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Abnormal Psychology Essay Jeffrey Dahmer was a sex offender and serial killer mainly between the years 1978 and 1991. He is well known for his severely atypical behaviors. Among his outward manners that are recognized as abnormal are paraphilia-specifically necrophilia and sexual sadism. Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims, whom were boys and men, suffered from rape, violence, dismemberment and finally their murders. Dahmer’s slow progression of killings soon turned into an obsession, which would later land him in prison with a sentence for fifteen life terms or a total of 957 years in prison. Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born to Joyce and Lionel Dahmer in Wisconsin, and eight years later moved with his family to Ohio. In his younger years, between the ages of ten and fifteen, Jeffrey became more and more antisocial; he was very quiet and socially distant from his family members and had signs of anhedonia (loss of interest in hobbies and interactions with people). Discovered later, this behavior may have been caused by peers at school consistently mocking Jeffrey without him putting up any defense for himself. See more:  The 3 Types of Satire Essay His fetishes and discoveries of unique hobbies began in a biology class in 9th grade where Jeffrey and his classmates dissected a fetal pig. At the end of the class, Jeffrey collected the remains of the pig and returned to the house, deciding to keep its skeleton. Dahmer’s fascination with this initial incident began to grow and carry over to other animals, such as dogs and cats. In an interview with Stone Phillips Dahmer says, â€Å"There may have been some violence involved, some underlying subconscious feelings of violence I just it was a compulsion, it became a compulsion. As this continued throughout his teenage years, Jeffrey Dahmer began to consume alcohol regularly. In the same interview he admits, â€Å"I was drinking a lot during that time and just, I don’t know, looking for some way to find some fulfillment, some pleasure and I acted on my fantasies and that’s where everything went wrong. † Soon, his alcoholism, too, got out of hand and he became an alcoholic while still finishing high school. Jeffrey Dahmer attempted to attend college at Ohio State University, but his lost of interest in attending classes combined with his heavy consumption of alcohol caused him to drop out after only a quarter of a semester. During this time, his parents, Joyce and Lionel got divorced. Jeffrey’s father made him join the Army after dropping out of Ohio State, but after a couple years, his alcohol problem again caused him to be removed. After being discharged from the Army, Dahmer decided against facing his father so he decided to live in Miami, Florida where the majority of his time was spent in a hospital. In 1981 Jeffrey Dahmer was first arrested for public intoxication. In 1982, Jeffrey went back to Wisconsin to live with his grandmother. Late nights, alcohol binges, and belligerent behavior characterized his time living there. His grandmother was tolerant of his peculiar behavior at first, which included several strange incidences: she had found a male mannequin dressed up in Jeffrey’s closet, a . 357 Magnum under his bed, and she could recall many instances where awful smells would waft from the basement. Dahmer once claimed that the terrible smell was from a squirrel that he had caught, killed, and dissolved with chemicals. (Dahmer’s father was chemist, and this claim was made from Jeffery to his father; it seems as though Jeffery told his father so that he would be proud of him). Jeffrey was arrested again in 1982 and in 1986, both times for indecent exposure. The second offense that he was arrested for in 1986 was for masturbation in front of two young males. It was only two years later that Jeffrey’s so-far-tolerant grandmother told him that he could not live with her anymore due to the many strange happenings. Jeffrey was arrested in the same year, 1988, for sexually fondling and drugging a young teenage boy (age thirteen); for this, he was put on probation for five years and for one year he was assigned to a work release camp where he was registered as a sex offender from the incident with the thirteen year old boy. Due to good behavior and a built up trust with the authorities, Dahmer was paroled from his work release camp two months early. Jeffrey Dahmer began killing at age eighteen, which was during the summer of 1978. Since this was after his parent’s divorce, Dahmer’s mother no longer lived at the same house and his father was away for business duties. Jeffrey had brought a man over to the house offering to drink alcohol with him, and when the man tried to leave, Jeffrey beat him to death with a ten-pound weight to the head. Dahmer did not murder again until nine years later where he killed a man randomly after picking him up; Dahmer said he could not recollect anything about this murder. After the second murder, Jeffrey Dahmer’s killings increased dramatically adding two more to the same year (1989), five the following year (1990), and several after that. On July 22, 1991 Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested for the alleged 17 murders (which would later be reduced to 15). Psychological Functioning: Jeffrey Dahmer is a unique human being who struggled with necrophilia, which is having sexual attraction to corpses. Upon arrest, officers found many severed heads, dismembered body parts, an altar made of skeletons, and several corpses. This makes Dahmer seem like a collector in a way, but I think