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Derrick Bird: mentality of a suicide bomber
First Post psychoanalyst Coline Covington on what makes a suicide killer take others with him
The night before taxi driver Derrick Bird went on his killing spree in west Cumbria, he had an argument at his taxi rank and drove away saying: "You won't see me again." This was the first clue that Bird had planned his suicide - and the shootings the next day.
Bird's victims were not all random. The first victims - his twin brother and the family solicitor who is thought to have been involved in drawing up his mother's will - were both shot in their homes. Three other victims were fellow taxi drivers. Bird had been under particular stress recently as his 90-year-old mother, who is seriously ill, had been staying with him between periods in a nursing home. It is now thought that a row over his mother's will triggered the shootings.
Bird's elaborate drive along the Cumbrian coast from Whitehaven, shooting at different locations until he stopped in Boot where he abandoned his car and shot himself, suggests that it is highly likely that he had in some way also mapped out his route and may well have had fantasies of the shooting spree and of his particular victims - long before enacting it.
It is very likely that Bird's victims were, at least in terms of his unconscious, not random at allWe can see some of the seeds of Bird's shooting spree in his past. He was a loner, a trait that is often associated with men who commit spree killings. He also knew how to handle guns. He had grown up hunting with his father and inherited his shotguns.
Most important, his murder of his twin brother, followed by the murder of the family solicitor, suggests that there was intense rivalry between the siblings that could well have reached a climax with their mother's impending death.
Bird's separation from his wife has been attributed to his wish for her to have an abortion with her second pregnancy which she refused to do. This may be some indication that he could only tolerate one child and that another child presented too much of a rivalrous threat to him.
But what about all the other people Bird shot? Were they merely victims of Bird's uncontrollable rage and omnipotent destructiveness?
Although we can only speculate on Bird's motivations for the shootings, what is common in such acts of violence is that there is a detailed fantasised scenario that is being enacted. Each character in the scenario counts.
Just as Bird charted the locations of his final drive, it is also very likely that his victims were, at least in terms of his unconscious, not random at all but represented internal characters with whom he was in conflict.
The young man cutting a hedge, the older woman crossing the road, the driver who stopped beside him, may well have set off associations with people in his life that appeared in his mind. Each time someone is killed, there is yet someone else who threatens. As Freud wrote, "There is no death in the unconscious." This gives us some way of understanding why Bird went on a killing spree and why he knew he had to kill himself in the end.
The fantasised scenario is also played out before an audience. The message may be as simple as, "See what I can do, who I can destroy, how powerful I am", or it may be more complicated, depending on the internal relationships at work. Lying behind the scenario is an overwhelming experience of impotence that fosters murderous feelings. The result is an emotional time bomb that is waiting to be set off.
The final suicidal act is a natural ending. While some theories suggest that suicide in these cases is committed out of guilt, it is more likely that it is actually the ultimate psychic murder of a hated internal object that is sought. In effect, the actual killings do not quench the murderous feelings but exacerbate them. While the murders are committed out of impotent rage, there is also an unconscious masochistic desire to be one with a loving internal figure who requires total submission.
The psychological parallel with suicide bombers is striking. The aim of the terrorist is to be loved, either by God or by the leader of the terrorist cell or both, by submitting him or herself completely to his power.
The murderous feelings towards the parent in the case of the terrorist it is normally the father - are then split off and directed towards the 'other' and ultimately towards the self in the suicidal act. The terrorist is also killing off what is 'other', 'alien' and impure within himself. Internal conflict is eradicated by an attempt to wipe out everyone who represents a threat to narcissistic supremacy.
Bird's terrorist was undoubtedly inside his mind and became so powerful that he could no longer resist his commands. His murderous acts may have held out the promise that he would in the end fulfill his omnipotent desire of being the only one.
Had Bird wanted to be his mother's only beloved? It is Bird's mother who has lived to witness his carnage. Was she his audience of one? ·
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This analysis is completely decontextualised and of little use. Bird was at the epicentre of powerful social, cultural and economic forces. As his biographical details unfolded after the case hit the headlines he seemed to be plagued by feelings of insecurity caused by potential problems with his family inheritance, his threatened position as an honest tax-paying citizen in an ailing nation-state and his precarious livelihood as a taxi driver forced to compete with workmates who had been turned into business rivals in an ailing, deregulated neoliberal economy. Terrifying Lacanian voids - which emphasise the fundamental sense of lack and insecurity at the core of every psyche - seemed to be opening up in three vital dimensions of his identity and security; the familial, the communal and the economic, what most people fear as potential evils, which bring this primal sense of lack into stark relief, were in the throes of becoming objective realities. A violent reaction that in the days before the Statute of Winchester would have been regarded as normal resurfaced in a modern age that claims to have left such barbarism behind. This is the first case in England, but not so in other parts of the world; see Neil Clark's article. Bird's actions were simply extreme manifestations of the norm, a rare modern explosion of the fear and aggression that is reproduced at the core of our society as economic drivers and social ordering mechanisms.
Even when the witness (perpetrator) is available, like Dennis Nielson or Harold Shipman (for a time), what they say is rarely comprehensible by a normal person, but saying that a person 'lost it' or 'went berserk' is hardly a theory or in any way explanatory, its not really simple, its just saying we have no idea what happened. What exactly did he lose? and how or why did he lose it? Although psychoanalytic or any other theory is not provable in itself, it might serve as a framework to investigate the psychodynamics of similar cases and perhaps enable pscyhologists to build up a picture. Will this help to prevent future cases? unlikely. I think the theory that neo-liberalism has undermined social cohesion as expressed by Neil Clark: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/64126,news-comment,news-politics,get-used-... is a more useful way to look at it.
Of course, non of the above can be proved or disproved. Ryan, Hamilton, and now Bird all killed themselves, so the main witnesses are unavailable for cross examination. I suppose the theory that they "lost it" and went berserk is too simple for you? Oh well, as long as all this theorising keeps someone in a, presumably well paid, job.