Was Lee Harvey Oswald Afflicted With Abusive Childhood PTSD Rage?

[Joe Bauer]

So much has been written about Oswald and his childhood to young adulthood anger and hatred issues.

Obviously Oswald's childhood from infancy was devastating to him emotionally.

Total disruption in parental care and nurturing as a child. Shipped out to foster care for a time?

No father. A crushingly domineering mother. Unstable living situations with many moves.

Dirt poor.

Some bullying and beating of him in elementary and junior high school. 

Hardly any close friends.

He acted out at what 13? Pulling a knife on a relative in a shared cramped apartment in NYC.

Truancy so frequent he was evaluated by a school psychologist.

Dying to get away from his sad life with his mother, he joins the Marines at the earliest age possible.

In the Marines he has more than the normal confrontations with fellow Marines and in one physical fight incident gets demoted in rank.

A number of his fellow soldiers describe him as offish and unfriendly.

Upon Oswald's release from the Marines he leaves to go to Russia. Lives there three years?

Has anyone ever read of Oswald having any confrontational anger issue episodes with anyone there?

Did Marina ever state that she saw Lee exhibit anger or rage in anyway there? Throwing things, threatening words?

I'm trying to establish a historical pattern of anger and even rageful violence on Lee Oswald's part showing itself from childhood on through his final young adult life years.

By late 1962 and into early 1963 Lee Oswald was reportedly expressing extreme violence thoughts and actually exhibiting alleged acts of extreme violence.

His attempt to shoot and kill General Edwin Walker.

He talked of violently hijacking a plane to Cuba with Marina's help?

Lee gets into a violent confrontation with Cuban expatriates on a busy downtown NO street in broad daylight?

Lee is accused of being physically abusive toward Marina. They fight often. 

Had Lee begun to lose it emotionally in his two years of financial and marriage stress and struggling back here in the states?

So then we come to 11/22/1963.

The official finding of the Warren Commission is that Oswald alone shot JFK from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book depository building.

Less than one hour later, he is charged with shooting to death Dallas PD officer J.D. Tippit.

Both the JFK killing and Tippit killings were what many would categorize as "rage" killings.

Oswald allegedly shot at JFK not once, but three times.

He misses the first shot, but nails JFK in the back with a second shot.

Oswald or whoever could see JFK was seriously injured with the second shot.

But the shooter isn't satisfied just wounding JFK... he must blow JFK's head off to be sure he will die. And knowingly taking that last head exploding kill shot with Jackie's horrified face just inches away reflects a person who is driven with something deeper than most killers.

A rage.

Jealousy can drive a man into that kind of rage. Abuse as a child can also. 

And the Tippit killer also killed with rage.

It wasn't enough to hit Tippit 3 times and bring him down on the ground, obviously dying. The shooter also had to then walk up close and finish Tippit with a coup de grace head shot.

That last head shot was unnecessary except to satisfy a rage impulse.

Oswald pulled his revolver and tried to shoot Officer MacDonald in the Texas theater. He fought with a ferocity when it misfired. There was a hand knife found near the seats the fighting took place. It has been speculated that it was Oswald's knife and he would have used it if it hadn't dropped down during the fight.

Oswald was acting out in the most extreme violence way. Again, in a rage?

There were millions of JFK ( and RFK ) haters in America by 1963 who hated them both "with a rage."

Segregationist - KKK types.

Cuban expatriates. American covert ops intelligence types. The Bay Of Pigs revenge types.

The Mafia.

Probably big oil and corrupt Texans and even LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover themselves.

Maybe even some of our top military people?

But Oswald wasn't connected to the JFK raging hate mind set of those other groups.

Yet, if Oswald did JFK and Tippit, he did so with a brutal rage. 

It is a perplexing conundrum imo, to come up with how he could have harbored such rage toward JFK.

Can anyone offer a different Oswald JFK rage explanation?

LBJ protege Mac Wallace was in a drunken rage when he over-kill shot Austin, TX pitch and putt manager Doug Kinser in broad daylight in front of witnesses. He was jealous because Kinser was sleeping with his ex-wife and reportedly LBJ's sister Josepha who Wallace was also intimate with.

Now there's a rage we can understand.

However, I can't understand Oswald's rage toward JFK and even J.D. Tippit.

Your thoughts?

 

 

 

 

Edited January 15 by Joe Bauer

[Denny Zartman]

This post is confusing. Oswald rented a room and it's reported that he would occasionally take time out of his day to play with the children of the person who was renting him the room. That doesn't really sound like somebody in a rage or who was raging against the world. Furthermore, it was said that one time two of the children were fighting and Oswald took them aside, sat them down, and told them that fighting each other was wrong. Again, that really doesn't sound like a damaged, violent person who was walking around with a lot of uncontrollable rage.

