Multiple Murders Psychology - Research Paper Example

?571047 Multiple Murders The more that is learned about multiple murderers, the more the various types of offenders are ified and studied. Multiple murders can be mass murders, like Hitler, Stalin, or Qu’adaffi, or they can be people like Ted Bundy or Gary Ridgeway—fairly non-descript and whose only claim to fame is that they are serial killers. Multiple murderers can also be fathers or mothers who kill their children, spouse or partner, and often, themselves. One type of multiple murder occurs on school campuses or in other public places where the murderer seems to target random victims. Examples of this include the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007 and the Arizona shooting spree that included the severe wounding of Congresswoman Gabby Gifford. All of these types of horrific crimes are characterized not only by the large number of lives lost, but also by a perception of the general public that a psychotically ill person is responsible for them. In general, that may be true, but the real question is how to stop these sorts of multiple killings from occurring. Much is known about mass murderers that attempt to commit genocide against an ethnic group or kill their own people for power or political reasons. That is another set of issues beyond the scope of this paper. In the past decade or so, many spree killings have taken place. Spree killings are serial murders where there are multiple victims within a short period of time, like the Virginia Tech shootings. Spree killers often have a grudge against a person or a group of people for some wrong done to him, real or imagined. The people the spree killer targets represent the person or persons against whom the grudge is held. Often, the spree killing has been planned in advance, and it often ends with the perpetrator killing himself or being killed by police. That situation also has its own set of characteristics beyond what this paper can adequately cover. Technically, one type of spree killer is the multiple murderer who commits family annihilation—familicide. Those who kill their families often exhibit many warning signs such as depression over a lost job, failure in school, bankruptcy or divorce and the inability to cope with such life crises. “The finding that a large majority of the perpetrators were mentally ill at the time and that many killed when faced with divorce and/or custody over the child(ren) may suggest that increased monitoring of this group might have preventative value” (Liem & Koenraadt, 2008, p. 306). While this type of mass murder is on the rise, perhaps due to the recent worldwide financial downturn, it is more predictable and preventable than what most people think of when they think of multiple murderers—the serial killers. So, for the scope of this paper, the focus will be only on serial killers and the cognitive aspects of their criminal behavior as well as the set of psychological characteristics that tend to be common in most of the serial killers studied. Serial killers are people who murder more than three people over a long period of time, usually 30 days or more. The killings are separated by a period when the killer relives the last event, seeks out a new victim, or whatever other motivating factors may cause the randomness of the intervals between serial killings. Often the motivation behind the killings is “largely based on sexual gratification or internal psychological gratification (Kraemer, Lord, & Heilbrun, 2004). Serial killers are deliberate, premeditated, and lack the interpersonal conflict and provocation that is more frequently seen in single homicide offenders (Kraemer et al., 2004). These hedonistic, instrumental aggressive features bear similarities to the instrumental aggression previously reported in psychopaths (Cima & Raine, 2009)” (Gao, Raine, & Phil, 2010, p. 201). Most research agrees that serial killers exhibit psychopathic personalities in that they do not feel remorse and are usually cruel and methodical. This may explain why many of them go for years without being suspected. However, some researchers believe that it is too simple to write serial killers all off as psychopaths. “Serial killers are very different from the average murderer: they do not have an immense fury or jealousy, or a profound emotion that prompts them to continuously kill. They cannot be simply labeled as sociopaths or psychopaths because they are much more complex individuals than that. Serial killers have a much deeper disorganization within them that is not openly presented until they are in the heart of a crime or as soon as the crime is commencing” (Bowen, 2007, p. 10). Because that moment is rarely witnessed, it is hard for those who study the psychopathology of serial killers to describe that particular set of circumstances. Yet, there are some common characteristics among serial killers. Most serial killers are Caucasian men who begin their murders sometime after the age of 20. Victims, on the other hand, are usually women, almost always strangers, often those who are the most vulnerable or who will not be missed by those around them like prostitutes. Serial killers can be further