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The case of Charles Whitman is an extraordinary study of the linkage of the gene-environment interaction of behaviors like aggression or violent tendencies. He was in my opinion, a product of his genes and his environment with a strong underpinning of physical illness caused by the glioblastoma tumor pressing on his amygdala. The physical inability of his Amygdala to not perform its required function is a definitive reason for his aggressive tendencies that manifested through his childhood experiences and his experience as a marine.
The biological flaw in Whitman was his amygdala which could not understand and imitate fear, reward, anticipation, or motivation. Thus, through the loss of this function, he also lost the restraints to certain behaviors. Whitmans aggression was multifactorial with socioeconomic, medical, and psychological factors playing a part in his actions. Whitmans bottom-up drive of the Amygdala and the insula also combined with the major deficiencies he had in his fears and anxieties while growing up manifested into the murders and the other atrocities that he had committed. Whitman being smart and aware of certain decisions his knowledge of computer engineering and his IQ put him a clear candidate for someone suffering from immediate response damage, which would essentially be his amygdala. He was just a product of the flaw of a physical illness and an environment he had no control over since the beginning of his social life.
The processing of these stimuli he received growing up, in the Marines, his relationship with his wife (manifested out of what he acquired from his father) and the death of his brother caused an undeniable mental imbalance which was only aggravated by his tumor. All of these stimuli in his environment were the risk factors that his past emotional conditioning encoded in the amygdala and the other related limbic regions triggered his drive to produce aggressive actions. The imbalance between his limbic drives and prefrontal control mechanisms was important for the range of psychiatric pathology provoked by negative stimulation, including not only aggressive disorders characterized by externally directed behaviors but also withdrawal behaviors associated with PTSD ( as with his marine experience and his relation with his father) and mood disorders (his decreasing relationship with his brother). Charles Whitmans issue was largely neurobiological because of the physical inability of his brain to sympathize with killing his wife or the other murders he committed. His case was more neurological because his character changed over time as he was not in the environment of being a murderer. From week 1, the major takeaway that can be used to accompany the case of Charles Whitman was that he was not based on a single factor that can explain why he was part of one singular group that made him susceptible to show violence. Although his was an intentional use of power, the decisions made by him, as he admitted had no particular reason to take them. So there is, I think to me, a blurry area in defining his intentions and if he was even aware as he was making them.
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