NCJ Number
169313
Date Published
1996
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This chapter contends that serial murder results from the breakdown of institutionalized ideological controls that produce oppression, as the oppressed develop a more idiosyncratic ideology without boundaries.
Abstract
The author offers hypotheses that relate to the main trajectory along which ideological and family relations intersect in the lives of serial killers. In such a trajectory ideological themes, especially those regarding wealth and power, that link the wider social order and the subcultural orders are inadequately fostered, regulated, and sustained. The tension- points of social inequality embedded in gender, race, and class are aggravated by the absence and erosion of ideological controls. Interpersonal relations are destabilized; the most vulnerable receptors of this disjointed condition are children in ideologically dysfunctional families; the children suffer abuse and neglect. Such abuse/neglect is partially eroticized by the child as the only available means of rationalizing maltreatment and maintaining some form of necessary emotional contact. Since the abuse/neglect trauma cannot be understood or appropriately compartmentalized by the child, it must be repressed or anesthetized. The deadening of emotion achieves pain reduction. Sociopathy or excessive compartmentalization is the long-term consequence. Scripted eroticized violence becomes the means for cataclysmic fulfillment of long-cultivated fantasies. Serial murder is the result, as overwhelming power asymmetries are neutralized and avenged. The media play a role in this trajectory, as they reinforce class dominance. 14 notes and 19 references