Narcissists, Amygdalae, and Tiago Henrique Gomes da Rocha

Brazilian Serial Killer Tiago Henrique Gomes da Rocha speed reads books backward, from ending to beginning. We know a few other things about him. A quote from him:

I had an ordinary childhood until I was 11. Then I was sexually abused by a neighbour. After that I felt like I was nothing. I felt the anger growing in me from that moment on…. When I was 22, I couldn’t stop myself anymore. It was like I had to do it.

Anger is amygdala produced, and it can be developed. With a certain predisposing nature, a child who rages constantly at something in his environment can develop their anger through repetitive exercise, to the point that in adulthood, it can become ever present, and overwhelming in strength.

Like most narcissists, I would assume that he targeted pretty girls because wracked by insecurity, he could never approach them. Of course contemplating that this failure was due to some fault with himself was too painful due to his amygdala sensitivity. To ease the strain on his amygdala, he probably blamed them for being too mean and haughty, and ignoring him. Once he began down that mentally defective road of logic, his hatred would supplant his shame/pain, and it would feed on itself to further insulate him from the agony. Eventually it would boil over in some way.

So what does this have to do with his speed reading books backward?

You can’t say anything for certain, but if forced to guess, his amygdala could be too sensitive and the sensations it produces are too strong, for him to read books normally.

A page-turner, in a literal sense, is a book which forces you to turn the page, because not knowing what comes next is too irritating to the amygdala for you to just stop. Imagine reading a great story, and then putting the book down right before the climax, and never knowing how it ends. If you are normal, it would be vexing. From a technical perspective, your amygdala would haunt you with a mildly bothered sensation at not knowing the ending.

In his case, I would bet that such a subtle irritation at not knowing how the book ended was so severe that he could not endure it long enough to turn the pages of the book, one by one, and get to the end. One day, he gave up and read the end of the book first. That assuaged the irritation. He then could move backward through the book, to assimilate its contents, absent the anxiety and irritation. From that point forward, that became how he read books, and eventually he was conditioned to even read magazines that way. Even the speed reading is probably adapted from his need to get the act over with, and finish assimilating the data as quickly as possible, to let his amygdala relax. From the article:

… during the early hours of yesterday, Da Rocha read 40 magazines in quick succession – and from back to front. [the guard] said: ‘It was a curious thing that he would read from the back forwards and very quickly, as if it were a task he was being made to do…’

That is the amygdala overwhelming the individual’s consciousness, and driving behavior by force of emotional punishment. He was being made to do it by a structure within his brain. That is, in a nutshell where all the bizarreness and illogicality of the narcissist comes from.

Knowing he cannot tolerate such a stimulus would obviously figure in a profile of him, for purposes of hijacking. Trigger his interest in something fascinating, and lead him down a rhetorical path, making him want to learn an interesting ending, see how a problem is solved, or gain some other amygdala-relieving satisfaction you build toward. Offer an imminent ending, then pull back and lead him on some more, as if a resolution is just around the corner. Repeat that a couple of times. Then, without concluding the journey, abruptly feign ADD, shift to something else, and when he tries to draw you back, proclaim yourself bored with the topic and move on. I laugh just picturing what that would do to him over the ensuing five minutes.

Like any narcissist, I’d assume he was sensitive to all the other amygdala hijacking stimuli as well, from diminution of stature, to out-grouping, to relative inferiority, to being laughed at, and those are what I would go to for a final deathblow. But using his need for an immediate ending against him would be a good foundation to set his amygdala in high gear in preparation for all the other hijacks – that constant agitation would lay beneath every subsequent interaction, amplifying the effects of each considerably. Like a muscle, the amygdala’s nervous structure has a limited reserve of ATP energy molecules to power its operations. It can only do so many repetitions before a traumatic shutdown is induced. Best of all, it is not difficult at all to overload the structure in these defective, narcissistic personalities.

Of course he is a serial killer, so as with most mental defectives, you’d want to also occupy the high ground of violence in the encounter, lest the interaction head in that direction. As he has shown, if he thinks he can get away with shutting off his amygdala by killing you, he will.

The amygdala is the Rosetta Stone of consciousness. As you begin to understand the amygdala mechanically, you begin to understand humans mechanically, from the most subtle desires and inclinations of normal people to the strangest quirks of the most defective. Most importantly it offers the key to a non-lethal weapon that is very effective against the evil among us today. Learn to use it freely.