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Serial Killer's Life Theory

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A Serial Killer’s Life Course Serial killing is at least as old as humanity itself. The study of serial killing, however, has only been around for the last few decades. As such, there has not been much investigation into the sociological or criminological precursors to serial killing. Because of this, I was interested to attempt to apply theory from the Developmental Life Course Perspective to the lives of serial murderers. Through the implementation of case studies, a pattern did, in fact, emerge that appeared to conform to the Perspective’s theory regarding entrance into, engagement in, and desistance from crime.
BACKGROUND AND HISTORY A person with Antisocial Personality Disorder, also called APD, is popularly known as a psychopath …show more content…
An example of an item from the Machiavellianism sub-scale of the SD3 is “It’s wise to keep track of information that you can use against people later.” Drawn from the writings of Machiavelli (The Prince and The Discourses), Machiavellianism has been described as a generally insensitive strategy for dealing with other people, especially with respect to those who are viewed as manipulable in social situations (LeUnes 2008). Machiavellianism is the only sub-scale of the SD3 that has an environmental or social factor to it (Furnham, Richards and Paulhus 2013). Underlying personality elements that are common to all three sub-scales of the SD3 include a lack of agreeableness, honesty, humility, and empathy, and a tendency toward interpersonal antagonism (Furnham, Richards and Paulhus 2013). An example of an item from the narcissism sub-scale of the SD3 is “I insist on getting the respect I deserve.” While Machiavellianism is mostly an other-oriented personality trait, narcissism is very much a self-centered trait. Rising from renditions of the Greek myth of Narcissus, the young man so obsessed with his own beauty that he lost the will to live, narcissism is recognized by the DSM-V as a true psychological disorder. Narcissists fixate on the self and …show more content…
Sociological, and more specifically, criminological theories, concentrate on social contexts leading to crime. Of main interest in this paper, proponents of the Developmental Life Course Perspective focus on identification and explanation of within-individual variations in criminal behavior from childhood to adulthood (Fox, Jennings and Farrington 2015). Interest in Antisocial Personality Disorder is virtually non-existent in Life Course Perspectives (Fox, Jennings and Farrington 2015). In blending the two together, I plan to investigate how the antisocial individual participates in violence, specifically in serial homicide, over the course of their

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