Breivik had made Jensen’s ideas his own. The difference was that Breivik put this thinking into action.
Jensen did not want to give evidence and moved abroad, where the Norwegian police had no legal authority to compel him to come to court.
One other individual who did not attend was Wenche Behring Breivik. She had spent part of the autumn as an in-patient at a psychiatric clinic. When she asked to be excused taking the witness stand, the District Court gave its consent. She was considered ‘unable’ to appear as a witness.
Ulrik Fredrik Malt, professor of psychiatry, was an elderly gentleman who gave the impression of being used to holding forth. He was the first of a dozen experts who were to brief the court on psychiatric matters, to help it reach the correct verdict. Healthy or sick. Accountable or not. Sentence or treatment.
The grey-haired man took his place in the witness box and regarded the various parties. He spent the first hour on an introduction to the correct use of the handbooks on which the court would rely, before going on to the particular instance sitting a few metres away from him. ‘The Commander. The messiah aspect,’ he said. ‘Life and death. I’m thinking of the executions. There’s clearly something tending in the direction of notions of grandeur, but are they delusions of grandeur?’
No. Breivik had given in too easily. In the case of delusions, one became aggressive when ousted from one’s elevated role. One was prepared to fight tooth and nail for the throne, whereas Breivik had simply toned down the significance of the Knights Templar and dropped the uniform as soon as someone told him it looked ridiculous.
Malt went on through the diagnosis chart.
‘Let us look at dissocial personality disorder – cold indifference to the feelings of others. Marked, persistently irresponsible attitude to social norms and duties. Lack of ability to sustain lasting relationships. Low tolerance of frustration, low threshold for aggressive outbursts, including use of violence. Lack of ability to experience guilt or learn from punishment. Marked tendency to generate feelings of guilt in others or to rationalise conduct that has brought the patient into conflict with society.’
Many in the room had now mentally ticked off all the criteria. But – the criteria had to have been in place before 22 July if they were to count. ‘I have not seen it said in any of the witness statements made by his friends that he was an ice-cold bastard. He did a little tagging, but so do a lot of people. He had some dubious accounts abroad, but those of us familiar with Oslo West circles know a fair amount of it goes on there. If that is a criterion, the number of people with the disorder will have to be adjusted radically upwards. Low threshold for outbursts of rage. No indication of that before 22 July. Lack of ability to experience guilt and learn from experience or punishment. It is possible there was a problem there.’
But it was not enough for Malt to be willing to make that his diagnosis. What about dissocial personality disorder with narcissistic traits, the diagnosis made by Tørrissen and Aspaas? ‘If one looks at what he writes in the manifesto compiled in his bedroom, fantasies about power and money and ideal love are present. That he is unique and admires himself, yes, both of those. Unique rights, yes, we can say he feels he has those, because he definitely does not relate to the law. Lack of empathy, that certainly fits. It would be entirely natural to make a diagnosis of dissocial personality disorder with narcissistic traits. So far, so good, you may think. But it is not good. We now come to the question that we have to ask ourselves as a society, as human beings and as psychologists. What is it that these questions actually give us the answer to?’
An enormous question mark filled the whole screen on the wall.
Judge Arntzen interrupted to ask if it was time for a short break.
‘That would be a pity,’ exclaimed Malt. ‘But we can leave that question mark there, because now we’re coming to the really exciting part.’
Breivik was furious. ‘He’s got to stop!’ he told Lippestad in the recess.
What enraged Breivik was that the testimony was being beamed directly to the TV viewers. Unlike the autopsy reports and witness statements from Utøya, this was going out live. And it was about his mind. People could switch on their sets, sit on their sofas and laugh at him. Yes, he would be allowed to defend himself at the end of each day. But whereas the psychiatrists’ evidence would be broadcast, his responses would not. His comments would be filtered through cultural Marxist journalists and would never get out to people directly.
After the short break, Lippestad asked to speak and demanded that the witness be dismissed, because he had crossed the legal boundaries of personal privacy.
‘The diagnoses he is presenting are, in parts, highly stigmatising.’
Malt was in the witness box, raring to continue. The whole thing degenerated into heated exchanges. The court retired to deliberate and reach a conclusion.
There was lively debate among those left sitting in the courtroom to await the outcome. Some of the public abandoned their seats in favour of the outdoor cafés around the Law Courts. The psychiatry seminar spilled out into the streets.
The trial had undergone a pronounced change of mood. While even the most seasoned crime reporters had been chastened as the courtroom mourned during the autopsy reports and the brutal witness accounts, the intellectual game of diagnosis loosened their tongues.
The same lively discussions were in full swing round canteen tables at work, between mouthfuls at top Oslo restaurants, among friends and colleagues, between couples. People on the bus started arguing about whether Breivik could be held accountable for his actions. Dinner-party guests were engrossed in the topic from their aperitifs through to the brandy and beyond. The case had turned the whole nation into amateur psychologists.
So many people in Norway had been affected by his actions, he had forced his way into their thoughts, and now they were wondering:
‘What was wrong with Breivik?’
Their answers had a tendency to divide along party lines. People on the left were overrepresented among those who saw him as a right-wing extremist terrorist. He had tapped into contemporary trends, and these ideologies and ideologues had to be crushed by debate. In other words, he was of sound mind. The further to the right you looked, the more likely you were to find people who thought him insane. That he could not be taken seriously and was an irrelevance.
Insanity was also the view of those he most admired. The work of a madman. ‘Is he crazy? Yes that’s probably exactly what he is. Nuts. Clinically insane,’ Fjordman wrote in a blog post. His conclusion was shared by several international anti-jihadists. Before 22 July, they had shared the same critique of Islam, the same world view. It had been so fine and pure. Now Breivik had sullied it with blood.
Breivik was overruled. Malt was permitted to go on. The enormous question mark came up on the screen again.
‘It is one thing to set off a bomb. It is quite another to go ashore on an island and shoot young people and talk about it as if he had been picking cherries. Is there an illness that could account for what I would choose to call mechanical killing? And there is also a change in sexual behaviour, we know that.’
‘Chairman. It’s ridiculous for me not to be allowed to object here. This is being broadcast. It’s offensive!’ Breivik interrupted.
Arntzen asked him to be quiet.
‘But my comments aren’t being broadcast!’
‘No, they are not.’
Malt had reached his conclusion.
‘Autism, or Asperger’s syndrome. Struggles to understand social signals. Has problems getting to grips with what others think and feel. What most people do to cope with this is to acquire expertise in social interaction. They become extremely polite, extremely proper and try to learn the rules of the game as best they can. But the point is that for them, empathy remains theoretical. They are incapable of sharing someone else’s suffering. They can have friends. They can run businesses. It works fine, but when you want to have a close relationship with someone… And the two of you are meant to share feelings… They can’t do it. And thus we come to the most important thing of all, and also the most painful…’