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Jeffrey Dahmer: The Phenomenon Of A Serial Killer

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Serial killers is not a new phenomenon. However, only recently, serial killers started being classified on the basis of their motivation to commit homicides. Motives include anger, financial benefits, various psychoses as well as lust and thirst for power. There are also serial killers who commit their crimes on the basis of following the certain ideology or because of membership in a criminal organization or for the realization of their sexual needs. Of course, there are cases that do not fall into none of presenting categories or pertain to more than one. Thus, the paper will focus on the phenomenon of serial killers, motives, and causes that lead to the crime and Jeffrey Dahmer, one of the most famous serial murderers known and an example …show more content…

According to the researches, it appeared in the late XIX century and was first used to describe the personality of Henry Howard Holmes. In the English language, this term was introduced in 1974 by the FBI special agent Robert Ressler. Defining the term “serial killer” Robert Ressler offered to analyze the behavior of this kind of criminals. He tried to identify common patterns in the formation of serial killers, in their development, motives and in their further actions. Ressler has determined that every maniac has its own individual manner. This also applies to the motives, choice of weapons, the crime scene, the victim, method of murder, time of day, and many other factors. In turn, the criminal justice historian Peter Vronsky notes that before Ressler, the term “mass murderer” was found in 1966 in the book of John Brophy The Meaning of Murder (Vronsky, …show more content…

However, the motives of any killer may represent considerable shifting among these categories. Visionary serial killers mostly experience psychotic gaps with reality, even believing that they are another person whether are forced to kill by entities, for example, the Devil or God. Mission-oriented killers mostly justify their doings only killing a certain type of “unwanted” people, such as homosexuals, people of different ethnicity or religion or prostitutes. What is important, in general, they are not psychotic. Hedonistic type of serial killer is looking for thrills and derives pleasure from homicide, seeing people as a desirable object to this goal. Lust, thrill and “comfort” are the subtypes of this category that were found by forensic

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