Ted Bundy

[Nuttou]

Is the article actually saying that the police threw a 9 yo boy in jail?

Into custody. A house for difficult children perhaps.

I have nothing to add on your other points

 

[ZPowers]

Whatevs. Why are you protecting him from having an incestuous and abusive background?

Serial killers are made in childhood. Not as adults, spurned or not.

I don't know if you can call it protecting. It just either happened or it didn't. It's simply finding an accurate portrayal.

Childhood trauma is a recurring trend in killers, but not a necessary one. Ted Bundy may have been abused, but as far as I know there isn't solid evidence to support that. My understanding of Jeffrey Dahmer's childhood is that, though his parents had a rough marriage, Dahmer himself was not personally abused. And I know pretty much for certain that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had perfectly normal childhoods.

 

[Totenkindly]

Michael is a diagnosed psychopath child who was raised in a normal environment by a mother with a degree in child psychology.

From article:

By the time he turned 5, Michael had developed an uncanny ability to switch from full-blown anger to moments of pure rationality or calculated charm — a facility that Anne describes as deeply unsettling. “You never know when you’re going to see a proper emotion,” she said. She recalled one argument, over a homework assignment, when Michael shrieked and wept as she tried to reason with him. “I said: ‘Michael, remember the brainstorming we did yesterday? All you have to do is take your thoughts from that and turn them into sentences, and you’re done!’ He’s still screaming bloody murder, so I say, ‘Michael, I thought we brainstormed so we could avoid all this drama today.’ He stopped dead, in the middle of the screaming, turned to me and said in this flat, adult voice, ‘Well, you didn’t think that through very clearly then, did you?’ ”

Holy sh*t!!
Okay, that's completely a FOM*.
Even from a 9-10 year old, but it sounds more like it happened when he was 6-7.

It suggests ruthless cunning.

*Freak Out Moment

More fun:

In some children, C.U. traits manifest in obvious ways. Paul Frick, a psychologist at the University of New Orleans who has studied risk factors for psychopathy in children for two decades, described one boy who used a knife to cut off the tail of the family cat bit by bit, over a period of weeks. The boy was proud of the serial amputations, which his parents initially failed to notice. “When we talked about it, he was very straightforward,” Frick recalls. “He said: ‘I want to be a scientist, and I was experimenting. I wanted to see how the cat would react.’ ”

In another famous case, a 9-year-old boy named Jeffrey Bailey pushed a toddler into the deep end of a motel swimming pool in Florida. As the boy struggled and sank to the bottom, Bailey pulled up a chair to watch. Questioned by the police afterward, Bailey explained that he was curious to see someone drown. When he was taken into custody, he seemed untroubled by the prospect of jail but was pleased to be the center of attention...

Definitely outside the normal realm. Kids are typically not detached from such things to such a degree -- they are capable of doing such things once or two until they realize the impact of their actions, or they act out of anger as a form of revenge... but this is the kind of clinical complete indifference that we see in the case material for adult psychopaths.

Note also how the parents can be fairly educated and other children in the family might seem to be very "normal" and not exhibiting such behavior.

Not to suggest that bad parenting can't contribute to some cases of adult anti-social behavior (we've discussed Kemper somewhere, and he was in a split home, separated from his dad who seemed to not want him, and stuck in the basement by his mother because she was afraid he'd "rape his sisters'... contributing to his natural detachment, although it seems likely he shot his grandmother out of displaced anger at his mother, and the rest of the crimes followed....)

 

[ZPowers]

(Examples of sociopathic childhood behavior)

That's interesting (and scary). I know that torturing animals and setting fires is pretty common among very young psychopaths.

The real origins of psychopathy and other disorders is an interesting topic. Could deserve its own thread

 

[Totenkindly]

The real origins of psychopathy and other disorders is an interesting topic. Could deserve its own thread

heck. It could be a book (and/or a large collection of them).

EDIT:

That's interesting (and scary). I know that torturing animals and setting fires is pretty common among very young psychopaths.

I think the magic three are:
1. Fire setting.
2. Torturing animals.
3. Bed-wetting.

I mean, I can kind of see it -- fire is very very accessible, kind of fascinating to observe, is destructive/changes the state of something so you want to see happens after, gives a sense of power, etc.

Same thing with animals, and it's like you are just viewing them as machines to take apart and figure out what they do... but there's still a sense of efficacy there, where you have the ability to control something.

