repeatedly pierced, prodded, pricked, and cut. The Countess may have
bitten chunks of flesh off their bodies while alive. She is said to
have bathed and showered in their blood in the mistaken belief that she
could thus slow down the aging process.
Her servants were executed, their bodies burnt and their ashes
scattered. Being royalty, she was merely confined to her bedroom until
she died in 1614. For a hundred years after her death, by royal decree,
mentioning her name in Hungary was a crime.
Cases like Barothy's give the lie to the assumption that serial killers
are a modern - or even post-modern - phenomenon, a cultural-societal
construct, a by-product of urban alienation, Althusserian
interpellation, and media glamorization. Serial killers are, indeed,
largely made, not born. But they are spawned by every culture and
society, molded by the idiosyncrasies of every period as well as by
their personal circumstances and genetic makeup.
Still, every crop of serial killers mirrors and reifies the pathologies
of the milieu, the depravity of the Zeitgeist, and the malignancies of
the Leitkultur. The choice of weapons, the identity and range of the
victims, the methodology of murder, the disposal of the bodies, the
geography, the sexual perversions and paraphilias - are all informed
and inspired by the slayer's environment, upbringing, community,
socialization, education, peer group, sexual orientation, religious
convictions, and personal narrative. Movies like "Born Killers", "Man
Bites Dog", "Copycat", and the Hannibal Lecter series captured this
truth.
Serial killers are the quiddity and quintessence of malignant
narcissism.
Yet, to some degree, we all are narcissists. Primary narcissism is a
universal and inescapable developmental phase. Narcissistic traits are
common and often culturally condoned. To this extent, serial killers
are merely our reflection through a glass darkly.
In their book "Personality Disorders in Modern Life", Theodore Millon
and Roger Davis attribute pathological narcissism to "a society that
stresses individualism and self-gratification at the expense of
community ... In an individualistic culture, the narcissist is 'God's
gift to the world'. In a collectivist society, the narcissist is 'God's
gift to the collective'".
Lasch described the narcissistic landscape thus (in "The Culture of
Narcissism: American Life in an age of Diminishing Expectations", 1979):
"The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. He seeks
not to inflict his own certainties on others but to find a meaning in
life. Liberated from the superstitions of the past, he doubts even the
reality of his own existence ... His sexual attitudes are permissive
rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation from ancient
taboos brings him no sexual peace.
Fiercely competitive in his demand for approval and acclaim, he
distrusts competition because he associates it unconsciously with an
unbridled urge to destroy ... He (harbours) deeply antisocial impulses.
He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that
they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his
cravings have no limits, he ... demands immediate gratification and
lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire."
The narcissist's pronounced lack of empathy, off-handed
exploitativeness, grandiose fantasies and uncompromising sense of
entitlement make him treat all people as though they were objects (he
"objectifies" people). The narcissist regards others as either useful
conduits for and sources of narcissistic supply (attention, adulation,
etc.) - or as extensions of himself.
Similarly, serial killers often mutilate their victims and abscond with
trophies - usually, body parts. Some of them have been known to eat the
organs they have ripped - an act of merging with the dead and
assimilating them through digestion. They treat their victims as some
children do their rag dolls.
Killing the victim - often capturing him or her on film before the
murder - is a form of exerting unmitigated, absolute, and irreversible
control over it. The serial killer aspires to "freeze time" in the
still perfection that he has choreographed. The victim is motionless
and defenseless. The killer attains long sought "object permanence".
The victim is unlikely to run on the serial assassin, or vanish as
earlier objects in the killer's life (e.g., his parents) have done.
In malignant narcissism, the true self of the narcissist is replaced by
a false construct, imbued with omnipotence, omniscience, and
omnipresence. The narcissist's thinking is magical and infantile. He
feels immune to the consequences of his own actions. Yet, this very
source of apparently superhuman fortitude is also the narcissist's
Achilles heel.
