Before I started to look into and analyze the readings after hearing the knowledge fair presentations on serial killers, I wanted to come up with my full standing on them. I have a mere true belief that some serial killers are born that way due to birth defects and that others become that way because of what has occurred in their lives, but that all humans still can decide what actions to take in life. My mere true belief is based off of my being against murder and all acts of violence and that we each have control over our own actions and lives.
Serial killers are people that commit a series of three or more killings where a cooling off period occurs in between the murders. In the article The Monster Within: How Male Serial Killers Discursively Manage Their Stigmatized Identities Jayne R. Henson and Loreen N. Olson discuss the background of criminal attributes and examine the experiences and social position of male serial killers. Data was collected for three months where the researchers met with each other discussing their criteria that the serial killers had to fit in and were interviewed by credible sources. In the end, they based their research on interviews with thirteen infamous serial killers. The serial killers that they looked at were David Berkowitz, Kenneth Bianchi, Theodore Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy Jr., William Heirens, Henry Lee Lucas, James Paul, Dennis Rader, Richard Ramirez, Gary Leon Ridgeway, Michael Ross, and Arthur Shawcross. Each of those serial killers discussed his actions and interactions with other people to the interviewers to offer insight and attempt to make sense of why they committed serial murders. Each of them came from different backgrounds, interviewed at different stages of their criminal proceedings, and had different numbers of victims. The serial killers were able to reflect on their lives and actions to allow the interviewers, readers, and researchers a chance to try to understand the serial killers and their lives that possibly made them become serial killers. Their findings were that serial killers were able to get away with murder because of their ability to blend in and be normal members of their society, but they said that they could not be normal because of a force that was out of their control so they killed to relieve their deviant selves and tendencies. The serial killers rejected the idea that they killed because they were predators that enjoyed the thrill of killing, and instead called themselves victims of forces in their lives that were out of their control. This article fulfills social science knowledge by investigating the psychological aspect of serial killers and using the information from the interviews to gather an understanding of why they say they killed people and to find connections between the serial killers their backgrounds. "The Monster Within: How Male Serial Killers Discursively Manage Their Stigmatized Identities" contributes to my mere true belief by describing the forces that the serial killers blamed for their actions, but I disagree that those forces can make a person justify killing another human being. Biological imperatives, emotional detachments, demonic possession, and sexual arousal were all forces that the serial killers used to justify killing people, but their justifications involved explaining how they could not control themselves, did not feel anything after killing, and that once they were buried they were gone. With the serial killers thinking that the problem would simply disappear and that they could go through life killing and being a normal member of society they are treating the people as if their lives do not matter. The killers would compare themselves to what they thought a serial killer was and how they were portrayed and correct the notions that society believes about killing. By correcting the methods of murder they serial killers explain the ways one can take a life. 
There are factors that serial killers use to explain their actions, but those factors do not start at the beginning of a life because no one is born evil. The
article No One Is Born a Serial Killer! by Ioana Ilie Magdalena she discusses that serial killers find pleasure in murder because they lose mental tension after committing murder. Serial killers are violent and the most dangerous of criminals because of their horrifying aggression that ends in a death. Magdalena's research involved the division of psychopathology and what life events makes a human become a serial killer. The focus that was looked at was the connection between psychopaths and serial killers, and the way that their brains work and connect to violent means to obtain goals in life. Magdalena's findings were that people in today's society must know what makes a person a serial killers to help fix society into preventing the creation of more serial killers.
This article fulfills social science knowledge by looking at the psychological aspects of social science when it compares psychopathic killers and psychotic killers. "No One Is Born a Serial Killer!" contributes to my mere true belief by connecting the reason of serial killers and giving an explanation for their actions without condoning the loss of lives. Magdalena explains how no one is born a serial killer but that anyone can become one if the biological factors, social, cultural, educational, and socioeconomic environment are right. I can understand that there are factors that can make a person's life hard and that when mental illness is involved people do not have full control, but when you are in control and know that you have done something wrong how a person with empathy can keep killing does not make logical sense. Serial killers may not be born, but if they are created then they must also have control over their own lives and actions.
Both of the articles focus on serial killers and how there are factors that are thought to be the reason for their existence. While the article The Monster Within: How Male Serial Killers Discursively Manage Their Stigmatized Identities talks about the interactions and actions of serial killers and what they blame their need to kill on, the article No One Is Born a Serial Killer! focuses on the background of psychopathology and the things that can occur in a person's life that can make them become psychopaths and serial killers. This post complements the previous post on social science because they both look at the situations that can cause people to commit bad actions. This post connects to the theme that what makes humans bad is when they cause physical harm to other people. My understanding and belief based off of the articles on serial killers is that when a person has lost empathy and will repeatedly kill people without any remorse and act like life is normal.
Henson, Jayne R., and Loreen N. Olson. "The
Monster Within: How Male Serial Killers Discursively Manage Their Stigmatized
Identities." Taylor & Francis Online. Routledge, 20 Aug. 2010.
Web. 20 Nov. 2015.
Ioana, Ilie Magdalena. "No One Is Born a Serial
Killer! ☆."
No One Is Born a Serial Killer! Elsevier Ltd, 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.
No comments:
Post a Comment