Author, The Psychology of Lust Murder University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA	May 2006
	“We chose to showcase Jeffrey Dahmer because the belief was that he really represented the extreme form of lust murder or erotophonophilia. Deviant sexuality was very much a part of his serial sexual killing. He is the quintessential lust murderer.”

What position do you currently hold at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte?
I’m a Professor of Crime, Law and Society and past Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice. Before that I was the Director of the Institute of Psychology, Law and Public Policy at the California School of Professional Psychology. I have a fair amount of administrative, practical experience in both psychology and criminology. Certainly the two academic administrative appointments reflect that. After spending a total of eight years in academic administration, I elected not to pursue staying on as Chair here, leaving me more time to write.

I read that you began your professional career as a community organizer and social activist for the homeless, the mentally ill, the working poor, the elderly, the decarcerated and the chemically addicted. What inspired you to do this kind of work?
I suppose, in part, it was because I dropped out of law school and needed a job. I also grew up believing in the importance of promoting social justice causes or issues.

You started off wanting to become a lawyer?
I went to college and readied myself to pursue a graduate degree in law, but realized that it was a mistake for me. I dropped out of law school because I was more interested in things that were related to the law but had a psychological or social bent to them. I knew I wasn’t getting that kind of exposure in law school. At that time I elected to re-think my plans, and I realized I needed to work. Because of my interest in social justice, I pursued a career working with people who are homeless and mentally ill and the other kinds of groups that you mentioned.

You later earned two master’s degrees?
I received my master’s degree in psychology and continued to do the work you just described. I still wasn’t quite sure where I was headed so I went back to school again. I decided to get another master’s degree, this time in sociology. After getting the two master’s degrees I still wasn’t quite sure about what I wanted to do.

You felt like you hadn’t found your niche yet?
That’s correct.

And then you started thinking about criminal justice?
I was still interested in social justice and issues that related to the justice and mental health systems. I thought I needed to pursue some kind of doctoral degree that would allow me to explore both. I was, and still am, interested principally in justice. I felt that Penn State offered a fairly interdisciplinary program. I was introduced to faculty who had backgrounds in political science, history, sociology, psychology, law and criminal justice. I realized that this kind of eclectic experience as a doctoral student was really what I was looking for. It was focused on issues of justice, some of which related to criminal justice, others of which related to social justice, and that was really what I was looking for.

So your concern is for the offender and the victim? You are interested in issues like social division?
Yes, that would be true. I’m interested in the way in which different systems, particularly the mental health and justice systems, impact the offender and the victim and the community of which they are both a part. I continue to have a very deep and abiding interest in the way in which the disciplines and systems of mental health and justice come to bear on the lives of persons who are poor, vulnerable, marginal, or in some other way dispossessed and disenfranchised.

Have you always been that way? Have you always had a concern for the well-being of all people?
Yes, I think that’s a fair statement. Even in high school I was always involved in events and extracurricular activities that dealt with helping the poor. It may be just a function of how I am wired. Some people are like that, and some people aren’t.

I read in an article that you are interested in more humanistically examining criminological concerns in ways that advance citizenship, community and justice. I thought that statement said something about your character and personal concern for others.
Criminal justice is only one facet of it. I think if I have a problem focusing on criminal justice, the problem is that what is really being described is the word justice. There are forms of economic and political justice, psychological justice, organizational justice, and of course criminal justice. I am interested in trying to get a handle on the way in which systems of justice either work or fail to work. To the extent that they work; are they promoting the interest of humanism, social accord and individual well-being? Do they advance the need for peace? Do they advance the need for collective good and citizenship? Those are the kinds of questions that are appealing to me. You get some exposure to those kinds of questions if you focus on criminal justice, but really the questions I’m drawn to are broader.

You have authored, co-authored or edited twenty books. Do your many writing contributions reflect your broad scope of interest in the different systems of justice?
I like to feature the larger issues like social justice, humanism, citizenship and collective good, and then there have been other books that have been more targeted. The Psychology of Lust Murder, for example, focuses on an aspect of some of the broader issues, but it moves in a direction of the way in which the mental health and justice systems functioned in terms of understanding the problem of lust murder, particularly in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer. In another book, Psychological Jurisprudence, I tried to explore the way in which the justice and mental health systems really fashion or fail to fashion justice, peace, and humanism as they address specific law, psychology and crime problems. Problems like defining mental illness, predicting dangerousness, and executing persons who are mentally ill. I have tried to take the broader themes and showcase them within the field of psychology, law and crime specifically.

When is The Psychology of Lust Murder due to publish?
April 2006.

Why did you write this book?
One of the interesting themes that I’ve been exploring has been the way in which psychology, crime and law intersect on very controversial and very high profile cases but where there is an absence of sufficient empirical or conceptual literature by which to understand those high profile cases. A few years ago I published a booked called Criminal Competency on Trial where the issue that was being explored was the notion of what it means to say that someone is competent to stand trial. There is a great deal of debate on this topic. One of the controversial cases that emerged was the case of Colin Ferguson, the New York City Railway Gunman. That same problem of competency to stand trial presented itself in the case of Theodore Kaczynski, The Unabomber. That book looked at the problem of competency to stand trial by featuring those two high profile cases. I did the same thing in a couple of other books, perhaps the more recent book is the case of Aileen Wuornos. Aileen Wuornos was a female homicide serial offender.

