Much of Britain is currently following the trial of Steven Griffiths, or as he'd like you to refer to him, the Crossbow Cannibal.Serial killers are always newsworthy, and Griffiths has killed at least three women in cold blood. (He did use a crossbow, but I think the newspapers made up the cannibalism.) But it's Griffiths's interests that have really got people's attention.
It turns out that before he became a serial killer, he was a man obsessed with... serial killers. His Amazon wish list was full of books about murder. He has a degree in psychology, and he was working on his PhD, in Criminology. Guess what his research was about.
Griffiths is therefore a kind of real life Hannibal Lecter or Dexter, an expert in murderers who is himself one. He's also a good example of the fact that, unlike on TV, real life serial killers are never cool and sophisticated, nor even charmingly eccentric, just weird and pathetic. Not to mention lazy, given that he was still working on his PhD after 6 years...
Yet there is an interesting question: was Griffiths a good criminologist? Does he have a unique insight into serial killers? We'll probably never know, at least not until (or if) the police release some of his writings. But it seems to me that he might have done.
When the average person hears about the crimes of someone like Griffiths, we are not just shocked but confused - it seems incomprehensible. I can understand why someone would want to rob me for my wallet, because I like money too. I can understand how one guy might kill another in a drunken fight, because I've been drunk too. Of course this doesn't mean I condone either crime, but they don't leave me scratching my head; I can see how it happens.
I cannot begin to understand why Griffiths did what he did. My understanding of humanity doesn't cover him. But he is human, so all that really means is that my understanding is limited. Someone understands people like Griffiths, it can't be impossible; but it may be that the only way to understand a serial killer is to be one.
The same may be true of less dramatic mental disorders. Karl Jaspers believed that the hallmark of severe mental illness is symptoms that are impossible to understand: they just exist. I've experienced depression; I've also read an awful lot about it and published academic papers on it. My own illness taught me much more about depression than my reading. Maybe I've been reading the wrong things. I don't think so.
14 comments:
So you are in neuroscience but not that much in psychology , Eh?
Cruelty's rewards: The gratifications of perpetrators and spectators
This used to be a free download but the suckers came...
No, you haven't been reading the wrong papers. I have schizophrenia, adhd and ocd. I'm quite certain there are no papers that can give me the insight I've gained from my personal experiences over the years. A paper can hardly describe the strength of a compulsion or the the believability of a command voice.
It came to my mind that some forensic profilers have helped some serial murder investigations to catch a killer. It would be somewhat contradictory if the profilers would not, in their psychology, understand somehow the conditions of the serial murderer. Profilers have succeeded to predict things like age, ethnicity and social class of the killers.
Nevertheless, the fundamental questions concerning the freedom of the will of serial killer etc. are perhaps indeed behind the curtain.
True, but I wonder how much "real understanding" there is in profiling. I mean I can profile any serial killer: they're male. That's statistically very likely to be true, but it doesn't mean I understand them, it's just an observation.
JLD, this is for sure. The entire issue of the journal addresses cruelty:
Cruelty's rewards: The gratifications of perpetrators and spectators
Victor Nell
A murky portrait of human cruelty
Albert Bandura
Ralf-Peter Behrendt
Make love, not war: Both serve to defuse stress-induced arousal through the dopaminergic “pleasure” network
Mary F. Dallman
Neurobiological bases of aggression, violence, and cruelty
María Inés de Aguirre
Compassion as an antidote to cruelty
Michael Allen Fox
Cruelty: A dispositional or a situational behavior in man?
Mika Haritos-Fatouros
Human–animal connections: Recent findings on the anthrozoology of cruelty
Harold Herzog and Arnold Arluke
Considering the roles of affect and culture in the enactment and enjoyment of cruelty
Spee Kosloff, Jeff Greenberg and Sheldon Solomon
Signifying nothing? Myth and science of cruelty
Boris Kotchoubey
The cruelty of older infants and toddlers
Sebastian Kraemer
Recent advances and hypotheses regarding the neural networks involved in cruelty and pathological aggression
Harold Mouras
The affective neuroeconomics of social brains: One man's cruelty is another's suffering
Jaak Panksepp
Human cruelty is rooted in the reinforcing effects of intraspecific aggression that subserves dominance motivation
Michael Potegal
Shame, violence, and perpetrators' voices
Nancy Nyquist Potter
Cruelty's utility: The evolution of same-species killing
Malcolm Potts
Animal cruelty: Definitions and sociology
Andrew Nicholas Rowan
Executive function and language deficits associated with aggressive-sadistic personality
Anthony C. Ruocco and Steven M. Platek
Nice idea, but is it science?
Richard Schuster
Sadistic cruelty and unempathic evil: Psychobiological and evolutionary considerations
Dan J. Stein
Epigenetic effects of child abuse and neglect propagate human cruelty
James E. Swain
Predation versus competition and the importance of manipulable causes
Katy Tapper
Torturers, horror films, and the aesthetic legacy of predation
Lionel Tiger
Cruelty, age, and thanatourism
Pierre L. van den Berghe
Explaining human cruelty
Nick Zangwill
Cruelty and the psychology of history
Victor Nell
Dear Neuroskeptic,
I like Makislav's comment. I feel like more of a blind generalist than a psychologist, but I imagine freedom of the will is an element to many forms of psychosis such as severe mania or serial murdering.