The narcissist's personality is chaotic. His defense mechanisms are
primitive. The whole edifice is precariously balanced on pillars of
denial, splitting, projection, rationalization, and projective
identification. Narcissistic injuries - life crises, such as
abandonment, divorce, financial difficulties, incarceration, public
opprobrium - can bring the whole thing tumbling down.
The narcissist cannot afford to be rejected, spurned, insulted, hurt,
resisted, criticized, or disagreed with.
Likewise, the serial killer is trying desperately to avoid a painful
relationship with his object of desire. He is terrified of being
abandoned or humiliated, exposed for what he is and then discarded.
Many killers often have sex - the ultimate form of intimacy - with the
corpses of their victims. Objectification and mutilation allow for
unchallenged possession.
Devoid of the ability to empathize, permeated by haughty feelings of
superiority and uniqueness, the narcissist cannot put himself in
someone else's shoes, or even imagine what it means. The very
experience of being human is alien to the narcissist whose invented
False Self is always to the fore, cutting him off from the rich panoply
of human emotions.
Thus, the narcissist believes that all people are narcissists. Many
serial killers believe that killing is the way of the world. Everyone
would kill if they could or were given the chance to do so. Such
killers are convinced that they are more honest and open about their
desires and, thus, morally superior. They hold others in contempt for
being conforming hypocrites, cowed into submission by an overweening
establishment or society.
The narcissist seeks to adapt society in general - and meaningful
others in particular - to his needs. He regards himself as the epitome
of perfection, a yardstick against which he measures everyone, a
benchmark of excellence to be emulated. He acts the guru, the sage, the
"psychotherapist", the "expert", the objective observer of human
affairs. He diagnoses the "faults" and "pathologies" of people around
him and "helps" them "improve", "change", "evolve", and "succeed" -
i.e., conform to the narcissist's vision and wishes.
Serial killers also "improve" their victims - slain, intimate objects -
by "purifying" them, removing "imperfections", depersonalizing and
dehumanizing them. This type of killer saves its victims from
degeneration and degradation, from evil and from sin, in short: from a
fate worse than death.
The killer's megalomania manifests at this stage. He claims to possess,
or have access to, higher knowledge and morality. The killer is a
special being and the victim is "chosen" and should be grateful for it.
The killer often finds the victim's ingratitude irritating, though
sadly predictable.
In his seminal work, "Aberrations of Sexual Life" (originally:
"Psychopathia Sexualis"), quoted in the book "Jack the Ripper" by
Donald Rumbelow, Kraft-Ebbing offers this observation:
"The perverse urge in murders for pleasure does not solely aim at
causing the victim pain and - most acute injury of all - death, but
that the real meaning of the action consists in, to a certain extent,
imitating, though perverted into a monstrous and ghastly form, the act
of defloration. It is for this reason that an essential component ...
is the employment of a sharp cutting weapon; the victim has to be
pierced, slit, even chopped up ... The chief wounds are inflicted in
the stomach region and, in many cases, the fatal cuts run from the
vagina into the abdomen. In boys an artificial vagina is even made ...
One can connect a fetishistic element too with this process of hacking
... inasmuch as parts of the body are removed and ... made into a
collection."
Yet, the sexuality of the serial, psychopathic, killer is
self-directed. His victims are props, extensions, aides, objects, and
symbols. He interacts with them ritually and, either before or after
the act, transforms his diseased inner dialog into a self-consistent
extraneous catechism. The narcissist is equally auto-erotic. In the
sexual act, he merely masturbates with other - living - people's bodies.
The narcissist's life is a giant repetition complex. In a doomed
attempt to resolve early conflicts with significant others, the
narcissist resorts to a restricted repertoire of coping strategies,
defense mechanisms, and behaviors. He seeks to recreate his past in
each and every new relationship and interaction. Inevitably, the
narcissist is invariably confronted with the same outcomes. This
recurrence only reinforces the narcissist's rigid reactive patterns and
deep-set beliefs. It is a vicious, intractable, cycle.
Correspondingly, in some cases of serial killers, the murder ritual
seemed to have recreated earlier conflicts with meaningful objects,
such as parents, authority figures, or peers. The outcome of the replay
is different to the original, though. This time, the killer dominates
the situation.
The killings allow him to inflict abuse and trauma on others rather
than be abused and traumatized. He outwits and taunts figures of
authority - the police, for instance. As far as the killer is
concerned, he is merely "getting back" at society for what it did to
him. It is a form of poetic justice, a balancing of the books, and,
therefore, a "good" thing. The murder is cathartic and allows the
killer to release hitherto repressed and pathologically transformed
aggression - in the form of hate, rage, and envy.
But repeated acts of escalating gore fail to alleviate the killer's
overwhelming anxiety and depression. He seeks to vindicate his negative
introjects and sadistic superego by being caught and punished. The
serial killer tightens the proverbial noose around his neck by
interacting with law enforcement agencies and the media and thus
providing them with clues as to his identity and whereabouts. When
apprehended, most serial assassins experience a great sense of relief.
Serial killers are not the only objectifiers - people who treat others
as objects. To some extent, leaders of all sorts - political, military,
or corporate - do the same. In a range of demanding professions -
surgeons, medical doctors, judges, law enforcement agents -
objectification efficiently fends off attendant horror and anxiety.
Yet, serial killers are different. They represent a dual failure - of
their own development as full-fledged, productive individuals - and of
the culture and society they grow in. In a pathologically narcissistic
civilization - social anomies proliferate. Such societies breed
malignant objectifiers - people devoid of empathy - also known as
"narcissists".
APPENDIX - Criteria of Narcissistic Personality Disorder
An all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behaviour), need
for admiration or adulation and lack of empathy, usually beginning by
early adulthood and present in various contexts. Five (or more) of the
following criteria must be met:
* Feels grandiose and self-important (e.g., exaggerates achievements
and talents to the point of lying, demands to be recognized as superior
without commensurate achievements)
* Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power
or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily
beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal,
everlasting, all-conquering love or passion
* Firmly convinced that he or she is unique and, being special, can
only be understood by, should only be treated by, or associate with,
other special or unique, or high-status people (or institutions)
* Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation -
or, failing that, wishes to be feared and to be notorious (narcissistic
supply)
* Feels entitled. Expects unreasonable or special and favorable
priority treatment. Demands automatic and full compliance with his or
her expectations
* Is "interpersonally exploitative", i.e., uses others to achieve his
or her own ends
* Devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with or
acknowledge the feelings and needs of others
* Constantly envious of others or believes that they feel the same
about him or her
* Arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes coupled with rage when
frustrated, contradicted, or confronted
Some of the language in the criteria above is based on or summarized
from:
American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical
manual of mental disorders, fourth edition (DSM IV). Washington, DC:
American Psychiatric Association.
The text in italics is based on:
Sam Vaknin. (2003). Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited, third,
revised, printing. Prague and Skopje: Narcissus Publication.
Read this for in-depth information - A Primer on Narcissism
Sex or Gender
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Alan Pease, author of a book titled "Why Men Don't Listen and Women
Can't Read Maps", believes that women are spatially-challenged compared
to men. The British firm, Admiral Insurance, conducted a study of half
a million claims. They found that "women were almost twice as likely as
men to have a collision in a car park, 23 percent more likely to hit a
stationary car, and 15 percent more likely to reverse into another
vehicle" (Reuters).
Yet gender "differences" are often the outcomes of bad scholarship.
Consider Admiral insurance's data. As Britain's Automobile Association
(AA) correctly pointed out - women drivers tend to make more short
journeys around towns and shopping centers and these involve frequent
parking. Hence their ubiquity in certain kinds of claims. Regarding
women's alleged spatial deficiency, in Britain, girls have been
outperforming boys in scholastic aptitude tests - including geometry
and maths - since 1988.
On the other wing of the divide, Anthony Clare, a British psychiatrist
and author of "On Men" wrote:
"At the beginning of the 21st century it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that men are in serious trouble. Throughout the world,
developed and developing, antisocial behavior is essentially male.
Violence, sexual abuse of children, illicit drug use, alcohol misuse,
gambling, all are overwhelmingly male activities. The courts and
prisons bulge with men. When it comes to aggression, delinquent
behavior, risk taking and social mayhem, men win gold."
Men also mature later, die earlier, are more susceptible to infections
and most types of cancer, are more likely to be dyslexic, to suffer
from a host of mental health disorders, such as Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and to commit suicide.
In her book, "Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man", Susan Faludi
describes a crisis of masculinity following the breakdown of manhood
models and work and family structures in the last five decades. In the
film "Boys don't Cry", a teenage girl binds her breasts and acts the
male in a caricatural relish of stereotypes of virility. Being a man is
merely a state of mind, the movie implies.
But what does it really mean to be a "male" or a "female"? Are gender
identity and sexual preferences genetically determined? Can they be
reduced to one's sex? Or are they amalgams of biological, social, and
psychological factors in constant interaction? Are they immutable
lifelong features or dynamically evolving frames of self-reference?
Certain traits attributed to one's sex are surely better accounted for
by cultural factors, the process of socialization, gender roles, and
what George Devereux called "ethnopsychiatry" in "Basic Problems of
Ethnopsychiatry" (University of Chicago Press, 1980). He suggested to
divide the unconscious into the id (the part that was always
instinctual and unconscious) and the "ethnic unconscious" (repressed
material that was once conscious). The latter is mostly molded by
prevailing cultural mores and includes all our defense mechanisms and
most of the superego.
So, how can we tell whether our sexual role is mostly in our blood or
in our brains?
The scrutiny of borderline cases of human sexuality - notably the
transgendered or intersexed - can yield clues as to the distribution
and relative weights of biological, social, and psychological
determinants of gender identity formation.
The results of a study conducted by Uwe Hartmann, Hinnerk Becker, and
Claudia Rueffer-Hesse in 1997 and titled "Self and Gender: Narcissistic
Pathology and Personality Factors in Gender Dysphoric Patients",
published in the "International Journal of Transgenderism", "indicate
significant psychopathological aspects and narcissistic dysregulation
in a substantial proportion of patients." Are these "psychopathological
aspects" merely reactions to underlying physiological realities and
changes? Could social ostracism and labeling have induced them in the
"patients"?
The authors conclude:
"The cumulative evidence of our study ... is consistent with the view
that gender dysphoria is a disorder of the sense of self as has been
proposed by Beitel (1985) or PfÑfflin (1993). The central problem in
our patients is about identity and the self in general and the
transsexual wish seems to be an attempt at reassuring and stabilizing
the self-coherence which in turn can lead to a further destabilization
if the self is already too fragile. In this view the body is
instrumentalized to create a sense of identity and the splitting
symbolized in the hiatus between the rejected body-self and other parts
of the self is more between good and bad objects than between masculine
and feminine."
Freud, Kraft-Ebbing, and Fliess suggested that we are all bisexual to a
certain degree. As early as 1910, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld argued, in
Berlin, that absolute genders are "abstractions, invented extremes".
The consensus today is that one's sexuality is, mostly, a psychological
construct which reflects gender role orientation.
Joanne Meyerowitz, a professor of history at Indiana University and the
editor of The Journal of American History observes, in her recently
published tome, "How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the
United States", that the very meaning of masculinity and femininity is
in constant flux.
Transgender activists, says Meyerowitz, insist that gender and
sexuality represent "distinct analytical categories". The New York
Times wrote in its review of the book: "Some male-to-female
transsexuals have sex with men and call themselves homosexuals. Some
female-to-male transsexuals have sex with women and call themselves
lesbians. Some transsexuals call themselves asexual."
