Notorious stalker George Gollin: "Alarming...CRACKPOT"

[Martin Eisenstadt]

These rambling, incoherent statements are excerpts from an ACTUAL SPEECH made by Crackpot CHEA director George Gollin (George D. Gollin, George Dana Gollin) on May 17, 1998.

Below is a post I made last year when the mental case Jared Loughner was blasting pols in AZ. It concerned his "rambling, incoherent" writings and comments.

I'm posting it again on this thread because after seeing that video of the Gollum cartoon caricature speaking Gollum's actual words it struck me as a clear exhibition of the very sort of delusional thinking that is common in schizophrenia. As Dr. Torrey said, "when you see these rambling, incoherent writings and comments, there is almost no other disorder where this is a prominent symptom.”

As Torrey says, “The psychosis picks up on the grand themes of the day." If you can stand to read the full speech you see it is a mish-mash of Gollum's self-congratulatory anecdotes regarding his fancied cleverness as a teacher combined with a review from a leftist perspective of certain political issues.

Gollum thinks this nutty 1998 graduation rant not only makes perfect sense but is worthy of preservation for posterity. I'm glad he did preserve it because it demonstrates his mental issues have been extant at least since then, not something new since his narcissistic self-proclamation of expertise in higher ed accreditation.

His bogus assertion of copyright issues regarding the video is just another "grievance" to be conflated with his fantasized "larger mission," be it "diploma mills" or his contrived "community service obligation." As the doctor said, it's psychotic thinking.

The fact that he describes himself as a "crackpot" and his behavior as "alarming" just reinforces the self-diagnosis. He's nuts and he knows it. Now you know it too, what are you gonna do about it?

Not unlike the major midwestern university that has a professor on staff notorious for death threats, stalking and unstable behavior. Will they also be blaming talk radio when he goes postal?

Rambling, incoherent writings and comments?

Red Flags at a College, but Tied Hands

...Although there is no reliable profile for a political assassin, such people almost always plan their attack, carefully choosing a target, a weapon and a time.

“We tend to want to dismiss these people as unstable types that snapped,” Dr. Borum said, “but there’s a whole process that occurs between conceiving the idea and executing it.”

Details about Mr. Loughner are still emerging, and only an examining doctor will be able to make a definitive diagnosis. But the writings and comments attributed to him point strongly to the kind of delusional thinking that is common in schizophrenia.

“I’d say the chances are 99 percent that he has schizophrenia,” said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Va., which advocates stronger laws to require treatment for people with severe mental illnesses. “He was together enough to take courses, and people with untreated schizophrenia can function very well for periods. But when you see these rambling, incoherent writings and comments, there is almost no other disorder where this is a prominent symptom.”

Many of Mr. Loughner’s reported comments — about currency and government — also suggest a growing paranoia. As a rule, violence is less common among people with mental illness than is often assumed; a vast majority are no more likely to commit harm than anyone else.

But studies suggest that a small subset of those with untreated, paranoid psychosis are two to three times as likely as people without mental disorders to get into physical altercations, researchers say.

“Certainly not all paranoids are mass murderers” by a long shot, said Dr. Michael Stone, a forensic psychiatrist in New York, “but almost all mass murderers are paranoid.”

But even if a doctor had diagnosed paranoia in this case, the knowledge might not have been helpful. A 1999 study of assassins and attackers found few common threads. Many had delusional ideas, but few heard voices; still fewer abused drugs or belonged to militant groups.

It is also not clear, some doctors said, that today’s partisan climate had any bearing on the assault. “The psychosis picks up on the grand themes of the day, whether those are antigovernment or something else,” Dr. Stone said.

In the logic of delusion, a grievance may be conflated with some larger mission, whether religious, political or artistic. “It’s not political thinking,” Dr. Torrey said. “It’s psychotic thinking.”

Dr. Borum and many others have argued that colleges, among other large institutions, can be more assertive in their approach to people who show a potential for violence.

“If complaints are piling up about someone, you could send a mental health person and a member of the campus police over to simply interview the person,” Dr. Borum said. “This intervention might be enough to put the person on notice, and maybe to move them into treatment.”

If not, they may wind up — as Mr. Loughner apparently did — alone with their thoughts. In recent decades, states have cut spending for hospitals and treatment centers, to the point where many people with aggressive urges cannot get therapy even if they want it. This retreat from providing services may have affected the sentencing of mentally ill offenders, some experts argue.

“The insanity defense, which may be tried in this case, is often unsuccessful,” Dr. Torrey said, “and one reason is that juries are afraid to send people to state hospitals, where they belong. They’d rather lock them up for longer, in prison.”