Pondsmith is making up excuses to keep “wheelchairs make you evil” in his game instead of recognizing the notion for what it is and discarding it.

At this point as I understand it his take is “alienation/isolation, trauma from a violent society, and denial of access to necessary medical care can eventually break someone, and someone who can bench press a car and has a bunch of reflex enhancers jacked directly into their spine is more likely to lash out in a dangerous way when their back’s to the wall, they think they’re going to die, and they panic,” with a whole lot of emphasizing social support networks as being important for surviving and enduring trauma like that.

It’s still not as good a take as “cyberpsychosis isn’t real, it’s just a bullshit diagnosis applied to people pushed past the brink by their material circumstances, acting in the way that a society that revolves around violence has ultimately taught them to act, who then just double down on it because they know they’re going to be summarily executed by the police who have no interest in deescalation or trying to take them alive, compounded with the fact that they can bench press a car and react to bullets fast enough to simply get out of the way, at least for a while” would be, but it’s earnest progress from someone who’s weirdly endearing despite being an absolute galaxy brained lib.

Weirdly, Cyberpunk 2077 seems to have had a better take on it than Pondsmith himself, with “cyberpsychos” mostly being just people with an increased capacity for violence dealing with intolerable material conditions until they fight back a little too hard against a real or perceived threat, with one who’s not even on a rampage and instead is just a heavily augmented vigilante hunting down members of a criminal syndicate that had murdered someone close to him. The police chatter also has the player branded a cyberpsycho when you get stars, reflecting the idea that it’s more a blanket term applied to anyone with augments who’s doing a violent crime than a real thing.