that his collections go beyond what people might consider a just a fetish. Often, those who are diagnosed with necrophilia behave in this was because they strongly desire to have full possession of and control over someone without the person resisting or refraining from being with them. I think this is a lot of what Jeffrey Dahmer dealt with in his life because he confesses it himself in his interview with Stone Phillips saying, â€Å"The only motive that there ever was- was to completely control a person, a person that I found physically attractive and keep them with me as long as possible, even if that meant just keeping a part of them. † Another reason for necrophilia could be a person’s desire for increased self-esteem; being attracted to a corpse was the only way Jeffrey could avoid rejection. As we know that Jeffrey was teased and picked on when he was young and during his teenage years, I think that his murders and necrophilia are related to these difficult times in his life. I think that once he established that he could have control over his victims, he went on a power trip and began to obsess over the supremacy he felt when he was controlling someone. It is reported that during the times that Dahmer was picked on and mocked in school, he never stood up for himself and never fought back. I think this led to an internalization of his feelings. He most likely built up some hostility to those people who tormented him and took advantage of him. Jeffrey Dahmer also began his attraction to males in his teenage years as he reports going to gay bars and bath clubs. The combination of his withheld anger and aggression towards his tormentors and the frustration that came from being attracted to men could have very well led to his outward aggression and finally to his killing spree. When Jeffrey talks about the things that he would do to victims, especially evident in his first crime, his pattern began to develop and it is in direct correlation to these things: he would seek out men (doing whatever it took to draw their attention), he would get them alone one way or another (either by bring them to the house or drugging them), and after having sex with them or taking advantage of them in whatever way he found pleasurable he would kill them. While he found it enjoyable to partake in sexual encounters while them men ere still alive, Jeffrey Dahmer found himself even more attracted to the corpses of those men and he found it fascinating to dismember them and keep just â€Å"a part of them. † I believe that this is where his necrophilia came from. In Jeffrey’s first murder we can see the power struggle where he desired to have sex with the man who wanted to leave. Through his sexual desires, Dahmer channeled his anger that he was being rejected and he lashed out and beat the man to death in the head with a ten-pound dumbbell. This extreme behavior is what leads me to believe that he showed signs of sadism. A sexual sadist finds pleasure in inflicting physical pain on someone and watching him or her suffer. I also can see that maybe Dahmer was frustrated with his sexual desires toward men and he felt his only way to stop this was to destroy the root of the problem; unfortunately, Jeffrey saw the men he was attracted to as his problem and in his desire to eliminate his problem he began killing the men who made him feel this way. In some ways, I am also convinced that Jeffrey Dahmer was competent and could take full responsibility of the killings because of his strategic behavior. His victims and murders were not random. Dahmer was also able to recognize that he was not completely satisfied in his initial encounters with the male species and when those things were no longer enough for him, he started purchasing sleeping pills in order to first drug his victims so that he could then take advantage of them. If Jeffrey Dahmer was not sane and competent than this organized behavior would not be evident in his tendencies. In the interview with Stone Phillips, Dahmer says, â€Å"After the second time, it seemed like the compulsion to do it was too strong and I didn’t even try to stop it after that; but before the second time, things had been building up gradually: going to bookstores, going to the bars- the gay bars, bath clubs; when that wasn’t enough, buying sleeping pills using it on various guys in the bath clubs. It just escaladed slowly but surely and after the second time which was not planned, it was out of control—it felt like it was out of control. The way that he uses his words here implies that he does take responsibility and that he fully knew what he was doing; as he says, â€Å"it was out of control—it felt like it was out of control,† he recognizes that he had the ability to make a choice and he chose to sexually victimize the men he was attracted to and then kill them. I am convinced that all of the things mentioned above lend themselves to his atypical functioning, but one thing that was not addressed was his parent’s role in all of this. Although they were divorced and parted during a time in Jeffrey’s life where he was having difficulties in other areas, I do not think that this was an issue or trigger to any of his behaviors. In an interview Jeffrey actually defends his parents saying that it makes him mad when people accuse them of playing any role in his decisions because they were not even aware of the type of issues Jeffrey was dealing with. From what Dahmer admits, we know that it was a gradual escalation of compulsive feelings that led to his abnormal behaviors. On November 28, 1994 while in prison, Jeffrey was beaten by an inmate and died from head trauma.