Dave Grossman

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Dave Grossmann (born August 23, 1956 in Frankfurt am Main , West Germany ) is an American author who writes about the psychological aspects of the killing of people and gives lectures through which he conditions police officers to kill.

Life

Grossman was a lecturer in military psychology and an officer at the US Military Academy at West Point until 1998 .

Grossman became known as an author in 1995 for his book On Killing. The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. (German: About killing: The psychological price for learning to kill in war and in society ). According to Grossman, it is required reading in FBI training and at numerous police schools. In the book he deals with various experiments by the US military, in which, among other things, attempts were made to lower the inhibition threshold for killing soldiers by means of conditioning . He transfers various observations to phenomena in modern mass media and considers their impact on children to be devastating. For example, he criticizes horror films and claims that children take the serial killers such as Freddy Krueger as role models. In the field of computer games , he considers the lightgun shooting games widespread in arcades to be violence enabling , as they are comparable to shooting training methods used by the military and the police. He later expanded his criticism to include the genre of first-person shooters .

Grossman calls his theses, according to which a natural inhibition to kill can be reduced through conditioning, "killology". His publications are not received in science.

After retiring from the military, Grossman founded the Killology Research Group , which aims to investigate the thesis that violent computer games (also known as " killer games " in the German debate ) can lead to violent behavior. The Killology Research Group is part of the Warrior Science Group , a private company that trains and advises security forces. His book, Who Taught Our Children To Kill?, Written with educational counselor Gloria DeGaetano . found in the German-speaking area in connection with the controversy about connections between violent games and willingness to kill in the media. Critics accuse Grossmann that his theses have not been scientifically proven and that he presents the facts in an undifferentiated and inadmissibly generalized manner.

Grossman travels across the United States, performing in front of soldiers, civilians and police officers. Probably thousands to tens of thousands of police officers were prepared for killing in his courses.

Comment on racist police violence

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd , an unarmed 46-year-old African American from Minneapolis, died during a police operation after 8 minutes and 46 seconds with the words "I can't breathe". Dave Grossman then turned to the American police. “To our shepherds, in this dark hour,” begins his post on Facebook.

To do this, he presented the painting of an American independence fighter in heroic pose, his shirt open, the flag waving in the wind, his rifle raised. Above it, it says, “God loves us and is dying to do something to respond to these dire times. He sent you. "

Publications

  • On killing. The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society . 1st edition. Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1995, ISBN 0-316-33000-0 .
  • On killing. The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society . Revised edition. Little, Brown and Company, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-316-04093-8 (American English). limited preview in Google Book search
  • Dave Grossman, Loren W. Christensen: On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and Peace . Warrior Science Publications, 2008, ISBN 0-9649205-4-9
  • Gloria DeGaetano, Dave Grossman: Who Taught Our Children To Kill? Free Spiritual Life Verlag, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 978-3-7725-2225-3

Individual evidence

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  1. ^ Bio Dave Grossman. Retrieved on May 29, 2020 (English).
  2. ↑ a b c DIE ZEIT, Lenz Jacobsen, June 5, 2020: Dave Grossman: He turns police officers into warriors
  3. ↑ On Killing. The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society . 1st edition. Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1995, ISBN 0-316-33000-0 , pp. 303, cf. also 308 ff .
  4. ↑ On Killing. The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society . 1st edition. Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1995, ISBN 0-316-33000-0 , pp. 315 .
  5. ↑ Killology Research Group. Retrieved on May 29, 2020 (English).
  6. ^ Official website of the Warrior Science Group
  7. ↑ Interview with Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman for "DIE ZEIT" Violence can be learned (PDF) ( Memento from November 5, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Focus: Rampage blood rush in the idyll
  9. ↑ Wiener Zeitung: How children become killers  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.wienerzeitung.at  
  10. ↑ Image: Ticino: blood amok without motive
  11. ↑ Arne Birkenstock: Do computer games make them aggressive? ( Memento from June 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ Thomas Hausmanninger : Review: Who taught our children to kill? A call against violence in television, film and computer games. (PDF; 39 kB)
  13. ↑ Review by Andrea Rothe: Good intention, bad execution
personal data
SURNAME Grossman, Dave
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grossmann, Dave (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American military psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH 23rd August 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main , West Germany