As far as I've ever heard Oswald never expressed any animosity toward JFK. I believe it was said that he liked JFK. He certainly wasn't in that sixth floor shooting anybody with a rifle that looked like a Mauser and that didn't have fingerprints on it until after he was dead.

If LHO really was up there in the sixth floor window with a rifle and a heretofore undetected rage against JFK, why didn't he fill JFK's face full of lead as the limo was going north on Houston?

As far as I've ever read, it's inconclusive that he actually tried to kill anyone during his apprehension in the Texas Theatre. One story seemed to be that the gun misfired and there was a dented primer to prove it. Another story is that a cop got his hand between the hammer and the primer, preventing the shot. It can't be both.

As far as Tippit, goes, it seems to me that "execution style" is a rather cold-blooded way to murder someone, not the hot-blooded actions of someone in a rage. A rage, imho, would be some sort of savage overkill. The killing of Tippit could have been Oswald acting in self-defense. It seems Tippit may have been drawing his gun when he was shot. Or it could have been someone other than Oswald. I personally do not dismiss Aquilla Clemons's report of seeing two men at the scene, neither of whom looked like Oswald. Also, the different types of ammunition used seem, to me at least, to be strong evidence supporting the possibility of two shooters.

Finally, maybe it's just me, but I believe Oswald's mother has been the subject of assaults on her character practically since the day of the assassination. I don't automatically accept them because I realize any conspirators were going to try and discredit her. Are the negative things we hear about her coming from objective sources, or are they from the WC and other LN sources that are determined to make her sound as bad as possible? Oswald was a mystery, and if there ever was a person who knew him best, it was his mother. Discrediting her would be a priority if the JFK assassination was a conspiracy and Oswald was to be successfully framed as a loner and not a government operative or asset.

[Joe Bauer]

4 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

This post is confusing. Oswald rented a room and it's reported that he would occasionally take time out of his day to play with the children of the person who was renting him the room. That doesn't really sound like somebody in a rage or who was raging against the world. Furthermore, it was said that one time two of the children were fighting and Oswald took them aside, sat them down, and told them that fighting each other was wrong. Again, that really doesn't sound like a damaged, violent person who was walking around with a lot of uncontrollable rage.

Oswald's mind set and actions in the last year of his life are confusing.

Yes, he showed big brother type caring and feeling when he scolded the two brothers for fighting. And he was definitely very loving to his baby daughter Junie.

His shooting at Walker was an extremely violent action...and one not done out of self-defense like you say he may have felt in the Tippit shooting, if he did it at all.

Okay, so you say the Tippit killing was not a rage killing?

You do acknowledge however that 3 shots that clearly had Tippit down and out was not enough for Tippit's shooter.

He had to walk up close to Tippit's prone body, aim directly to his head and administer a last "coup de gras" head shot ... for what?

So, even if it was not a rage execution, you at least call it a "cold blooded" one.

Was Oswald that cold blooded? That unfeeling?

The point of my original post is the conundrum of Oswald committing these cold blooded murders and trying to understand how Oswald became so cold blooded.

To inflict such brutality on JFK would require some deep motivation for doing so.

I don't see where that motivation came from.

It seemed Oswald harbored no deep hatred for JFK. 

He didn't hate JFK for the reasons all those others hated JFK for.

Revenge for the Bay Of Pigs.

JFK's stance on segregation.

JFK and RFK's broken deals with the American Mafia.

Intelligence agency power competition. Military too.

Big Oil interests threatening.

Yet, Oswald was found to have gone after JFK more violently than all those other powerful JFK hating groups?

I don't even see Oswald's incredibly neglectful childhood trauma as being a logical motivation explanation reason for him to blow JFK's head off.

What was Lee Oswald's motive for committing the ultimate violent act of brutality against JFK?

If it was simple hate ... what did JFK do to inspire that in Oswald?

 

Edited January 15 by Joe Bauer

[David Andrews]

"A far mean streak of independence brought on by negleck" (neglect).  Did Oz write that about himself, or did Howard Hunt or David Atlee Phillips ghostwrite it, casting Oz in the resourceful loner role, the World Historical Individual shaded somewhere between Davy Crockett and Charles Starkweather?

I've read those guys.  I'm not sure they're were that expressive as fictionneurs.

Edited January 15 by David Andrews

[Cory Santos]

On 1/14/2024 at 7:49 PM, Joe Bauer said:

So much has been written about Oswald and his childhood to young adulthood anger and hatred issues.

Obviously Oswald's childhood from infancy was devastating to him emotionally.

Total disruption in parental care and nurturing as a child. Shipped out to foster care for a time?

No father. A crushingly domineering mother. Unstable living situations with many moves.

Dirt poor.

Some bullying and beating of him in elementary and junior high school. 

Hardly any close friends.

