Violent Behavior: Psychoanalytic Theories

“Tommy Lee,” a good-looking man in his 30s, was charged with multiple counts of murder for which he was facing death in the electric chair. His 10 victims, many of whom were reportedly prostitutes, were all young women who had voluntarily gotten into his car and driven off with him to wooded areas. The women were raped and ritually bound prior to being killed. Their bodies were dumped and displayed in signature ways designed to alert legal authorities that these killings were the products of one killer.

The community was outraged at the viciousness of the killer, who apparently tortured his prey prior to [Page 503]disposing of them. When asked why he had abducted and killed these women, the killer, a man of abovenormal intelligence, had no answer. He did recall a groundswell of anger erupting inside him prior to killing his victims. Beyond that uncontrollable rage, he had no immediate explanation for his murderous behavior. Had these women done something to offend him in some way? The killer thought for a moment and replied “No.” Had these women possibly humiliated him by their words or behavior? The killer responded in the negative. After some reflection, the man acknowledged that these women had done nothing to warrant the death and destruction he visited upon them.

The motivation for these killings became evident during the forensic evaluation. The springboard for this homicidal rage dated back to the man's childhood. The killer had been physically, sexually, verbally, and psychologically abused by his mother, a woman reputed by family members to be a prostitute. Although it is unknown whether his mother actually was a prostitute, this characterization does not seem unreasonable. The woman had a collection of photos of herself as a younger woman going to work at a bar, wearing a skimpy blouse, short shorts, and “go-go boots.” Tommy Lee had memories of being removed from her bed, where he routinely slept until he was about 13 years of age, and placed on the living room sofa by strange men in the middle of the night when his mother returned home.

In-depth interviews with Tommy Lee's parents revealed that his parents had been divorced from one another twice and married to each other on three occasions. The mother recounted several incidents of being abducted from the street by her ex-husband when Tommy Lee was a young child. On each of these occasions, Tommy Lee's father took the boy's mother to the woods and raped her.

Tommy Lee's apparently senseless killings become understandable when viewed from a psychoanalytic perspective. Psychoanalytic theory emerged from the seminal works of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). Freud's writings had a profound effect on the development of psychiatry and psychology in the 20th century. The broader term psychodynamic theory includes Freud's theory as well as the revisions of his followers. Psychoanalytic theory posits that abnormal behavior, including criminal and antisocial behavior, is caused by unconscious conflicts rooted in early childhood experiences. Psychoanalysis can be conceptualized as a complex framework addressing three interrelated theories of personality: theory of the structure of personality, of personality dynamics, and of psychosexual development.

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