Family annihilations, murder-suicides: warning signs go unheeded because we normalize them
Read: Denormalizing the Signs of Impending Disaster, by Prof. Michael Schwalbe at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/18-8 -- and then add in the common denominator that the good professor himself fails to clearly acknowledge: mother.
Overwhelmingly, the loss involved is the loss of, or inability to secure, nurturant devoted love, motherlove, and its culturally acceptable adult substitutes once it becomes wussy for a real man to want his mommy: the wife or girlfriend and the family and emotional support connected to her. This loss may or may not also be accompanied by related losses of status, property, power, and authority, but it is the one loss for which there is no formalized social acknowledgment by way of compensation, no formalized sympathy via the justice system, little empathy, and possibly even perceived punishment (for example, divorce child support).
All these other losses on their own may create anger, or depression, and depression may lead to suicide, but depression and these other losses are rarely found on their own precipitating mass suicide-murders. There's a dangerous push now too, a backlash movement, to normalize coercive control and domestic violence as "situational" or "common couple" violence", along with the usual denigration of women's credibility when they fear for themselves or their children.
Recommended further reading, William Pollack, e.g. Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons From the Myths of Boyhood, and generally, Eli Newberger http://www.elinewberger.com/articles/archive/archive-index.html
Also see: Will He Kill? http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/will-he-kill.html
and on domestic violence, http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/013.htm http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/why-he-kills.pdf
Read more: http://justice.posterous.com/warning-signs-go-unheeded-because-we-normaliz#ixzz0EkG1YKSr&B
Read more: http://justice.posterous.com/warning-signs-go-unheeded-because-we-normaliz#ixzz0EkG1YKSr&B
