder becomes a disorder when the symptoms are severe.

The Family’s Perspective;

The Borderline patient’s wife suffers from two physical ailments that are stress related, is suffering from symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and about to have a nervous breakdown. The wife is also on medication to be able to cope with living with the Borderline patient, while the Borderline patient is not on any medication.

It is nearly impossible to hold a reasonable discussion with the patient because he keeps on projecting his inner imaginary reality onto others.

The wife asks her family to help her leave the home, as she is afraid of the patient’s unpredictable and volatile behavior. After a few months recovering from the trauma of living with the patient, she moves to another city and gets a protected identity.

Is this not severe enough for the psychologist?

The psychologist, by only listening to his patient and not his wife as well, for “ethical reasons,” did not get the wife’s perspective has no idea how severe his patient’s behavior was. In addition the psychologist was fixated by the diagnostic manual and wass unaware of other ways of separating the different forms of this particular personality disorder. There are the classic Borderline patients who psychiatrists usually meet, and then there are the patients, who seldom are seen by psychiatrists. This particular patient is of the hidden kind.

Breivik’s Misdiagnosis

Breivik was living out his fantasy when he spoke to the first set of psychiatrists. Then after reading their report on him, it dawned on Breivik that he might get committed to a “madhouse” as he expressed it. So when the second set of psychiatrists interviewed Breivik, he was more careful how he worded his answers.

This is not the behavior of a psychotic individual, but the scheming manipulations of a nasty narcissist. His killing spree was a carefully prepared and action. Breivik’s shouts of, “Whoo Hoo!” each time he shot an unarmed youth was the culmination of nine years of conscious meticulous planning.

Hate is not a symptom of insanity. Anders Breivik was not insane, he was venting his hatred on immigrants, those who were friendly with immigrants, and young women.