NS,
I would follow Humean sensualist philosophy of mind and assert that mind is an object of the empirical world. We gain knowledge of the mind by our senses. How come information gathered statistically would not be real - or, I mean, any less real than other empirical, scientifically gathered knowledge?
For example, Newton discovered gravity by calculating the motions of the planets. He seemed to be himself ignorant of the "secret powers" behind gravity and thus he did not pretend to understand gravitation. It worked as an empirical fact, hence he did not have to make any additional hypotheses how the gravitation "really" works (okay, let's admit that he had some theological ideas). But my point is that observation is epistemologically sufficient to form valid beliefs about the world. Or at least empirical science is the best method for it.
So I am not sure if we could ever "really understand" the mind but rather collect some empirical knowledge of it.
First, I've heard about the case, but I never bothered to look into it closer, so my entire comment is based on your own post.
a) obsession/avid interest in murder books/criminology degree: it may be that Steven was not interested in other offenders at all, but was simply trying to make sense of what he himself was. If he truly is a serial killer, someone with certain preferences and "taste", he might have been just wondering all the way why.
It's like your own choice to become a neuroscientist, because you probably were fascinated by your own brain, the same way Steven was fascinated about his preferences.
b) Another point to consider is rather a philosophical position I hold. As a psychology student, a biological perspective supporter (evolution in specific) and an atheist, I do not categorize people's action into "divine good" and "satanic evil". For me, those are simply adaptive and maladaptive behaviors/actions by a specimen of our species. Killing another human being may be an adaptive behavior (in a drunk fight as a self-defense, using your own example). On the other hand, killing a person out of a psychological gratification is a complex form of an (mal-)adaptive behavior: 1) as a specimen he effectively utilizes his needs; 2) but as a part of the species his actions will be considered simply wrong (take whatever philosophical, judicial or normative position you can think off).
c) About profilers understanding the offender. Yes, using base rates you can predict the characteristics of an offender (he is a Caucasian male, 30-45 age bla-bla) using the crime scene reports and victimology. However, it will be your own level of empathy that in the end will decide whether you truly understand the offender or not. It's a myth that you need to have a similar past to better understand how the offender feels (a similar myth that majority of psychology students have a lot of their own issues which kinda forces them to become psychology students). Yes, a similar experience will help you understand the offender better, but it's not a necessary component to be a good profiler.
c) About Steven being lazy... I do not know him at all in a sense that what he was doing or so, so it might just been a good joke you had about "6 years into his PhD" and nothing more. His compulsion and preferences may have led him to another productivity which we may not be aware, and where he may have mastered himself we may never will (like a hobby or something).
d) So, has Steven a good instinct on serial killers?
I highly doubt it and the answer is simple: His own quite "random" killings. That much disorganized serial killer is surely not so much avid to look into other people's minds. He was just too much concerned with what was going in his head, reading about crimes and stuff, eventually understanding that he is what he is, and accepting it.
But of course, I have insufficient data to work with and I might have got his profile wrong. :)
My thought is that after studying serial killers for so long, he came to identify with them. If you spend your days reading about and investigating people murderers, you're probably already very interested in serial killings and only likely to become more interested in them, or even idolize or desire to experience them.
Having studied cocaine and heroin, and heard cocaine and heroin users talk about their drugs, I can say that it's relatively easy to start imagining what it might be like to participate in the evils that one studies. It might only take ten or twenty serial killers' descriptions about the joy, awe, or power their killings gave them to get this guy wanting some of the action, so to speak.
Not that I think there's any excuse for giving into that sort of temptation. I just understand how it might become appealing, after so much exposure.
Just a message from an undergraduate to say thanks for the blog. I regularly check for updates and always enjoy reading your writing.
I've even referenced a few of the papers you have introduced me to in a few of my exams :D
Thanks and keep it up!
Mike Mike: an interesting thought... if you study serial killers for too long, maybe you do come to understand them, to empathize with them, but once you can empathize with them, you're dangerously close to being capable of doing the same things.
undergraduate: Thanks. Maybe in a few years people will just be able to cite "neuroskeptic" and get top marks in exams... that'll be the day...
About Mike Mike's idea:
People do not just snap because of some literature reading and become serial killers. If anything, Steven already had certain predispositions to become one (e.g. psychopathic characteristics, psychosis etc). It was only a matter of time when he'd kill someone, regardless of his literature top list.
Neuroskeptic, you should consider this in light of how brain works. Will make more sense. Some people will read this killer stuff and see disturbing images, they will feel disgusted by it (no reinforcement), but people with deviant pathways (I don't know, limbic system screwed or frontal lobes) will get a gratification.
I mentioned in my earlier post that maybe Steven was just trying to figure out who he himself was by reading all that. Another point is that maybe he was just feeding his own "taste", until he needed something more real.
I am an expert on serial killers. Serial killers are tortured victim creations of their evil lie-based societies.
They have every right to undertake murder acts, and society has no right to pass judgment on them.
For more information : www.Truthmedia.8k.com
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