Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children (Library of Contemporary Thought) (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Jonathan Kellerman is best known as the author of a series of bestselling suspense novels starring psychologist sleuth Dr. Alex Delaware, but his nonliterary background is as a children's clinical psychologist. In Savage Spawn, inspired by the schoolyard shootings that took place in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Springfield, Oregon, in 1998, he brings his training to bear on the question of how children can become cold-blooded killers. Kellerman has as much--perhaps more--to say about the broader issue of the nature of psychopathy, however, than he does about youth violence, though he does occasionally bring the two themes together. But Savage Spawn is essentially a hundred-page-plus op-ed piece rooted in Kellerman's belief that there are fundamentally bad people in the world and that the response to the perpetrators of violent acts such as the shooting at Jonesboro should be to "lock them up till they die." (Although published shortly after the multiple-death shooting in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, the book was clearly written before this incident took place.) Readers may ultimately prefer more detailed considerations such as William Pollack's Real Boys or Lost Boys, by James Garbarino.

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist Kellerman, a child psychologist who often uses the fictional character of Dr. Alex Delaware as his foil, here tackles the hot topic of violent children in a nonfiction formatApart of the ongoing Library of Contemporary Thought series. Using the recent school shootings in Oregon, Arkansas and Colorado as a hook, he vents his own views on "childhood criminality as a social destructor." Relying on personal case histories, he provides a general profile for kiddie psychopaths. Mostly boys, from all kinds of backgrounds, these habitually violent kids are marked by their bravado and lack of conscience. In short, they're cold-blooded monsters who, when given access to guns, become deadly threats. Kellerman's personal views can be shrill, even alarmist, as he rails against such ills as "Marxist-derived social science norms," yet this novelist-on-a-soapbox diatribe plays convincingly in Gilliland's forceful reading, like an artfully constructed public speech. Based on the 1999 Ballantine paperback. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (May 18, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345429397
• ISBN-13: 978-0345429391
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #249,646 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Very Readable Introduction to Childhood Violence, July 17, 1999

By	Daniel J. Maloney "Daniel J. Maloney" (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews

Jonathan Kellerman, best known for his psychological fiction is actually a highly qualified child psychologist.

In the non-fiction examination of Violence in Children or "Savage Spawn" as Kellerman titles his work, readers are offered a no nonsense overview of some of the salient issues at play when discussing the contribuors to childhood violence.

Having worked with Juvenile Delinquent Adolescents in a residential treatment center for five years of my career, I feel that I have some good insights into the issues Kellerman addresses. Kellerman is appropriately realistic in the need to acknowledge that there is no causation that can be attributed to only nature or only nurture in the causation of male childhood violence. He believes, and I agree, that we have to factor both of these causative contributors together in order to get some insight into violence in kids.

I am reluctant to be particularly ready to dismiss the psychiatric role in the prevention and treatment of violence through the treatment of faulty neurotransmitters in the brain. The reality is that millions of people have been helped by the new class of drugs known as SSRI's. Further, Jonathan Kellerman's truly subjective bias against the psychiatric profession on a wholesale scale is somewhat inappropriate on a professional level and actually inaccurate when dismissed completely in the extent in which Kellerman takes his argument.

Interestingly or perhaps more ironically, Kellerman is an obvious supporter of treatment of kids with the drug Ritalin -- a psychiatric drug -- which is particularly controversial, certainly overprescribed and questionably effective in a large majority of cases of children under its influence. However, Kellerman has clearly recommended this drug for many of his young patients and often cites his observations of its effectiveness.

I support Kellerman's practical advice that what we do not need to see are blue ribbon commissions to study childhood violence. He accurately represents the fact that much is known about problems in children and monies could be better utilized in direct education for kids and even more importantly, parents. We don't need to wait for violence to intervene with children. Early intervention when warning signs are obvious is a very realistic and far underutilized approach to preventing the escalation of patterns of violence in children.

There is much to be said for Kellerman's points about family environments which indirectly give children a poor culture for the development of appropriate values. In working with Juvenile Offenders, I often found that the healthiest members of a kid's family was the kid himself -- the one who got into trouble and was removed from the home! They got out of extremely dysfunctional situations that aren't always apparent to the casual observer. My own experience with troubled kids left me with far more empathy for them and an often overwhelming impatience -- even anger -- with their families, particularly parents or parent who seemed to be more immature that their adolescent sons.

Kellerman makes some excellent points about the availability of guns to kids and is again quite pragmatic in rejecting convoluted arguments about the "right to bear arms" and the NRA. He simply states he believes guns should not be available or accessible to children until a reasonable age -- similar to our approach to driver's licenses and alcohol. Five and Six year old kids should not be around guns! And, sadly, too often, they are!

