With the Virginia Tech killing spree still making headlines, and all the calls for gun reform, banning violent video games and the like that it has stirred up, I found an interesting article over off EW.com. Apparently one of the evidences they’re toting around for the shooter’s mental instability, or whatever they want to pawn the killings off on, was his writing. An English professor was disturbed enough by what he read off of Cho Seung-Hui’s work that he alerted his superiors, who of course told him not to bother with it. Then this all happens.
Question. Should college writing, whether screenplays, essays, stories, etc. be scanned for potential indications of mental instability, rage issues, and so on?
None other than Stephen King weighs in on this:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20036014,00.html
His opinion is that potential psychopaths can’t be screened out by their artistic (questionably labeled) products. Sure, hindsight is great for this kind of thing. But let’s not be seeing English-class monitors leaning over student’s shoulders, making sure that short story is kept PG. Personally, I’ve written some weird stuff. Violent. Maybe disturbing, depending on what revision draft you peeked at. My imagination dregs up some strange things, I’ll admit. I’ve got what I’d like to think are some rather nasty villains, consequences and crisis for the protags to face…but aren’t those elements that keep the story intense, emotional and full of the tension? Obviously, if one’s work degrades into nothing more than an exercise to see how many ways you can imaginatively kill someone off, that might signal trouble.
I also agree with the latter part of King’s editorial. Some of us write in order to push those darker parts of ourselves out onto the paper where it can be dried and stored away without sitting in our heads. We write out our depression and our anger. We dice up our emotions and put them on ice, processed and set aside, albeit in a fictional sense. Still, I would say writing is its own form of therapy, because we’re able to feel a full scope of tension and resolution every time we work through a story, and that gives us a level of freedom and release that others don’t have.
Your thoughts?
I see that smile.
Actually, I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately–especially since the VT shooting.
All in all, I agree (I haven’t read the article yet, so what I say here is strictly relating to what you said). I’ve written some nasty, dark crud and my creative writing teacher hasn’t been “distrubed” by it. I was actually somewhat concerned she might do something weird after the shootings because most of what I’ve turned in this semester has been rather dark.
While writing itself cannot be used to identify “troubled” individuals, I wonder if it can’t be used as evidence to clue people in on a person when that person /also/ exhibits antisocial* and withdrawn behavior. In other words, no, writing can’t be an indication all by itself, but if taken together with other behavioral problems . . . I think that it’s a valid piece of evidence then.
Geeze, I hope that made sense.
*antisocial in the psychological definition: a person who doesn’t care about the rights of others and violates them regularly.
Yes. It made sense. One of my friends from church, Greg, once talked about (and showed) some of the somewhat dark, morbid drawings he did in college that literally scared his roomie. Fortunately, the guy seems to have turned out to be a rather decent chap (although with a tendency to show off pictures of his bare, hairy feet).