He acted out at what 13? Pulling a knife on a relative in a shared cramped apartment in NYC.

Truancy so frequent he was evaluated by a school psychologist.

Dying to get away from his sad life with his mother, he joins the Marines at the earliest age possible.

In the Marines he has more than the normal confrontations with fellow Marines and in one physical fight incident gets demoted in rank.

A number of his fellow soldiers describe him as offish and unfriendly.

Upon Oswald's release from the Marines he leaves to go to Russia. Lives there three years?

Has anyone ever read of Oswald having any confrontational anger issue episodes with anyone there?

Did Marina ever state that she saw Lee exhibit anger or rage in anyway there? Throwing things, threatening words?

I'm trying to establish a historical pattern of anger and even rageful violence on Lee Oswald's part showing itself from childhood on through his final young adult life years.

By late 1962 and into early 1963 Lee Oswald was reportedly expressing extreme violence thoughts and actually exhibiting alleged acts of extreme violence.

His attempt to shoot and kill General Edwin Walker.

He talked of violently hijacking a plane to Cuba with Marina's help?

Lee gets into a violent confrontation with Cuban expatriates on a busy downtown NO street in broad daylight?

Lee is accused of being physically abusive toward Marina. They fight often. 

Had Lee begun to lose it emotionally in his two years of financial and marriage stress and struggling back here in the states?

So then we come to 11/22/1963.

The official finding of the Warren Commission is that Oswald alone shot JFK from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book depository building.

Less than one hour later, he is charged with shooting to death Dallas PD officer J.D. Tippit.

Both the JFK killing and Tippit killings were what many would categorize as "rage" killings.

Oswald allegedly shot at JFK not once, but three times.

He misses the first shot, but nails JFK in the back with a second shot.

Oswald or whoever could see JFK was seriously injured with the second shot.

But the shooter isn't satisfied just wounding JFK... he must blow JFK's head off to be sure he will die. And knowingly taking that last head exploding kill shot with Jackie's horrified face just inches away reflects a person who is driven with something deeper than most killers.

A rage.

Jealousy can drive a man into that kind of rage. Abuse as a child can also. 

And the Tippit killer also killed with rage.

It wasn't enough to hit Tippit 3 times and bring him down on the ground, obviously dying. The shooter also had to then walk up close and finish Tippit with a coup de grace head shot.

That last head shot was unnecessary except to satisfy a rage impulse.

Oswald pulled his revolver and tried to shoot Officer MacDonald in the Texas theater. He fought with a ferocity when it misfired. There was a hand knife found near the seats the fighting took place. It has been speculated that it was Oswald's knife and he would have used it if it hadn't dropped down during the fight.

Oswald was acting out in the most extreme violence way. Again, in a rage?

There were millions of JFK ( and RFK ) haters in America by 1963 who hated them both "with a rage."

Segregationist - KKK types.

Cuban expatriates. American covert ops intelligence types. The Bay Of Pigs revenge types.

The Mafia.

Probably big oil and corrupt Texans and even LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover themselves.

Maybe even some of our top military people?

But Oswald wasn't connected to the JFK raging hate mind set of those other groups.

Yet, if Oswald did JFK and Tippit, he did so with a brutal rage. 

It is a perplexing conundrum imo, to come up with how he could have harbored such rage toward JFK.

Can anyone offer a different Oswald JFK rage explanation?

LBJ protege Mac Wallace was in a drunken rage when he over-kill shot Austin, TX pitch and putt manager Doug Kinser in broad daylight in front of witnesses. He was jealous because Kinser was sleeping with his ex-wife and reportedly LBJ's sister Josepha who Wallace was also intimate with.

Now there's a rage we can understand.

However, I can't understand Oswald's rage toward JFK and even J.D. Tippit.

Your thoughts?

 

 

 

 

Joe, you bring up a good point.  Twenty plus years ago during law school I spent two years researching and drafting a paper on Jim Garrison.  During that research I came across an interesting article in academia regarding LHO.  Basically, it was a psychological and sociological analysis of Oswald and his environment.  The author determined Oswald was a ghost in the machine, shuttered from broken home to foster home with no father as a role model, Oswald was the result of a broken American system that allowed him to fall through the cracks.   I cannot recall the article but I will look it up for you.   

[Joe Bauer]

27 minutes ago, Cory Santos said:

Joe, you bring up a good point.  Twenty plus years ago during law school I spent two years researching and drafting a paper on Jim Garrison.  During that research I came across an interesting article in academia regarding LHO.  Basically, it was a psychological and sociological analysis of Oswald and his environment.  The author determined Oswald was a ghost in the machine, shuttered from broken home to foster home with no father as a role model, Oswald was the result of a broken American system that allowed him to fall through the cracks.   I cannot recall the article but I will look it up for you.   