Kellerman does an excellent job of explaining the difference between psychotic behavior and psychopathology (the primary group considered to be the main perpetrators of the most heinous crimes.) Offically known in the psychiatric profession as those suffering from Antisocial Personality Disorder in the DSMIV, or earlier as Sociopathology, Kellerman makes a strong case that it is in this group we find our most serious offenders. He effectively characterizes sub-sets or types of psychopaths and recognizes that there is indeed such a thing as "evil."

I believe Kellerman becomes unnessarily caught up in briefly citing statistical analyses of childhoood violence. However, boiled down, he makes his point that we can't simply accept one causative factor in seeking the roots of violence.

I was extremely disappointed that Kellerman failed to address effects of suburban, homogeneous living, and its potential danger for kids, nor the entire -- very important area -- of low self esteem as causative contributors to childhood violence.

Kellerman also fails to discuss the impact of the peer violence in the vebal and physical abuse suffered at the hands of peers by those kids who were "different" or issues of the unacceptability of difference of any kind -- behavioral, interests, sexuality, etc. -- and the violence too often present in the peer pressure which lets the kid who is -- in any way different -- know that he is a "reject" or "freak" in the eyes of his peer age group. Aren't some of these kinds of issues extremely significant in the ignition of unexpected retaliatiatory violence. We witnessed some of this type of retaliation in the selectiveness with which the two killers in the Columbine massacre chose who was to live and who they wanted to see dead. Intolerance of difference is often a message clearly delivered in varying forms of violence -- mostly verbal, not atypically verbal, but also commonly physical.

Overall, I believe Kellerman's text is a worthy brief overview of some of the major areas to be covered in really examining and learning more about how we should anticipate and prevent violence in children. He provides a very fine bibliography for the interested person who wishess to go beyond his 120 page work on this very urgent and real problem in our country at the close of this century.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not about "troubled kids", September 14, 2002

By A Customer

This is not a book about troubled children in the usual sense of that phrase, meaning children who are who are angry, lonely and unhappy and who act on those feelings in destructive ways, such as getting into fights or taking drugs. This is about a much smaller group: children who are so psychologically damaged that they simply don't experience the normal range of human feelings. Troubled teens might hide their anxieties behind a facade of cool contempt for others; but for child psychopaths, Kellerman suggests, there's nothing behind the facade. They see other people not as fellow human beings, but as objects to be manipulated or dominated for their own ends.

Kellerman's most interesting hypothesis here is that such children have not been produced by a general decline in moral or social values; instead, he postulates that this psychological abnormality has probably occurred in a small percentage of the population of every human society that has existed. (This certainly would explain why the vast majority of children who are teased or bullied at school, or who watch violent movies and play violent computer games, etc., are nevertheless nice kids who grow into kind, decent adults.) The main difference now is that adolescent psychopaths on a killing spree have access to more sophisticated, efficient weapons than existed in the past.

As other reviewers have suggested, some of the interventions and remedies Kellerman suggests don't seem feasible. That doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong; it's possible that our only other option is to endure periodic school shootings (though that's certainly an upsetting thought). I do think Kellerman might have dwelt more on the question of diagnosis; he's good at describing his own (rare) encounters with child psychopaths and how they differed from his (much more numerous) encounters with troubled boys, but it's unclear whether someone with less experience, training and sensitivity would be able to see and articulate the distinction. Still, the distinction itself, as Kellerman delineates it, is persuasive; and it might at least keep educators and school psychologists from lumping every unpopular, unhappy kid who likes to play shooter games or set off bottle rockets (which is a whole lot of kids) in with mass murderers (which, despite the seeming frequency of school shootings, is a very small number of kids). In any case, this is interesting reading for anyone curious to know how evil arises in individual human beings.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I expected more, November 28, 1999

By A Customer

Jonathan Kellerman's comments on NPR's "Fresh Air" convinced me to buy this book. While it was a good introduction to the nature of psychopathy, I found most of his policy proposals politically infeasible, at best.

Admittedly, the issue of what to do with budding psychopaths is a difficult question, but Kellerman's suggestion to aggressively place such children in orphanages (or foster homes) rather than waiting to send them to prisons (or cemeteries) begs challenging legal, moral, and social questions that Kellerman all but ignores. He also, naively presumes that such facilities could reasonably be staffed by people as compassionate, dedicated, and insightful as he. Most mental health care workers I know would avoid dealing with such difficult charges.

Similarly, his views on the importance of gun control (which I wholly agree with) suggest that Kellerman remains surprisingly ignorant about the strength of the gun lobby in this country.

I do believe that Kellerman may have a chance to diminish the hyperbole around the relative importance of violence in the media, if he can teach enough people that correlation is not causation.

I hope books like Kellerman's spark some debate in the upcoming election year, but I doubt many of his ideas will be achievable in the foreseeable future.