Second Thoughts on Theoretical Approaches to Multiple Murder (From Serial and Mass Murder: Theory, Research and Policy, P 39- 51, 1996, Thomas O'Reilly-Fleming, ed. -- See NCJ-169306)

• NCJ Number: 169308
• Author(s): E Leyton
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 13 pages
• Sale Source: Canadian Scholars Press
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: Canada

Annotation

A rational integration of theories of multiple murder causation is currently impossible, given the highly politicized nature of modern ideologies and academic disciplines whose competitive relationships betray the mandate of the university.

Abstract

Religious fundamentalists claim that violence is the inevitable consequence of modern secular society's abandonment of the church and the rejection of traditional religious and family values. Psychiatrists claim that serial murder is a consequence of an individual's mental disease. Racist propagandists claim that violence is a consequence of the natural behavior of an inferior race whose genetic inability to function as responsible adults leads to primitive violence. Bio-psychologists claim that violence is a consequence of an individual's biological abnormalities; and sociologists and anthropologists claim that violence stems from a culture or subculture of violence. Psychologists claim that serial killing, like all violence, is learned behavior internalized in the individual through a variety of psychological mechanisms such as role modeling. Other theories of multiple murders and murderers are promulgated by right-wing theorists, left-wing propagandists, radical feminists, gun- haters, gun-lovers, and sociobiologists. In all likelihood a full understanding of multiple murders will integrate a number of disciplines that focus on the forces that shape those who share and bear a civilization; however, the development of such an interdisciplinary explanation cannot occur in the current climate of competing ideologies. 26 notes and 33 references