Understanding

In his book Columbine Dave Cullen credits an F.B.I. psychologist named Dwayne Fuselier with doing the diligent work to try to understand and diagnose the killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Klebold was diagnosed as depressive. The following are some quotes from Cullen's book, which I pieced together for this post.

"Depressives are inherently angry, though they rarely appear that way. They are angry at themselves. "Anger turned inward equals depression," Fuselier explained. Depression leads to murder when the anger is severe enough and then turns outward. Some depressives withdraw - from friends, family, schoolmates. Most of them get help or get over it. A few spiral downward towards suicide. but for a tiny percentage, their own death is not enough. The rarest of these angry depressives take the reasoning one step further: everyone was mean to them, everyone had a role in their misfortune. They want to lash out randomly and show us all, hurt us back and make sure we feel it. But murder or even suicide takes willpower as well as anger. Dylan fantasized about suicide for years without making an attempt. He was not a man of action. He was conscripted by a boy who was."