But is LHO's devastatingly neglected and heart breaking childhood the main psychological reason he could become such a hate filled cold blooded murderer just 20 years later.

How does LHO's childhood trauma figure into a hatred of JFK to a brutal murder degree? And/or a sadistic over-kill shot execution of DPD officer JD Tippit?

Sometimes a "Manchurian Candidate" Oswald scenario fits into the mystery motivation story as much as any other, imo.

Edited January 16 by Joe Bauer

[Micah Mileto]

Professional Psychology is equally as stupid as armchair psychology. You shouldn't listen to anything these "professionals" claim. Weren't they doing labotomies then?

[Cory Santos]

4 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

But is LHO's devastatingly neglected and heart breaking childhood the main psychological reason he could become such a hate filled cold blooded murderer just 20 years later.

How does LHO's childhood trauma figure into a hatred of JFK to a brutal murder degree? And/or a sadistic over-kill shot execution of DPD officer JD Tippit?

Sometimes a "Manchurian Candidate" Oswald scenario fits into the mystery motivation story as much as any other, imo.

Well there is more to it than just childhood trauma and yes, childhood trauma can cause a disposition towards criminal choices as an adult.  Let me find that article for you to read. 

QUOTE

Professional Psychology is equally as stupid as armchair psychology. You shouldn't listen to anything these "professionals" claim. Weren't they doing labotomies then?

Micah Mileto

END QUOTE

Micah, please tell us more.  What is your basis for such an observation?

 

Edited January 17 by Cory Santos

[Micah Mileto]

48 minutes ago, Cory Santos said:

chology is equally as stupid as armchair psychology. You shouldn't listen to anything these "professionals" claim. Weren't they doing labotomies then?

Micah Mileto

END QUOTE

Micah, please tell us more.  What is your basis for such an observation?

 

With all due respect, what is your extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claim that mental healthcare workers know more about the human mind than the average person? The human mind is one of the most extraordinary phenomena in the universe that "we" know of, so it must follow that somebody claiming to understand the human mind better than most will need to provide some very extraordinary evidence to corroborate them. Virtually all of what modern mental healthcare claims to be science is just witness evidence. Witness evidence is notoriously unreliable. On it's face, it is obvious how psychology is just another cult, albiet one that has convinced virtually every government in the world of it's importance. Those papers are just pretentious and circular - not worth the paper they are (sometimes) printed on. Just try reading a random new paper from a mainstream psychology journal, and notice how any truly skeptical reader will understand how truly stupid and hollow the research is. This is the circus that decides prison sentences and executions.

Edited January 17 by Micah Mileto

[Cory Santos]

5 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

 

With all due respect, what is your extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claim that mental healthcare workers know more about the human mind than the average person? The human mind is one of the most extraordinary phenomena in the universe that "we" know of, so it must follow that somebody claiming to understand the human mind better than most will need to provide some very extraordinary evidence to corroborate them. Virtually all of what modern mental healthcare claims to be science is just witness evidence. Witness evidence is notoriously unreliable. On it's face, it is obvious how psychology is just another cult, albiet one that has convinced virtually every government in the world of it's importance. Those papers are just pretentious and circular - not worth the paper they are (sometimes) printed on. Just try reading a random new paper from a mainstream psychology journal, and notice how any truly skeptical reader will understand how truly stupid and hollow the research is. This is the circus that decides prison sentences and executions.

I never made that claim.  Please do not attribute words to me which I did not state.  Clearly, you have a bias against psychology.  I assume perhaps psychiatry and sociology as well?

[Micah Mileto]

Just now, Cory Santos said:

 

There is no such thing as unbiased, there is only a question of which side you are biased against, and for what reasons.

[Cory Santos]

5 minutes ago, Micah Mileto said:

There is no such thing as unbiased, there is only a question of which side you are biased against, and for what reasons.

Your response avoided my question and point but okay.  

[Sandy Larsen]

Here is a thread attempting to psychoanalyze a figment of the Warren Commission's imagination.

Incredible.

 

[Joe Bauer]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Here is a thread attempting to psychoanalyze a figment of the Warren Commission's imagination.

Incredible.

 

It's logical to wonder what motivated Oswald to do the extraordinarily violent acts he committed.

If he didn't do them, then yes the thread context is not a worthy one.

Edited January 17 by Joe Bauer

[Sandy Larsen]

35 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

It's logical to wonder what motivated Oswald to do the extraordinarily violent acts he committed.

If he didn't do them, then yes the thread context is not a worthy one.

 

Well he didn't shoot Kennedy. He didn't shoot Tippit. There's no reason to think he shot at Walker.

My gosh Joe, you've been a forum member for as along as I can remember. Do you still think that Oswald was the crazed man the WC made him out to be? Your OP makes you sound like a WC apologist.