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Pathological Narcissism and Serial Homicide: Review and Case Study
LOUIS B. SCHLESINGER
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
Serial homicide, as a psychopathological condition, has been described as long ago as 1886. The traits and characteristics of serial murderers are varied, as are the theories that attempt to explain their motivation. Theorists have emphasized, for example, traumatic events in early life, sexual disturbance and dynamics, and neurobiological abnormalities. In the past fifteen years, as narcissistic disturbance in general has been better understood, a relationship has been noted between pathological narcissism and serial homicide. Narcissistic personality disorder, narcissistic injury, underlying feelings of inadequacy and humiliation, self-glorifying compensatory fantasies, and the erection of narcissistic defenses have all been mentioned as important factors in understanding the serial killer. An illustrative case report, which encompasses many of these characteristics, is presented here along with a review of clinical research, theory, and findings.
But even where it emerges without any sexual purpose, in the blindest fury of destructiveness, we cannot fail to recognize that the satisfaction of the instinct is accompanied by an extraordinarily high degree of narcissistic enjoyment, owing to its presenting the ego with a fulfillment of the latter's old wishes for omnipotence.--Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Homicide, the ultimate form of human aggression, is not a unitary event, but a complex behavior with different clinical pictures, different dynamics, and different prognoses. Serial homicide is a relatively rare phenomenon (Drukteinis, 1992) at the extreme end of the aggressive spectrum. Here, the offender kills not because of a logical motive, or as an outgrowth of a psychotic disorder, but because of an internal pressure to commit the act (Revitch and Schlesinger, 1989). If, as Fromm (1973) and others suggest, aggression should be viewed as an aspect (or outgrowth) of personality functioning, the motivation to commit serial murders would thus stem in large part from an individual's underlying personality makeup. That is, in such cases aggression has been integrated within the personality (Kernberg, 1992).
The psychopathology of narcissism has been increasingly studied ever since the condition "narcissistic personality disorder" was included in the third revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (1980). Specifically, the relationship between nar-
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