Ted Kaczynski (Unabomber) | Mental Health & Personality | MMPI Results

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel hello this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can take a look at the mental health and personality characteristics in the ted kaczynski case Ted Kaczynski of course was also known as the Unabomber another question here is what do the results of his MMPI indicate so just a reminder I'm not diagnosing anybody here in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this so first I'll take a look at the timeline then look at the investigation Ted Kaczynski's background and then the mental health and personality factors in this case so from the perspective of an outside observer this case starts on May 25th 1978 a package wrapped in brown paper is found on the campus of the University of Illinois in Chicago it was to be delivered to the sender a professor at nearby Northwestern University the professor however did not send the package so he gave it to campus security and it exploded injuring one of the security guards in May of 1979 a graduate student at Northwestern University was injured by a bomb and then we see in November of 1979 twelve passengers aboard American Airlines flight 444 from Chicago to Washington DC were injured from smoke inhalation a bomb in the cargo area of the aircraft failed to detonate completely but it still caused smoke this occurred while the plane was flying and of course caused an emergency landing then we see in June 1980 the president of American Airlines was injured by a bomb at this point the FBI formed the u nabob task force named for the earliest targets universities and airlines they had no idea Kaczynski was the Unabomber the FBI discovered that the suspect used materials that were commonly available like nails tape fishing wire and wood there were also no fingerprints or DNA left in any of the packages Kaczynski did leave false clues in the packages though evidently designed to mislead investigators now from October 1981 through June 1985 six more bombs were sent to universities two were diffused and four caused injuries to five different people then we moved to December 1985 a computer store owner was killed making it the first murder that Kaczynski would commit February 1987 Salt Lake City Utah a bomb explodes and injures a computer store owner a woman reported seeing a man in the parking lot outside that store her recollection beats to the now famous drawing of the Unabomber suspect in June of 1993 we see two different bombs injured two more people the attacks occur just two days apart December 1994 one of Kaczynski's bombs kills an advertising executive in New Jersey and in April 1995 another bomb kills a timber industry lobbyists in California Kaczynski had murdered three people and wounded 23 from 1978 to 1995 in June 1995 Kaczynski sends a 35 thousand word essay titled industrial society and its future to the New York Times The Washington Post and some other media outlets he demanded that the media outlets publish this manifesto if they satisfy this demand he said he would stop his criminal activity it's now moving to the investigation and his arrest so the FBI had formed a psychological profile of the Unabomber suspect it theorized that the suspect had connections to academia was highly intelligent and had a degree specifically in the hard sciences interestingly although this profile was actually extremely accurate the FBI gave up on this profile years after was formed the FBI offered a 1 million dollar reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspect this combined with the publication of the manifesto led to the FBI receiving thousands of phone calls a day for several months one of the people that a contacted the FBI was David Kaczynski Ted Kaczynski's younger brother David had recognized the style of writing in the manifesto as belonging to Ted it took the FBI two months of investigating this possible match to get a warrant to search Ted's cabin located outside of Lincoln Montana prior to this Ted Kaczynski's name had never been on any list of potential suspects compiled by the FBI agents believed that the suspect they were looking for was 10 years older than Kaczynski Ted was taken into custody on April 3 1996 the FBI found 40,000 journal pages that Kaczynski had written by hand they contain descriptions of the crimes and instructions how to make explosives they also found a live bomb so in theory one that was ready to be mailed so it would appear that Ted Kaczynski did not intend to keep his promise about discontinuing criminal activity I know several people who have commented on this particular activity is very disappointing like they were disappointed in Kaczynski so in a sense I guess they're saying if you can't trust somebody who sends explosives to all these people around the country who can you trust I'm not sure exactly what they're getting out there I mean it seems pretty clear that Kaczynski was going to continue doing what he was doing before the publication of his manifesto but I find that interesting that people would be really kind of let down by Kaczynski having that other explosive in his cabin like if he can't trust Kaczynski who can you trust again I don't I don't get it but either way I've heard that a few times in 1998 Kaczynski accepted a plea deal where he would serve the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole he has filed numerous appeals since then they have all been unsuccessful so now moving to Kaczynski's background Ted Kaczynski was born in Chicago Illinois on May 22nd 1942 everything really seemed fine he was relatively normal by most standards and then he developed an allergic reaction at nine months old he had to go into the hospital for some time for several months after his hospitalization he appeared fearful of being separated from his mother he was also less responsive and more withdrawn in elementary school he seemed to be socializing well then his family moved and he had to transfer to a different junior high he took an IQ test at that time and according to his report scored between 160 and 170 points so about four standard deviations above the mean right would be highly unusual he was permitted to skip sixth grade and after this yet difficulty fitting in and was bullied during these years people described him as shy they said he would shut down in social situations they referred to him as a loner in high school Kaczynski continued to be thought of as an outsider but he did exceptionally well academically he had a specific interest in mathematics he was permitted to skip 11th grade and he graduated high school at just 15 years old Kaczynski then went to Harvard College and graduated with a degree in mathematics in 1962 during this time we see he is described as a genius but also socially awkward he also spent over 200 hours in a psychological study he was a participant in the study and this involved him being repeatedly berated verbally and humiliated it's really amazing to me that academics would think that