Questions About the Suburban Massacre in Littleton

In the aftermath of the Columbine shooting in Littleton, Colorado, we are in a situation where the more we learn the more questions we have — a condition that may well continue indefinitely. At present there are too many perspectives and dynamics to choose from: the individual feelings of rejection (narcissistic injuries) and the reactive grandiosity in assuming power roles (identification with the aggressor) as well as the cultural and the political which provide means and models for enacting violent revenge.

I want to restrict these few observations to

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questions of parenting: not only about what seems to have gone wrong, but how difficult it is to know. Not long ago, with my then about-to-marry daughter Hilary, now the mother of a girl, I monitored the messages in Child, a mass-market magazine for parents with young children. In many ways, its viewpoints were enlightened: non-normative, but responsive to reasonable expectations, and generally accepting of children as interesting, different human beings.

But one vignette raised some alarms. “You’re opposed in principle to violent toys,” goes a question-answer feature, but “your 3-year-old wants a toy gun.” You should say, “Guns hurt people. You don’t want to hurt people. Let’s talk about ways you can help people.” On the one hand, the child receives a clear message from the parent and may feel reassured that he/she participates in the parent’s non-violent aura. The child may also infer that if he/she wants to retain the parent’s love, he/she should identify with the parent’s picture of the world — keep the bad stuff outside. However, this could arouse a less adaptive defense of identification-with-the-aggressor, or just as easily inhibit the child’s subsequent needs for self-protection. In fact, the parent’s seizing the high ground in opposing violence in principle may shield unaddressed anxieties over aggression, self-injury, sexuality, etc.

There is in fact a breakdown in empathic attunement because the parent is scripting the child like a blank sheet in the Lockean mode, an opportunity to explore the meaning of toys in parents’ and children’s life is missed, and a crucial distinction between fantasy and reality is blurred. The so-called gun is after all only a toy to a three-year-old (and should also be to an adult); toys are transitional objects that serve genuine developmental needs. It may be the boy is attempting to dis-identify with the mother by externalizing his dawning awareness of the genital to have it recognized and validated, in which case mother’s disapproval may return him to an earlier symbiotic bind of total dependency; this may in turn alleviate the mother’s own anxieties over separation and loss. Eliminating the so-called gun from the field of play then reassures her and motivates her to double her energies toward this illusory safety. If the toy-gun is appropriately perceived as a transitional object, however, it will eventually succumb to the fate of all childhood’s dolls and toys — gradual phasing-out and abandonment. When the mother interferes by imposing her own fears in terms of unquestionable principles, the child may experience the narcissistic mortification of helpless defeat at the hands of a beloved but more powerful adversary, and may grow up associating guns or genitals with power and danger, setting the stage for acting out on the one hand and sexual/gender conflicts on the other.

A neighbor of the family of Dylan Klebold (one of the two presumed Littleton killers) recalls saying to the Klebold mother, Sue, that “in your house you have all these boy toys, while I have only girl toys.” “Boy toys, but no toy guns,” Sue Klebold answered. A neighbor of the Eric Harris family (the other presumed killer) recalls the Harrises as great neighbors. “They’re always raking their leaves, shoveling their sidewalks, lending a hand in a pinch. And they have terrific boys — pleasant, clean-cut, respectful toward their parents.” Her own kids were “such troublemakers, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, throwing parties when their parents weren’t around.” The Harris parents dutifully attend PTA meetings, Little League, etc. When a neighbor, however, met with them to call their attention to death threats sent by Eric to their son, Mrs. Harris broke down in tears (“In Littleton, Neighbors Ponder What Went Wrong,” Washington Post, May 2).

Where does what appears to be “good-enough parenting” turn out to be something else, which I’m tentatively calling “As-if parenting”? The clinical term emanates from Helene Deutsch’s attempts to depict personalities akin to our borderline/narcissistic syndromes today. Among other features, the as-if personality has not consolidated stable identifications, and consequently relies on society’s ready-made stereotypes of adult behavior, revealed as partly external and resulting in shallow interpersonal ties. Are we seeing today new versions of the older bourgeois forms of respectability and propriety now defined in wealth and status substituting for genuine ideals and relationships, and thereby subverting parenting?

Children may collude with such as-if parenting by outward compliance. This false-self seems to have been the one perceived by the probation officer, the judge, neighbors, and school officials in their dealings with the two Littleton boys.

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