Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 18
October 13, 1966
NUMBER 23, PAGE 5b

The Psychiatrists And Mass Murder

Noel Smith

The psychiatry that has become an institution in this country, that has the authority and standing and influence in ecclesiastical And educational circles, in courts and legislatures, and whose peremptory decisions are increasingly and alarmingly being substituted for due process of law, is not the valid and praiseworthy psychiatry that recognizes the relativity and limitations of psychiatry. This institutional psychiatry is Freudian psychiatry. It is humanistic. It scorns the authority of the Bible. It scorns the sin proclaimed by the Bible. Scorning the sin of the Bible, it logically scorns the Incarnation; there never was any premise for it.

It is an interesting and sobering experience to listen to some of these psychiatrists talk about the mass murder of eight helpless nurses in Chicago and the mass murder of 13 and the wounding of 34 in Austin, Texas.

One of them in Austin is reported in the press as saying that Charles Whitman came to see him. The psychiatrist said that Whitman was "oozing" with hostility. The psychiatrist said that Whitman told him that he was thinking about going up on the tower of the university and start shooting people.

And what impression did that statement make on the psychiatrist? The psychiatrist said that he saw no indication that Whitman might be a danger to himself or the community. He didn't feel that Charley would do anything violent.

Right on the heels of a senseless mass murder in Chicago, a man comes to see a psychiatrist, "oozing" with hostility, and tells the psychiatrist that he was thinking about getting a deer rifle and going up on the tower and start shooting people.

And, to the psychiatrist, that was no indication that Whitman might be a danger to himself or to the community.

Why didn't the psychiatrist inform the proper university authorities so they could see to it that "Charley" did not go to that tower carrying with him any kind of bag or case that could conceal a deer rifle--not to mention an arsenal.

And when a man comes to a psychiatrist "oozing" with hostility and complains about the members of his family, and says that he wants to get a deer rifle and start shooting people, if that isn't an indication, in these violent days, that he might be a danger to himself and the community, what could constitute an indication?

Another psychiatrist, described as "tops" in his field, talked about the tumor found on Whitman's brain. This psychiatrist said that the tumor "could" have been the cause of the mass murder, out that "the chances are it wasn't." But he went on to say that the tumor could not be eliminated.

But the man interviewing this psychiatrist didn't ask him about the question of there being no evidence that the man jailed and indicted for the mass murder of eight nurses, had a brain tumor. And the psychiatrist of course did not bring it up.

This psychiatrist thought that the sewage of violence and crime and licentiousness pouring into American homes day and night on television, and the filth bending the shelves of the peddlers of pornography, and the filthy movies, might have an "exciting effect" in the case of unstable adults. But in the case of children "these movies and television shows provide a relatively harmless outlet for the impulses which I've mentioned before, and, by this draining off the hostility, may be considered as a desirable operation."

That is as plain as anybody can make it. All this sewage of crime, violence, drunkenness, profanity, lewdness, and licentiousness pouring from the movies, news-stands, and television is a "desirable operation" for children.

So says a "top" psychiatrist.

These psychiatrists confess the woeful limitations of their knowledge about anything. In the midst of universal violence and crime they are at best fatalists.

Before you follow this arrogant institution of Freudian psychiatry in throwing away your Bible and turning your back on what it has to say about sin and the real remedy for it, you should first demand that this psychiatry tell you what it is that causes the "oozing" of hostility and causes that hostility to murder 13 innocent people and to wound 34 more -- every one of whom the hostility intended to kill. And then to tell you the remedy for it.

Psychiatry accounting for this universal violence and crime, and citing a real remedy for it, is about as serious as an idiot trying to dam the Mississippi River with a box of matches.

We are holding on to our Bible, to the Saviour of the world, to the Holy Spirit.

- Baptist Bible Tribune June 23, 1966