So, it is all in the mind, you see.
This would be taking it too far. A large body of scientific evidence
points to the genetic and biological underpinnings of sexual behavior
and preferences.
The German science magazine, "Geo", reported recently that the males of
the fruit fly "drosophila melanogaster" switched from heterosexuality
to homosexuality as the temperature in the lab was increased from 19 to
30 degrees Celsius. They reverted to chasing females as it was lowered.
The brain structures of homosexual sheep are different to those of
straight sheep, a study conducted recently by the Oregon Health &
Science University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Sheep
Experiment Station in Dubois, Idaho, revealed. Similar differences were
found between gay men and straight ones in 1995 in Holland and
elsewhere. The preoptic area of the hypothalamus was larger in
heterosexual men than in both homosexual men and straight women.
According an article, titled "When Sexual Development Goes Awry", by
Suzanne Miller, published in the September 2000 issue of the "World and
I", various medical conditions give rise to sexual ambiguity.
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), involving excessive androgen
production by the adrenal cortex, results in mixed genitalia. A person
with the complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) has a vagina,
external female genitalia and functioning, androgen-producing, testes -
but no uterus or fallopian tubes.
People with the rare 5-alpha reductase deficiency syndrome are born
with ambiguous genitalia. They appear at first to be girls. At puberty,
such a person develops testicles and his clitoris swells and becomes a
penis. Hermaphrodites possess both ovaries and testicles (both, in most
cases, rather undeveloped). Sometimes the ovaries and testicles are
combined into a chimera called ovotestis.
Most of these individuals have the chromosomal composition of a woman
together with traces of the Y, male, chromosome. All hermaphrodites
have a sizable penis, though rarely generate sperm. Some hermaphrodites
develop breasts during puberty and menstruate. Very few even get
pregnant and give birth.
Anne Fausto-Sterling, a developmental geneticist, professor of medical
science at Brown University, and author of "Sexing the Body",
postulated, in 1993, a continuum of 5 sexes to supplant the current
dimorphism: males, merms (male pseudohermaphrodites), herms (true
hermaphrodites), ferms (female pseudohermaphrodites), and females.
Intersexuality (hermpahroditism) is a natural human state. We are all
conceived with the potential to develop into either sex. The embryonic
developmental default is female. A series of triggers during the first
weeks of pregnancy places the fetus on the path to maleness.
In rare cases, some women have a male's genetic makeup (XY chromosomes)
and vice versa. But, in the vast majority of cases, one of the sexes is
clearly selected. Relics of the stifled sex remain, though. Women have
the clitoris as a kind of symbolic penis. Men have breasts (mammary
glands) and nipples.
The Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 edition describes the formation of
ovaries and testes thus:
"In the young embryo a pair of gonads develop that are indifferent or
neutral, showing no indication whether they are destined to develop
into testes or ovaries. There are also two different duct systems, one
of which can develop into the female system of oviducts and related
apparatus and the other into the male sperm duct system. As development
of the embryo proceeds, either the male or the female reproductive
tissue differentiates in the originally neutral gonad of the mammal."
Yet, sexual preferences, genitalia and even secondary sex
characteristics, such as facial and pubic hair are first order
phenomena. Can genetics and biology account for male and female
behavior patterns and social interactions ("gender identity")? Can the
multi-tiered complexity and richness of human masculinity and
femininity arise from simpler, deterministic, building blocks?
Sociobiologists would have us think so.
For instance: the fact that we are mammals is astonishingly often
overlooked. Most mammalian families are composed of mother and
offspring. Males are peripatetic absentees. Arguably, high rates of
divorce and birth out of wedlock coupled with rising promiscuity merely
reinstate this natural "default mode", observes Lionel Tiger, a
professor of anthropology at Rutgers University in New Jersey. That
three quarters of all divorces are initiated by women tends to support
this view.