classified using various methods. One such method developed by the FBI classifies serial murderers into three groups, organized or disorganized, or a mixed psychopathology of both organized and disorganized much like most people in general could be categorized. Again, a common trait of serial killers is their seeming normalcy and lack of distinguishing characteristics. Many serial killers exhibit charm and likeability when they wish to. Many are married and have families. Most serial killings are pre-planned and the details seem well thought out, as if the killer has fantasized his every move and then when he actually commits the act, he just lives out the fantasy in the order in which it occurred to him. The real distinguishing feature of all serial killers though is their ability to sustain the behavior for long periods of time, often years, without being caught. “Serial killers may be capable of engaging in very serious violence without being caught for sustained periods of time because they possess adaptive features (good executive functioning, efficient information-processing, adaptive stress reactivity) that are similar to those of successful psychopaths (Gao et al., 2009; Ishikawa et al., 2001)” (Gao, Raine, & Phil, 2010, p. 202). This set of characteristics is what makes serial killers so frightening to the general public. Much of the recent research has centered on identifying the psychic disorder that causes some people to become serial killers. In general, serial killers begin their criminal behavior while they are still children. As children they have a violent fantasy life that they later act out on their victims. Most come from dysfunctional families where they were neglected and abused. Fathers may have been absent, mothers controlling or authoritative. Some serial killers were illegitimate children or adoptees. Some abuse substances and have bursts of rage and other mood swings. Some are sexually insatiable. “Some have experienced head injuries at some point before beginning to kill (which may be evidence for a neuropsychological basis for their behavior). . . . These individuals cannot empathize or feel guilt and are largely indifferent to others. . . .Most are diagnosed with one or more forms of paraphilias, the most common being sadomasochism, fetishisms and voyeurism (Knight, 2006, pp. 1191-1192). Knight’s article, “Some Thoughts on the Psychological Roots of the Behavior of Serial Killers as Narcissists: An Object Relations Perspective,” identifies the disorder that may be the root of the tendency toward serial killing as pathological and destructive narcissism. Narcissism arises when a child’s normal development is interrupted at a crucial point and certain necessary tasks are not fulfilled. Knight identifies the results as “the well-defended lack of self-esteem . . .rooted in deficient or inadequate preoedipal infantile experiences, . . . .deficient self-object experiences of mirroring and idealization . . . .no or little responsive caretaking. . . . the process of “transmuting internalization”(Kohut, 1971, 1977, 1984) did not occur in an optimal manner. For serial killers, a “developmental arrest” (Kohut, 1977, 1984) occurred, resulting in pathological narcissism.” As a result, says Knight, “Serial killers may seek out object relations not in order to develop a mutual relationship of interdependency but to obtain their narcissistic supplies and thus to unconsciously bolster their fragile sense of self and defend against feelings of shame, rejection, inadequacy and low self-esteem. . . .While the necessary narcissistic supplies are offered, such relationships are idealized. These same relationships, however, are discarded and devalued as soon as they no longer provide the narcissistic supplies” (Knight, 2006, pp. 1197-11198). Unfortunately, when a pathological narcissist who is also a serial killer discards his “narcissistic supply,” the police usually find a body, or several bodies, over a number of years as this scenario plays itself out over and over again. With Knight’s characterization of the serial killer as having extenuating circumstances that caused his crimes, some may be able to generate some sympathy for these people who carry out such heinous crimes without guilt or remorse. Yet, some researchers characterize serial killers as monsters who are not mentally ill, just evil. One of the researchers who express such beliefs about his findings about serial killers is Richard Whittington-Egan. He talks about “The Psychotics,” who he says are “genuinely insane. They hear voices, see visions, fail to perceive reality correctly. Murder is a symptom of their madness” (Whittington-Egan, 2008, p. 326). For these people, Whittington-Egan seems to have some sympathy because they are clearly insane. One excellent example of such a person is Andrea Yates, a Texas mother who drowned all five of her children in a bathtub, and was found guilty of murder, but who won a new trial and a finding of guilt by insanity later. This classification perhaps best describes the spree killers or those who commit familicide like Yates. Most serial killers fall into Whittington-Egan’s other category: “The Psychopaths (also designated Sociopaths). They