Sexual and Gender Identity, Personality, and Eating Disorders
Holly Bracy
Psy/410
November 18, 2013
Kathryn Westbeld

Sexual and Gender Identity, Personality, and Eating Disorders
Sexual and Gender Disorder Categories * Sexual Dysfunction * Sexual Desire Disorders * Sexual Arousal Disorders * Orgasmic Disorders * Sexual Pain Disorders * Paraphilias * Gender Identity Disorders (Hansell & Damour, 2008)
Sexual and Gender Disorder Classifications * The DSM-IV-TR classifies sexual disorders into three types: sexual dysfunctions, paraphilias, and gender identity disorder. (Hansell & Damour, 2008)
Summary of Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders * The psychodynamic approach focuses on fixations in sexual development and also focuses on defense mechanisms. * Cognitive/behavioral perspectives emphasize social learning of abnormal sexuality, classically conditioned sexual arousal to deviant stimuli, and reinforcement of aberrant sexual behavior. * Biological factors can include some disinhibiting diseases or injuries or mental retardation that can contribute to abnormal behavior. (Hansell & Damour, 2008)
Personality Disorder Categories * Paranoid Personality Disorder * Schizoid Personality Disorder * Schizotypal Personality Disorder * Antisocial Personality Disorder * Borderline Personality Disorder * Histrionic Personality Disorder * Narcissistic Personality Disorder * Avoidant Personality Disorder * Dependent Personality Disorder * Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (Hansell & Damour, 2008)
Personality Disorder Classifications * Cluster A – paranoid, schizoid and schizotypal disorders * Cluster B – antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic disorders * Cluster C – avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive disorders (Hansell & Damour, 2008)
Summary of Personality Disorders * The psychodynamic perspective focuses on disruptive childhood experiences with caretakers and a reliance on maladaptive defense mechanisms. * The cognitive-behavioral approach emphasizes shape thought patterns, influences the patterns of perceptions and behavior that become personality traits, and establishing interpersonal strategies. (Hansell & Damour, 2008)
Eating Disorders Categories * Anorexia Nervosa * Bulimia Nervosa (Hansell & Damour, 2008)
Eating Disorder Classifications * Eating disorders are extremely influenced by demographic factors such as age, gender, class, and culture. (Hansell & Damour, 2008)
Summary of Eating Disorders * The cognitive-behavioral aspect focuses on experiences that reinforce eating-disordered behaviors and faulty and distorted thinking. * The sociocultural explanation focuses on the unrealistic images of female beauty presented by the media and their negative effects on women. (Hansell & Damour, 2008)
The Case of Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960. He lived in a wealthy suburb on Akron, Ohio, in an estate. His father was a successful research chemist and blames his son’s behavior on the medications his mother took while pregnant with him (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009). His mother suffered from hysteria, depression, suicidal ideation, and psychosomatic illnesses (Martens, 2011). Dahmer’s first grade teacher wrote a note to his parents telling them the Dahmer acted as though he felt neglected since his younger brother was born. He remembers his home as being constantly tense because of his parents fighting. Dahmer felt guilty for being born because his mother suffered from postpartum depression and had a nervous breakdown after his birth (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009).
There were many things Dahmer did as a child that was peculiar. He displayed angry, shy, and impulsive behavior (Martens, 2011). He had a fascination with dead animals, liked to repeatedly listen to his friends’ hearts by placing his head on their chest, collected animals that had been dead on the side of the road, cut off their heads and placed them on sticks (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009) . In junior high, Dahmer said that he masturbated daily and constantly dreamed of having sex with boys his age. He started thinking of using corpses for sexual pleasure after dissecting a pig in biology class. He started drinking in high school and was a loner (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009).
