Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Paul Krugman's Dissociative State

The psychopathology of serial murder: a theory of violence:

Children who do not have the power to control the mistreatment they suffer create a new reality that they can escape to. This new reality becomes their fantasy that they have total control of and becomes part of their daily existence. In this fantasy world their emotional development is guided and maintained...

...According to Garrison (1996), "the child becomes sociopathic because the normal development of the concepts of right and wrong and empathy towards others is retarded because of the child's emotional and social development occurs within his self-centered fantasies. A person can do no wrong in his own world and the pain of others is of no consequence when the purpose of the fantasy world is to satisfy the needs of one person"...

...Boundaries between fantasy and reality are lost and fantasies turn to dominance, control, sexual conquest, and violence, eventually leading to murder. Fantasy can lead to the first step in the process of a dissociative state, which, in the words of Stephen Giannangelo, "allows the serial killer to leave the stream of consciousness for what is, to him, a better place."

The author must be mistaken: I saw no mention of Sarah Palin or the Tea Party.


No comments: