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[-] foggy@lemmy.world 94 points 2 years ago

It's weird to me the level of deranged guilt her diary entries show.

We are responsible for our actions. I just wonder wtf was going on in her head that allowed her to keep doing it. She hated herself for it. Like a lot.

[-] kandoh@reddthat.com 49 points 2 years ago

That's the sort of evil I understand and can cope with. There is something wrong with her we don't have the capacity to understand. Some chemical imbalance or growth pushing on her brain in a certain area.

It's the people with nothing wrong with them but allow evil to happen like the hospital administrators that gets me.

[-] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

A lot of time there is nothing visibly wrong with them and their background doesn't explain it

[-] ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Sadly, we don't understand the brain yet. Otherwise perhaps certain things could be visible. I know that there is some research how activity patterns in brains of "psychopaths" difffer from other people. But it is all still on shaky grounds.

[-] agedbeef@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

I read the article and didn’t see any diary stuff. Do you have a link to it?

[-] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

You'd have to look at what she got out of it emotionally. Other hospital killers did it for a combination of "They were a burden", "I was putting them out of their misery" and a sense of godlike power of life and death. Some started doing it for seeming mercy reasons but got so comfortable with doing it that they started killing patients because they annoyed them.

[-] foggy@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

I think you're perhaps ignoring what I said about the content of her entries.

She suffered from her actions, emotionally. A lot. It's quite clear she got nothing positive emotionally from it:

"I am evil I did this”.

The note added: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them.

“I am a horrible person.

“I hate myself. There are no words. I am an awful person. I pay every day for that.”

“I panic I’ll never have children. I don’t deserve mum and dad. The world is better off without me. I did this, why me.”

“No one will ever know what happened and why . . . I’m a failure.”

“I am a problem to those who do know me . . . it would be much better for everyone if I just went away. I just want to be happy.”

“Kill me” and “Help me” along with the names of some the babies she murdered.

In one, Letby scrawled: “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t live like this.

“No one will ever understand or appreciate what’s like.”

[-] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

She got something out of it though. No one was forcing her to do it so regardless of her entries at the moment of choice she wanted to do it. She may have felt regret or self-hate after the fact but it is clear that those feelings eventually passed.

[-] pankuleczkapl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Regret or self-hate can just as well turn into driving factors to continue doing harm to others. When you are mentally ill, logic starts completely bending and finally making a 180 degrees turn from normal

[-] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago

There's a whole lot of mental health issues in there.

[-] ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I don't think it's possible to really understand a person that is that level of abnormal. Or rather, when you have empathy in a somewhat normal range, I think it's really hard to understand how not having empathy works.

this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
621 points (97.4% liked)

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