this type of study was a good idea it really highlights how some academics have a lot of intelligence but no common sense after Harvard Kaczynski went to the University of Michigan he would earn both a masters and a doctoral degree in mathematics in 1967 at age 25 Kaczynski became an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of California Berkeley as an assistant professor he conducted research and taught evidently his teaching style was rigid and disconnected from the students he would read from the textbook instead of engaging in a dialogue with the students he wouldn't answer questions so he was not well liked as a professor Kaczynski left that position in 1969 and offered no explanation for that decision he moved back home with his parents and in 1971 he moved into a 10 foot by 14 foot cabin that he and his brother David had built outside of Lincoln Montana his life there was pretty simple not unusual for that rural area he didn't have running water or electricity he would ride a bicycle into town if he need anything he became increasingly concerned that his ability to live peacefully was being jeopardized by the expansion of industry in that area now shortly after this his criminal career begins up until the point he was arrested he had no significant criminal history he ran the red lights of a school bus at one point but that was about it he had no religious affiliation no history of substance use but he did have a history of seeking mental health treatment and I'll talk about that in the next section so now moving on to the mental health and personality factors that work in this case before I go through this analysis I want to mention something that Kaczynski said during one of his evaluations he said that science has no business probing the workings of the human mind right so he didn't appear particularly fond of mental health professionals so looking at his five factor model profile so I remember the five factors through the acronym ocean openness to experience conscientiousness extraversion agreeableness and neuroticism Kaczynski appears to have mid to high openness to experience mid range conscientiousness he seems to be extremely low in extraversion so introverted he has low to mid agreeableness and low to mid neuroticism now taking a look as intelligence we see this report I talked about before where his IQ was between 160 and 170 in May of 1996 when he was in prison he scored a 136 now this is an incredibly high score it's still over two standard deviations above the mean I think the second score is probably more accurate it was administered by a mental health professional in a controlled environment it's not uncommon when we see high levels of intelligence that it seems to come at a cost in terms of one's ability to socialize so many people in this situation are considered socially awkward and disconnected they don't like being around other people they feel like they're on the outside we see all these things with Kaczynski he had difficulty finding people he could relate to now in terms of what was happening with his mental health here we see a number of theories and quite a bit of controversy on this topic as I mentioned in the prior section we see Kaczynski did seek mental health care both prior to and after the beginning of his criminal career when he was at the University of Michigan he had a involving fantasies of being a female he went to talk to a mental health clinician there but in the waiting room he became anxious by the time he got to see the clinician he simply said he was depressed and anxious so he never brought the topic up in 1988 we see he sought counseling several times around the issue of establishing relationships with women he reported depression and insomnia at that same time before the plea agreement was entered On January 22nd 1998 Kaczynski objected to the idea that he should mount an insanity defense this is what his attorneys had recommended On January 7th 1998 he attempted to end his own life using his underwear as a tourniquet when his vision became blurry and he started to feel dizzy he worried about possible brain damage that he could sustain and a non-fatal attempt so he discontinued and because of this activity a judge ordered a mental health evaluation a clinician named Sally Johnson performed the evaluation the total interview time in this assessment was about 22 hours an intake interview at a mental health agency would take about one and a half to two and a half hours so this was an extremely thorough evaluation the report is 51 pages it's actually quite interesting I'll put a link to it in the description for this video as part of the mental health evaluation Kaczynski was given an M MPI - so this is a Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory arguably the most advanced psychometric instrument that has ever been developed he was also given a Milan clinical multiaxial inventory to a Beck Depression Inventory and a projective test called the draw a person picking an apple from a tree alright so that's a real thing I didn't just make that up that's an actual test it's not too popular anymore but at that time it was somewhat popular projective tests have kind of fallen out of favor the idea behind a projective test is that you have kind of a neutral stimuli and somebody will project their own thoughts and feelings onto that stimuli so the Rorschach test the inkblot test is another example of a active there based on a psychoanalytic theory defense mechanisms projection is one of the defense mechanisms so now back to the MMPI dr. Johnson's interpretation has been disputed by many other people I'll cover that controversy after I talk about her diagnosis I did a comprehensive review of the MMPI to a while back and another video I'll put the link to that video in the description as well dr. Johnson gave Kosinski a provisional diagnosis of schizophrenia paranoid type this diagnosis was available in 1998 under the DSM 4 it's not available in the current DSM in the current DSM it's just referred to as schizophrenia there was also a disorganized type catatonic undifferentiated and residual type in that old DSM that had been dropped in addition we see that dr. Johnson diagnosed Kaczynski with paranoid personality disorder this is a cluster A personality disorder in the same cluster as schizoid and schizotypal she also diagnosed him with antisocial and avoidant features so not avoidant an antisocial personality disorders just the features interestingly antisocial is in cluster B and avoidant is in cluster C so in this diagnosis we see all three of the personality disorder clusters are represented dr. Johnson believed that paranoid person is order was premorbid so that means that she believed that disorder was already there when the schizophrenia developed now the schizophrenia was justified by the presence of two long-standing delusional beliefs modern technology was controlling Kaczynski he believed that and he was verbally abused by his parents when he was young which led to him being unable to establish