In 1978, his parents divorced when he was 18 years old. The divorce was bitter. He killed his first victim during this time (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009). The victim was 19 year old Steven Hicks. Hicks was a hitchhiker that Dahmer had picked up and they went back to Dahmer’s apartment and drank and smoked marijuana. When Hicks tried to leave, Dahmer got upset and they wrestled. Dahmer ended up hitting and strangling Hicks with a barbell. After he strangled Hicks, he took Hicks’ clothes off and masturbated over the body and ejaculated onto the body. Dahmer then cut the body into pieces, placed them in plastic bags, and eventually placed them in the woods behind his parents’ house (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009).
Over the next several years, Dahmer spent his time drifting and claimed that he was trying to resist the urge to kill. He attended college for a few months, spent time in the army, and lived in Florida for a little while. After he returned from the army, he would go to gay bathhouses or bars, find a man, drug him, and take him back to a hotel room (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009). Dahmer would then have anal sex with him, leave, and the man would have no recollection of what happened. Dahmer did not commit any murders between 1978 and 1987. Then, in 1979, he plead guilty to second degree sexual assault and enticement of a child for immoral purposes, just after having killed three men (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009) . He approached a 13 year old boy and offered $50 for the boy to come back to his place and help him try out his new camera. The boy was drinking coffee that Dahmer had put alcohol and a tranquilizer in. While the boy was drinking the coffee, Dahmer had the boy remove some clothes, was kissing his stomach, unzipped his pants, and touched his penis. After the boy returned home, his parents noticed his behavior and the boy confessed to what had happened. The parents filed charges. Despite this arrest and conviction, his murders remained undiscovered (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009).
Dahmer’s main interest was sex with unconscious men. His goal was to make these men into zombies so that they would stay with him and forget who they are (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009). He tried to do this in ways such as drugging them and drilling holes into their head while they were alive and pouring muriatic acid in the holes. He also tried to keep them by packaging and storing their body parts and eating them later so that they would become a part of him (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009). With his 14 victims, he would cut open the abdomen, place his penis inside the cavity, get an erection, and ejaculate while still inside the body. Dahmer placed his penis in the mouth of some of the men that he beheaded, got an erection, and ejaculated. He would also have sex with some of them after they were already dead (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009).
In July of 1991, Dahmer got his last victim, Tracy Edwards. Edwards was in Dahmer’s bedroom watching The Exorcist when Dahmer handcuffed one of his hands to the bed and placed a knife to his chest (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009). Edwards hit him and kicked him in the chest and escaped. Edwards reported it to the police and at first they were not going to investigate because of how implausible it sounded. However, two officers who had some extra time on their hands decided to investigate (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009). When the police showed up to Dahmer’s apartment, he simply let them in. They found body parts in his bedroom and human heads in the refrigerator. When arrested, he put up a little bit of struggle, but eventually surrendered. He was given 957 years via 15 consecutive life sentences. On November 28, 1994, he was beaten to death in prison while mopping a bathroom floor (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009).
After being thoroughly examined and undergoing numerous psychological tests, Dahmer was diagnosed as suffering from a mixed personality disorder with sadistic, obsessive, fetishistic, antisocial, and necrophilic features (Martens, 2011). The medications his mother was taking while pregnant could have contributed to his behavior, but it cannot be proven. Some other biological factors could be the mental illnesses his mother suffered from. Emotionally, he did not develop a healthy attachment with his family. He was neglected and teased at school which eventually led to his deviant behavior. The emotional neglect affected his cognitive processes. He developed a distorted way of thinking and developed defense mechanisms that helped him cope. His behavior describes a psychopath, but there’s not a clear association. His tendency to lie was not so pronounced that he was regarded as pathological. The most correct diagnosis for Dahmer would be paraphilia and he clearly fits the category of Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified (Meyer, Chapman, & Weaver, 2009).

References
Hansell, J., & Damour, L. (2008). Abnormal psychology (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Martens, W. H. (2011). Sadism linked to loneliness: psychodynamic dimensions of the sadistic serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Psychoanalytic Review, 98(4), 493-514. doi:10.1521/prev.2011.98.4.493
Meyer, R., Chapman, L. K., & Weaver, C. M. (2009). Case studies in abnormal behavior (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.