Serial Killers

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 by: Sam Vaknin

Countess Erszebet Bathory was a breathtakingly beautiful,
unusually well-educated woman, married to a descendant of Vlad Dracula
of Bram Stoker fame. In 1611, she was tried - though, being a
noblewoman, not convicted - in Hungary for slaughtering 612 young
girls. The true figure may have been 40-100, though the Countess
recorded in her diary more than 610 girls and 50 bodies were found in
her estate when it was raided.

The Countess was notorious as an inhuman sadist long
before her hygienic fixation. She once ordered the mouth of a talkative
servant sewn. It is rumoured that in her childhood she witnessed a
gypsy being sewn into a horse's stomach and left to die.

The girls were not killed outright. They were kept in a
dungeon and 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".

About the Author

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory Bellaonline, and Suite101 .

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

palma@unet.com.mk

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