a relationship with a woman dr. Johnson noted that Kaczynski was not psychotic at the time of her evaluation now the paranoid personality disorder was justified by Kaczynski's pervasive distrust of others the antisocial personality features were justified by the criminal offenses that he committed now she would have probably given him the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder except he did not have symptoms before the age of 15 so he meant enough of the symptom criteria but he did not meet that other criterion the avoidant personality features were justified by the long-standing pattern of isolation and having difficulty in social situations dr. Johnson believed that Kaczynski was competent to stand trial which of course in this case functionally meant he was competent to accept the plea agreement now it may sound unusual that he was found competent but it's really not a high standard there one has to be able to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings and to assist attorneys in their defense right so again it's not really necessarily a high bar that's set in the sentence so now moving to the controversial interpretation of the MMPI results dr. Johnson's interpretation of the results suggest that Kaczynski honestly answered all the questions including some that indicated he had strange thoughts odd perceptions and feelings of isolation and alienation his profile was said to be consistent with someone who would be socially insecure introverted shy as well as hostile irritable and demanding the profile is also consistent with somebody who would avoid social activities and keep their distance from people who would be described as cold and distant and be unable to directly express feelings and who would be hypersensitive to criticism and troubled by a lack of relationships this point is particularly interesting because it runs contrary to the idea of schizoid personality disorder and I'll talk about that in a few moments so some interesting conclusions we see from the evaluation of Kaczynski specifically from the MMPI results but there has been some disagreement as I indicated there's another popular theory about how this MMPI could be interpreted that we see in the research literature so this theory goes like this the results of the MMPI indicate that Kaczynski was over reporting symptoms so it's possible that this can be attributed to his unusual personality so his unusual personality could lead to an unusual pattern of responses but another possibility would be that he was lying this other Theory also finds no evidence of disordered thinking little evidence of delusions or persecutory ideas no depression he was upset about the prospect of an insanity defense but that's not the same thing as depression this theory says that there is a pronounced lack of positive emotions indicated in this mmpi profile and that's not the same thing as having negative emotions so positive emotions are tracked on extraversion and negative emotions are tracked on neuroticism additionally here we see no signs of anxiety so with this theory what does that really leave us with well it seems to align with schizoid personality disorder now interestingly this is what the prosecution experts believed that Kaczynski hat so again they had a difference of opinion there with dr. Johnson another interesting point here the results of the Millan indicated elevations on the schizoid clinical scale so just to cover the other two assessments that were given the BDI the Beck Depression Inventory and they draw a person picking an apple from a tree both those test results came back as normal so what is schizoid personality disorder well it's a cluster a person is order we see seven symptom criteria in the DSM four or more are required for a diagnosis so the symptom criteria are neither desires nor enjoys close relationships including being part of a family this one seems to align almost always choosing solitary activities this one seems like a good fit considering he lived in a cabin in a rural part of Montana has little if any interest in having sexual experiences with another person I don't think this one fits takes pleasure and few if any activities this one's not really clear lacks close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives this one seems to be endorsed appears indifferent to the praise or criticism of others while he was hyper sensitive to criticism so this one does not seem to be endorsed and shows emotional coldness detachment or flattened affect this one seems endorsed so a good argument could be made for schizoid personality disorder so from everything I've seen here what do I think about this controversy around the diagnosis well as I mentioned I can't diagnose him I can only align symptoms with behavior like his but if I were to do that I think I would lean more on the of schizophrenia I think dr. Johnson made some good points about the delusions particularly convincing was the idea that Kaczynski believed modern technology was controlling him that does seem to rise to the level of a delusion we see an alignment with avoidant personality features and also with antisocial I think she made good points there as well as far as the premorbid paranoid personality disorder I think this makes sense based on how we understand cluster a personality pathology we understand it to be on a continuum with schizophrenia so it wouldn't be unusual for somebody who was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia to have had paranoid personality disorder before that so the idea is that that personality disorder could be an indication that somebody would develop schizophrenia later on so what about the schizoid personality disorder argument well we see alignment with some of the schizoid symptom criteria like I talked about so perhaps really here we see both schizoid personality disorder and paranoid person I sort were premorbid so certainly a complex set of symptoms but there's a lot there around cluster a personality pathology and around schizophrenia the Ted Kaczynski case has been an area of interest from many professionals in the world of mental health and for those in the criminal justice system Kaczynski was an extremely dangerous criminal if not for his brother recognizing that writing style it's likely he could have evaded capture indefinitely he really had a dangerous combination of extreme intelligence delusional thinking paranoia and a lack of empathy I know whenever I talk about famous cases like the Ted Kaczynski case there will be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always I hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 394,872

Keywords: Ted Kaczynski, Unabomber, schizophrenia, paranoid personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, factor 1 psychopathy, factor 2 psychopathy, sociopathy, vulnerable narcissism, hypersensitivity to criticism, David Kaczynski, FBI, Lincoln, Montana, mental health

Id: SnlUgfBB2jA

Length: 21min 54sec (1314 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 23 2020