are McNaughton sane; they know right from wrong - but don't care. They lack conscience and the capacity for empathy. They feel neither guilt nor remorse. They kill because they want to: they like it” (Whittington-Egan, 2008, p. 326). Whittington-Egan apparently has no sympathy for this type of serial killer and blames their actions on controllable urges. “Two traits invariably present: lust for power and paraphilia, or sexual abnormality, such as voyeurism, undinism, coprophagia and piquerism (self-stabbing with sharp instruments)” (Whittington-Egan, 2008, p. 326). These traits make serial killers particularly frightening and hard to capture because they are smooth, adventurous, and have no conscience about their deeds. They are “positively anti-social, although more gregarious. Superficially quite normal” (Whittington-Egan, 2008, p. 326). But, most psychologists believe that there is a point in a serial killers’ life, before he becomes a serial killer, where intervention and treatment could have helped to prevent the ultimate outcome. One way to think about psychopaths is to look at those considered successful in that they have not been involved (or not been caught) in serial murders or other similar criminal behavior. Gao, Raine and Phil explain the difference between the two types of psychopaths, successful and unsuccessful. All psychopaths share the same lack of emotional empathy, abilities to process emotion and modulate behavior, and avid sensation-seeking. Perhaps some people who might become psychopaths channel that tendency into adventure seeking or high-risk occupations. The successful psychopaths are those whose orbital frontal cortex and/or amygdala are intact or enhanced, as are their abilities to process information and condition themselves to fear. Cognitively they can at least fake empathy and are able to use executive functioning. Maybe some of those power-seeking, money-hungry CEOs that are often accused of less than human behavior as they lay off thousands of workers without seeming to care are actually successful psychopaths. These traits that may make some psychopaths do well in life are impaired in unsuccessful psychopaths as are their decision-making abilities. Successful psychopaths may become involved in white-collar crimes or relational aggressiveness while unsuccessful psychopaths tend more toward blue-collar crimes and physical violence (Gao, Raine, & Phil, 2010). Based on this study, there may be many millions of potential serial killers alive just waiting for the right configuration of triggering circumstances to set them off into a familicide, spree killing, or a more long, drawn-out, methodical and much more frightening serial murdering cycle. Depending on which of these theories about serial killers one accepts, there are many ways to think about this particular type of criminal behavior. One way may be to be especially cognizant of children in dysfunctional families and intervene when those children are still young. Perhaps if such intervention occurs, the tendency toward destructive narcissism will be averted through counseling. Another way is to take those young people who have a history with all the characteristics in place that may lead to serial killing and separate them from society so they are not able to begin their crimes. This is a pretty cynical view, but perhaps the only way to protect the majority of people who may fall victim to these criminals. Their numbers seem to be increasing, and that may just be due to the increasing stressors on individuals in modern society. Not only is it frightening to contemplate that there may be millions of potential serial killers, just waiting to crack, but it also causes one to want to be more cautious, perhaps less trusting even of those one knows or thinks one knows well. There does not seem to be just one definitive answer to the problem of serial killers or mass murders of any type really. The only option we have is to continue to do research and to try to glean as much knowledge as possible from those serial killers who have been caught. The more work that can be done, the safer society will be. Also, early intervention into dysfunctional families will not hurt and may actually prevent another Jeffery Dahmer. References Bowen, K. N. (2007, August). The Perception and Knowledge of Serial and Mass Murder Between Officers at the Arlington Police Department and Criminology and Criminal Justice Students At the University of Texas at Arlington. 1-90. Arlington, TX: University of Texas at Arlington. Gao, Y., Raine, A., & Phil, D. (2010). Successful and Unsuccessful Psychopaths: A Neurobiological Model. Behavioral Sciences and the Law , 28, 194-210. Knight, Z. G. (2006). Some Thoughts on the Psychological Roots of the Behavior of Serial Killers as Narcissists: An Object Relations Perspective. Social Behavior and Personality , 34 (10), 1189-1206. Liem, M., & Koenraadt, F. (2008). Familicide: a comparison with spousal and child homicide by mentally disordered perpetrators. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health , 18, 306-318. Whittington-Egan, R. (2008, September 22). The Serial Killer Phenonmenon. Contemporary Review , 323-330. Read More