AMERICAN POLITICAL ASSASSINS

CONTRIBUTING CHARACTERISTICS

Lecture 2 – Identity Development

"The men they murdered were famous, men who had won popularity contests, and those who murdered them, for the most part, were individuals who had been losing popularity contests

all their lives. . . . The characters, from Booth to Oswald,are haunting American malcontents who have lived

their lives underwater,bubbling to the surface only for one ghastly gasp of

air,

a spasm of dreadful clarity." Schwartz, J. (n.d.). Background information. Review of Broadway musical Assassins. Retrieved on Dec. 23, 1996, from: http://www.rose. brandeis.edu /users/pei sach/assassins/assassins.html.

Status Incongruence

The gap between "biologically ascribed status" and "achieved position" in terms of occupational variable.

"Over and over a consistent pattern for . . . presidential assassins repeats itself":

“It is the gap between the position they believe they are entitled to in life and the reality of their existence, "as well as an extreme and obsessive desire for greatness of a scale totally inconsistent with the achievements of each. . . .their achievements are not congruent with their aspirations." (See ASSASSIN.DOC)

Wilkerson, D. Y. (1976). Political assassins and status incongruence: A sociological interpretation. In Doris Wilkerson (Ed.), Social structure and assassination (pp.25-39). Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing.

SELF-CONCEPT AS A FACTORSELF-CONCEPT AS A FACTOR

“Lack of significant extra-familial primary relationships (lack of close friendship ties, occupational instability, and either strained or no relationships with the opposite sex) is a function, in part, of the absence of ‘normal’ intra-familial relationship in early childhood. . .”

“due to the death of a parent and/or to occupying an extreme ordinal position. . .

The relationship between these and the resulting presidential assassination . . . is tied to the self-concept of the assassin.”

Wilkinson, D. Y., and Gaines, J. The status characteristics and primary group relationships of seven political assassins in America." In Doris Wilkerson (Ed.), Social structure and assassination (pp.108-119). Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing.

See ASSASSIN.DOC

Male children thrust into the role of surrogate spouse and protector of their mothers

often “grow up with incredibly grandiose ideas about themselves.

The child at an early age learns the bizarre message

that he is so powerful he can take care of the most powerful person in the world—his mother.”

Alice Hoagland, court appointed psychologist to Mark David Chapman. Jones, J.(1992). Let me take you down: Inside the mind of Mark David Chapmane, the man who killed John Lennon. New York: Villard Books.

Booth’s mother, who from age 14 he was responsible for