Bed-wetting is an odd one. I'd speculate it has something to do with not following parental/social mores (since it's something we are taught to do when young) -- controlling the natural urges in order to integrate into society and please our authority figures. Sometimes bed wetting is an overt form of defiance. But in any case, if someone does not want to regulate their natural urges... that can carry over into other areas. The rules that keep us from murdering/abusing each other are basically regulating biological instincts...

 

[ZPowers]

heck. It could be a book (and/or a large collection of them).

Well, the definitive book relating to impressionable youngsters being turned into inconsiderate, selfish adults has already been written.

It's called Atlas Shrugged.

(Ba-dum-TISH)

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

Generally speaking, serial killers are serial killers because it's in their nature or because of a traumatic background (and such a trauma can probably also happen in adulthood). I happen to think Ted is the first case. Psychopaths exist and they are born that way. I'm absolutely not protecting him from anything, you're the one insisting he was abused without answering my arguments.

(Note: Being spurned by the woman of your life can absolutely led to murder. It has many time, though I'm not sure this is the case here. It may be part of it.)

Nah. Psychopathy and sociopathy, addiction, and most disorders and neuroses (if not all) are bred in childhood through some toxic elixir of abuse and neglect and abandonment. It's not nature at all. Sure, some brain biology could perhaps make one predisposed to be imbalanced mentally, but what makes one antisocial is one's environment.

 

[Mal12345]

Nah. Psychopathy and sociopathy, addiction, and most neuroses are bred in childhood through some toxic elixir of abuse and neglect and abandonment. It's not nature at all. Sure, some brain biology could perhaps make one predisposed to be imbalanced mentally, but what makes one antisocial is one's environment.

Psychopaths are born, sociopaths are made.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

Psychopaths are born, sociopaths are made.

Disagree emphatically. Unless this is some semantics fap.

 

[Totenkindly]

Psychopaths are born, sociopaths are made.

That's still being debated:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-psychopath-and-a-sociopath.htm

One problem is that the terms overlap so much in definition and in practice. No one can agree on the distinction.

EDIT: I have to say, the whole Bundy thing now is driving me to buy Rule's most recent edition of his bio and read it!

 

[ZPowers]

That's still being debated:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-psychopath-and-a-sociopath.htm

One problem is that the terms overlap so much in definition and in practice. No one can agree on the distinction.

EDIT: I have to say, the whole Bundy thing now is driving me to buy Rule's most recent edition of his bio and read it!

Yeah, the terms are fuzzy. I recall reading a couple years ago that the FBI and other criminal investigation outfits officially define sociopaths as very careful, controlled, planned-out and usually of above average intelligence (so, people like Bundy) and psychopaths as having less than average intelligence, more prone to killing fairly spontaneously or in a sloppy way and not covering their tracks. That's not really a proper psychological assessment, however.

The other definition I've heard is that, while both lack any real conscious, psychopaths are much more compelled to commit violent acts. That's probably not too legit.

 

[Mal12345]

Disagree emphatically. Unless this is some semantics fap.

Um noooooooo, it is psychological fact, not fap.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

Um noooooooo, it is psychological fact, not fap.

Your statement is a fallacy in and of itself.

There really can be no psychological fact. Heck, you can tell that just by how often the DSM radically changes.



I'm right about it, the sooner you accept it, the sooner the healing can begin.

 

[Mal12345]

Your statement is a fallacy in and of itself.

There really can be no psychological fact. Heck, you can tell that just by how often the DSM radically changes.

This matter seems to be of grave importance to you, so...

http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/psychopath_2.htm

 

[Thalassa]

You may be right here. It seemed to me psychopath could arise even from healthy environment, but I'm willing to concede the point.
(PS: Wikipedia says it was age three: "For the first three years of his life Bundy lived in the Philadelphia home of his maternal grandparents". Lets go for three and a half! )


Whenever you feel like it!

Wikipedia isn't god. His mother moved away with him when he was four, marrying his step-dad when he was about 4 or 5. Anyway, he already had a fascination with knives at age three, and I'll read your post; however, the reason I believe him to be an ENFJ is because I think he had tertiary Se that he was in touch with at a young age, and it wasn't just something that came out in rage that was generally repressed like INxJs tend to be for the most part, Ted's Se seemed pretty active to me even before he snapped.

 

[Thalassa]

I'd say Bundy was INFJ, not ENFJ or ENTP.

It's clear for me that he was no P. He was such a planner, extremely careful with the way he executed his crimes. It has nothing to do with the live-in-the-moment, impulsive ways of an ESTP. Also his response to that girl's rejection ("Stay calm, be patient, and plan revenge") sounds quite J to me - in fact it's the stereotype of the wounded INFJ angry with the world. Descriptions of him (quiet, private) put me more in mind of an introvert (though that isn't conclusive at all).

