NCJ Number
122280
Journal
Federal Probation Volume: 53 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1989) Pages: 41-45
Date Published
1989
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This article explores the psychological profiles of four serial murderers to determine their common emotional and environmental characteristics and to develop criteria to identify persons with such tendencies and early treatment programs for these individuals.
Abstract
The underlying psychological motivations for homicide generally are frustration, fear, and depression combined with the murderer's interaction with environmental factors such as stress, parental repression, or rejection. When these factors interact, the individual's ego-protective mechanisms fail and he acts out violently; this situation may be aggravated by certain circumstances or people. Experts describe three types of murderers: the ego disharmonious or ego-dystonic, whose conflict between ego and conscience leads to a dissociative reaction; the psychotic, who suffers from a mental illness that causes a complete break from reality; and the ego harmonious, whose commission of murder seems to him rational and acceptable. All three types share characteristics of helplessness, impotence, desire for revenge, irrational hatred of others, suspiciousness, hypersensitivity to rejection, self-centeredness, an inability to tolerate frustration, uncontrollable emotional outbursts, and a need to retaliate through destruction. Serial murderers are ego disharmonious, disassociating themselves from their actions; they have experienced cruel and violent parenting, parental rejection and rejection by members of the opposite sex, previous contact with the criminal justice system, commitment to a mental health institution, aberrant sexual behaviors, and a loner personality. There are commonalities between serial killings: the victims are usually similar physically, the relationship between perpetrator and victim is that of an acquaintance or stranger, and the murderer exhibits an obsessive-compulsive behavior. Most of the killers are between 25 and 35 years old, male, and Caucasian. The victims are female, of any age, and also Caucasian. The article includes case histories of four serial killers -- Theodore Bundy, Albert De Salvo, Edmund Kemper, and Jerome Brudos. 1 appendix, 22 references.