Jeffrey Dahmer

The cause of Jeffrey Dahmer’s horrible spree of murder, mutilation, and cannibalism cannot be clarified with a single explanation. One must accept his twisted psyche to have resulted from many influences including biological predisposition and external factors. From a psychoanalytic perspective, one can uncover events from Dahmer’s life that served to strengthen his obsession with murder and death.
Jeffrey Dahmer’s incorrigible actions cannot be attributed to his childhood; his environment growing up was relatively normal and stable. Dahmer’s horrific actions were merely a method of satisfying his innate, twisted impulses. According to the psychodynamic model, human beings are solely driven to satisfy their pleasure needs. For normal people this would involve things such as passing through Freud’s oral and anal stages, as well as overcoming an Oedipal complex. In the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, his childhood instin...