Peter Langman

• Ph.D.
• Medical Professional at Langman Psychological Associates, LLC

School shootings scare everyone, even those not immediately affected. They make national and international news. They make parents afraid to send their children off to school. But they also lead to generalizations about those who perpetrate them. Most assumptions about the perpetrators are wrong and many of the warning signs are missed until it’s t...

This study examined 64 school shooters who committed multi-victim attacks in the United States during the years 1966 through 2015. Results include demographic analysis of age, venues of attack , racial/ethnic identity, magnitude of attacks, and frequency of perpetrator suicide. Data is provided for the sample as a whole, as well as for different ti...

In the thirty years since her attack, Brenda Spencer has had five parole board hearings in which she made many claims to either avoid responsibility for her crimes or to paint herself as a victim. This article reviews the many contradictions in her claims.

In the years since his school shooting, Williams has made numerous statements that were either contradicted by other people or contradicted by statements he made at other times. This article seeks to make sense of the conflicting testimonies and presents a tentative conceptualization of Williams and his rampage attack.

It is argued that there are overlaps and similarities in the dynamics and other characteristics between perpetrators of acts of terrorist violence and perpetrators of school shootings. In this case analysis article, we retroactively applied the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol–18 (TRAP-18) to study the perpetrator (Nikolas Cruz [NC]) of...

The present study examines an understudied potential warning sign of school shootings: violence against women (VAW). Utilizing the social–ecological model of violence prevention, we employed directed content analysis to determine the prevalence of acts and social–ecological features of VAW among profiles of 59 boys/men who perpetrated school shooti...

This article explores the motivations of ideological killers by investigating their justifications for violence. These justifications are divided into three categories: those that are grounded in actual social/political realities that are present in the lives of the perpetrators; those that utilize geographically and/or temporally distant vicarious...

Dr. Langman’s timely book presents practical, research-based guidance on anticipating and preventing mass attacks. Warning Signs is for all members of a school community, including school personnel, mental health professionals, law enforcement officers, parents, and students. Drawing on lessons learned from dozens of thwarted plots and deadly attac...

This article first examines Osama bin Laden in the context of Islam, al-Qaeda, and other extremist ideologies. The analysis critiques his use of collective guilt to justify killing innocent people and his misuse of Islam as a rationale for terrorism, highlighting the extent of his bigotry and paranoia. Next, the theme of humiliation is discussed at...

Research Summary In this article, I provide a qualitative analysis of ten perpetrators of mass violence, including five school shooters and five attackers in nonschool settings (a random public shooting, a familicide, and three attacks by White supremacist homegrown violent extremists). The killers are discussed in terms of body‐related issues, thr...

This article examines eight homegrown jihadists in light of my psychological typology of school shooters. The terrorists are discussed within the three categories of the typology: psychopathic, psychotic, and traumatized. Though terrorists have often been viewed as ordinary people with no significant psychological issues, the cases presented here i...

Contagion and copycat behavior among mass killers is often discussed in the media when there are multiple attacks within a short span of time. Proximity in time, however, does not necessarily mean that one attack inspired another. This study examines the clearest cases of role modeling and fame seeking among mass killers in which the perpetrators p...

Preventing school shootings is a matter of conducting thorough, ongoing assessments of potential perpetrators. This is generally done in schools by a threat assessment team comprised of individuals in several roles and positions, including psychologists. This article addresses the importance of access to information and information exchange, warnin...

Mass violence is a complex phenomenon that defies simplistic explanations. This article proposes a bio-psycho-social model to account for the many factors that contribute to rampage school shootings. Biological factors include those related to health, appearance, and ability. The psychological domain includes three types of perpetrators: psychopath...

This document provides evidence to support the idea that school shooters have been influenced by previous perpetrators.

This document pulls together information on a variety of issues relating to school shooters, including adoption, immigration, fire-setting, marriage, self-injurious behavior, hostage situations, attempts to escape, Nazi interest, satanism, suicide by cop, those who killed family members, and those who have been released from prison. It also covers...

This document presents data in several areas: body-related issues that may have been challenges to the perpetrators’ identities, family members who served in the military and/or law enforcement, the shooters’ aspirations to serve in these professions, and the frequent thwarting of these aspirations. These different sets of data are presented togeth...

One way to make sense of school shootings is to examine who the targets were. Though some attacks consisted of indiscriminate violence against anyone in the vicinity, others were partly or completely targeted against specific people. This document lists shooters and notes their targeted victims in five categories: bullies, rivals, family members, g...

This document provides brief summaries of the shooters’ negative experiences in educational settings, including academic failures, disciplinary actions, and other issues. It also notes their families’ involvement in education, primarily as school personnel such as teachers or professors. Finally, it identifies those cases in which the shooters targ...

A common misconception about school shooters is that they are typically kids from stable, middle-class families. This document presents information on the families of shooters, including factors such as divorce, domestic violence, child abuse, criminal behavior, and parental alcoholism and drug addiction. The percentage of broken homes and dysfunct...

This document lists arrests, law enforcement contacts, and reports to the police about the perpetrators of school shootings that occurred prior to their attacks.

This article discusses May’s psychotic symptoms, school shooting, and the lack of a coherent rationale for his attack.

This article provides details on Shrout’s life and attack and categorizes him as a psychopathic shooter.

Apart from Charles Whitman, the rampage by Slobodian in 1975 appears to have been the first large-scale school shooting in the USA or Canada. Despite this, his attack is often overlooked, perhaps because of the difficulty in tracking down information. This article provides a brief summary of his life, personality, and attack.

This article reviews what is known about Robert Smith and his attack, and compares him to several other psychopathic shooters.

The school shooting by Reyes has not received much attention, but it has particular interest because of his extreme youth. He committed his attack at age 12, making him the second youngest rampage attacker I am aware of, after Drew Golden, who was 11. Note: since the attack by Reyes, another 12-year-old, Mason Campbell, committed a school shooting....

This document summarizes the medication and substance abuse histories of dozens of school shooters. This is a companion document to my article “Psychiatric Medications and School Shootings.”

This document identifies the sources of firearms used in 52 school shootings (involving 54 perpetrators) during the twenty-five years from 1991 through 2015. The sample includes both single-victim and multi-victim shootings committed by secondary school, college, and aberrant adult perpetrators.

This document presents data on how 48 school shootings ended, whether with police intervention, civilian intervention, or perpetrator suicide. It also looks at other aspects of school shootings that can inform first responders on what they might encounter when they arrive at the scene.

This article explores the idea that prescription drugs, in particular antidepressants (SSRIs, such as Prozac) and stimulants (such as Ritalin), cause school shootings.

This article documents Eric Harris’s self-contradictions and vacillating attribution of responsibility for the attack, demonstrating that his justifications cannot be taken at face value.

Eric Harris left records documenting his admiration for Hitler, Hobbes, and Nietzsche. He also may have admired Charles Manson. This article explores parallels between the ideas of these men and those of Harris in an attempt to trace possible influences on his thinking.

This school shooting has received little attention since it occurred, and information about Mitchell is scarce. This article pieces together the little that is known about the perpetrator.

This article pulls together the little available information on Morrison and explores his psychological dynamics.

This article discusses Lane’s post-attack behavior as evidence suggesting psychopathic personality traits.

This article discusses Pierson’s longstanding anger problems, as well as his arrogance, inability to accept responsibility for the consequences of his own behavior, academic failures, and the dissolving of his dream to serve in the military. It also addresses Pierson’s interest in Eric Harris and ways in which he echoed and perhaps imitated Harris.

This article presents details about Brazill’s dysfunctional family (alcoholism, domestic violence, and child abuse), and the events leading up to his attack.

Butler’s school shooting did not receive the amount of media coverage that larger scale attacks have, but sufficient information was available to shed some light on his personality dynamics.

Former college or university students have been responsible for some of the most destructive shooting sprees in recent years. While Lanza did not carry out his attack on a college campus, he certainly could have. For campus Behavioral Intervention Team members, exploring Lanza’s motivations could help better ad- dress students who may pose a threat...

This article examines Rodger’s psychological dynamics, drawing on insights gained through an analysis of his autobiographical document. The article highlights Rodger's personality traits and his motivations for murder.

One of the biggest challenges to understanding school shooters is the difficulty obtaining valid information. As I have studied this population over the last ten to fifteen years I have located many documents that have been crucial to my research. For five years these documents have been available on my website (www.schoolshooters.info) so that oth...

This article first demonstrates multiple types of problematic reporting, showing that many statements made about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold cannot be taken at face value. The article then seeks to present a more accurate picture of Harris and Klebold based primarily on the thousands of pages of Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) documents.

This article discusses Woodham’s discrepant and contradictory statements about why he committed murder, including bullying, peer pressure, mental illness, and rejection by his girlfriend, highlighting the problems in taking explanations by school shooters at face value.

This article provides a brief summary of Ybarra’s life, noting the dysfunction in his family as well as his psychotic symptoms and other issues that may have contributed to his frustration and anger.

A typology of school shooters (psychopathic, psychotic, and traumatized), comparing them across categories to highlight differences in suicidality, peer harassment, peer encouragement, family role models for violence, victim selection, ideology, and other factors. The data is drawn from diaries, police records, court documents, books, scholarly art...

This study examined 16 perpetrators of multi-victim shootings at colleges and universities, comparing them using Langman’s typology of psychopathic, psychotic, and traumatized shooters, and dividing them into targeted vs. random attackers. Targeted attackers were more frequently psychopathic than random at- tackers, with the latter being most commo...

School shootings can be prevented by identifying warning signs in the form of leakage and attack-related behavior. Rampage school shooters typically reveal their violent intentions through their talk with peers, their school assignments, their online be- havior, and/or their interactions with their parents. This article presents examples of warning...

A number of researchers have sought to identify the features that school shooters have in common in terms of family life, personalities, histories, and behaviors. This article examines the cases of 10 rampage school-shooters in an effort to find out not only how they are alike, but also how they differ. Based on available information, these youths...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2000. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-105). Includes vita.

Responds to Mintz's comments (see record 2009-17459-001) on the author's original article (see record 1997-07117-012) on the subject of white and Jewish culture in psychotherapy origins. Langman acknowledges the importance of historical accuracy and in response to Mintz's comments, states that both fields, Gestalt psychology and Gestalt therapy, we...

Multicultural literature often states that psychotherapy is a product of White culture. This article differentiates between White culture and Jewish culture and demonstrates the extent of the influence of Jewish culture on the origin and development of psychotherapy. The first section compares White culture to Jewish culture in terms of compatibili...

Discusses reasons for the lack of attention to Jews as an ethnic minority within multiculturalism both by Jews and non-Jews and why Jews and Jewish issues need to be included. To analyze why non-Jews have not included Jews in multiculturalism, the level of assimilation, classification as part of the White majority, the view of Jews as members of a...