The Ni-Fe-Se combination is the best to figure people out and manipulate them, as he was doing with those girls. Inferior Se can notice all the small details in a person's appearance and behaviour (this is a mostly inconcious process however) and the dominant Ni will take all of this and put it together so as to form an accurate global picture of the person. Fe permits to understand people's feelings, and really to manipulate these feelings.
Ni-Fe-Se is also very useful to blend in in society or quickly adapt in a different social context, because it permits to 1) be aware of all the rules and expectations (Fe-Se), 2) form a picture in your head (Ni) and 3) project a fully formed image of yourself to the world (Ni-Fe). Ted Bundy was described by everyone as an extremely charming guy, a former good and intelligent student with a future in politics, whom nobody ever suspected capable of such horrible crimes (lots of people couldn't even believe it at first). This show how good he was at controlling how people viewed him.

I don't think he was ENFJ, because Ti doesn't sound at all like his inferior function. The easy way he used it to argue his point (or perhaps see the flaws in a plan, or think quickly of an escape, I don't know) would make me put it as his tertiary function, in a supportive role (for example I think he used Ti a lot in that last video we have of him, where he explained how pornography was what pushed him to do what he did). It makes more sense for Se to be his shadow, I think. INFJ, when unstable, have a tendency to fall back to their inferior Se, having ESTP moments. But as their Se is undeveloped (their weak point), it often takes the form of a more or less unhealthy ESTP, sensation seeking in a rather uncontrolled manner. It fits with the nature of Ted's crimes, all about lust. That monster inside him would be his shadow.

It's weird to me that you focus on Ni-Fe-Se so much (like an ENFJ) but then at the end say Ti probably wasn't his inferior. His early fixation with not only pornography, but being brazen enough to be a peeping tom, and getting arrested twice for burglary in high school makes me think Se was his relief function. I also think he was able to form such a slick facade - even in high school when he said he didn't connect well to other children - and then later when he put on a show that people bought, that he was probably an Fe dom.

I won't argue to the death over Ted Bundy but I do believe he was a socially maladjusted ENFJ.

 

[Mal12345]

The identity of his real father is unsure, but I've never read anywhere that it might have been his grandfather.

Why is everybody so stuck on Wikipedia?

It was Ted Bundy who claimed that his father might have been his grandfather. Also, "researchers have alluded to the possibility that his father may be Samuel Cowell, his grandfather."
http://famousserialkillers.co/ted-bundy/

This may have appeared in the Wiki article at one time, but those articles are heavily edited and the content is sometimes controversial. That's why it's good to search other sites on the web.

 

[Mal12345]

@2:16 in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sIyTfXv2Hk

JD - "First of all, you were raised in what you considered to have been a healthy home"
TB - "Absolutely."
JD - "You were not physically abused, you were not sexually abused, you were not emotionally abused."
TB - "No."

 

[Totenkindly]

Why is everybody so stuck on Wikipedia?

It was Ted Bundy who claimed that his father might have been his grandfather. Also, "researchers have alluded to the possibility that his father may be Samuel Cowell, his grandfather."
http://famousserialkillers.co/ted-bundy/

This may have appeared in the Wiki article at one time, but those articles are heavily edited and the content is sometimes controversial. That's why it's good to search other sites on the web.

Anything I've said about Bundy was taken from elsewhere than Wikipedia, thanks. Wiki's helpful, but can't be used as a single basis.... just like everything else.

The problem is that Ted gives conflicting stories. he was never honest, he just made crap up based on his feelings of the moment and whatever he thought would get people to do what he wanted. The night before his execution, he decided he would credit pornography with making him a killer in the Dobson documentary, which Dobson of course ate up (since it gave him fodder for his Focus on the Family material). I'm not sure he even knew what was true.

 

[Mal12345]

Anything I've said about Bundy was taken from elsewhere than Wikipedia, thanks. Wiki's helpful, but can't be used as a single basis.... just like everything else.

The problem is that Ted gives conflicting stories. he was never honest, he just made crap up based on his feelings of the moment. The night before his execution, he decided he would credit pornography with making him a killer in the Dobson documentary, which Dobson of course ate up (since it gave him fodder for his Focus on the Family material). I'm not sure he even knew what was true.

I've just posted a link to that very interview. In it, Bundy says that he is not a victim of pornography and denies that it made him do anything.