The woman featured in the movie Monster?
Yes. Before the movie came out I wrote a book with a colleague basically making the argument that we don’t know a lot about women who kill, and certainly not a lot about women who kill serially. My point is that I’ve been interested in showcasing topics that are fairly difficult to access, by relying upon certain detailed systematic case studies. We have a whole lot of literature, both empirical and conceptual, about men who kill and who kill serially. Although I would argue that much of the literature we have on men who engage in predatory serial homicide tends to be somewhat anecdotal. I wanted to explore that phenomenon of serial murder for women. The issue with the Aileen Wuornos case was whether she was suffering from anti-social personality disorder or whether she was psychopathic, and the extent to which those mental disorders would have any impact on her criminal responsibility. The same is true with regard to the present book, The Psychology of Lust Murder. This book asks the question: how we understand sexual homicide and how do we understand serial murder, particularly at the point where they intersect?

Sexual homicide and lust murder isn’t the same thing?
No. Sexual homicide can be the same as lust murder but lust murder represents the integration of how people who engage in sexualized violence – particularly when it manifests itself in extreme forms like cannibalism, torture, necrophilia and the like – live out their eroticized violence in the form of repeated homicide. The notion of repetition is important to understanding serial murder. So “lust” murder really pushes the question even further. Rape is a form of sexual assault. However, the question is to what extent is rape a form of (and essential to) sexualized violence that results in murder? It is a form of sexual violence that can result in murder, and it is a form of sexual violence that can result in serial murder, but I would argue that rape, in terms of severity, isn’t the same as cannibalism. It’s not the same as having sex with a corpse. Thus, the phenomenon of lust murder really pushes the question about how we understand extreme forms of eroticized violence as they manifest themselves in the context of serial murder.

How long has that concept been around?
It’s been around for awhile, but we haven’t really been able to get a handle on it conceptually, and we certainly haven’t been able to get a handle on it empirically.

And that’s what you are trying to do with this book?
This book says, first of all, that we have to have useful models and clear theory construction as a basis to then engage in some theory testing. In a sense, this book says we need to take one step backwards in order to move two steps forward. By taking one step backward what we are doing is exploring the existing models on sexual homicide and serial murder. We want to know which of them can be both useful and practical when it comes to comprehending lust murder. If we can identify these models, then the question is one of theoretical integration. The goal of this synthesis is to advance, more seamlessly, our conceptual understanding of lust murder. Our efforts to date suggest that what is needed is a more complete understanding of those phenomena that underscore both sexual homicide and serial murder; namely, the presence of extreme forms of deviant sexuality, also known as paraphilias. What are paraphilias? Paraphilias would include things like voyeurism, which is somewhat harmless, all the way up to and including things on the extreme dysfunctional end like having sex with a corpse or stabbing a body while having sex with that person. There are some really gruesome things that people do. The second thing that we realized when trying to make sense of sexual murder and serial homicide is that we have to understand the way in which this behavior of paraphilia or deviant sexuality is very much a part of the problem.

What causes people to have these extreme forms of paraphilia?
That’s a more complicated question to answer, and that’s why we wanted to look at the existing models that deal with sexual homicide and serial murder. When we integrate them, we find that there are a whole host of things that take place, not the least of which include cognitive thinking skills or a deficit in cognitive thinking; to things that include facilitators, such as drugs, alcohol or pornography; to things that relate to the formative events in that person’s early adolescence or childhood; to the kind of parenting or lack of parenting that was present for the person; as well as the construction (and acting out) of violent fantasies. All of these contribute to the emergence and maintenance of paraphilias.

Can you elaborate a little more?
There are early traumatic events that are very much a part of understanding paraphilias. Jeffrey Dahmer, for example, underwent a series of very traumatic childhood traumatizations that were never addressed or dealt with in his early adolescence. The problems to which he was exposed included his parents being disinterested in him. They didn’t nurture or love him, or they didn’t exhibit any tenderness or positive emotion toward him. This issue of inadequate or dysfunctional parent-child bonding is explored in the literature on attachment disorder. Attachment refers to the notion that people (regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, class, culture, etc.) bond with their primary caregivers when they are young; the two principal figures here are mom and dad. In the absence of having healthy, bonding attachments to mom and dad, the child will have no baseline to know how to exhibit tenderness, love, warmth, affection, etc. A person can learn to exhibit these tendencies through interactions with others; however, they are substantially hampered in their ability to learn them if they are not displayed by mom and dad during the person’s formative development. In Dahmer’s case, he was essentially abandoned and left to fend for himself, and so he began to retreat inwardly and would dissect all kinds of little animals and insects without anyone supervising him. He found it to be his way of coping. It’s a negative coping strategy. It led to him being a somewhat truant youngster, and later going to school drunk. His parents also went through a tumultuous divorce which consisted of constant fighting and bickering and there was never any resolution. All of this was very traumatic for Dahmer, and he talked about it in a number of interviews he gave. In the Psychology of Lust Murder, we argue that paraphilia and the paraphilic process was very much alive and well for Dahmer, and was never dealt with in his early childhood.

Is paraphilia always the underlying motive of lust murder?
That is what we are arguing in our book. In order to understand how lust murder takes place, paraphilia does indeed play a prominent role in explaining that behavior. In fact, we’ve gone so far as to say, particularly in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, that it is the underlying motive for tracking the increasingly violent sexualized images he harbored; images the he eventually acted upon.

Do you mean, for example, how he started with the photographs he would take?
Yes, but not just the photographs he would take. He would imagine having sex with people, and then sex with manikins, and then sex with corpses. My point is that these are increasingly violent sexualized fantasies. In order for him to experience orgasm he had to not only have these fantasies, but he had to act on them.

And that’s how paraphilia manifests itself?
Yes, particularly the more extreme variation of it.

Paraphilia probably isn’t easy to detect, especially in an introverted child. A child who does these things probably wouldn’t expose themselves and share it with others.
Right, but there were some early signs with Dahmer. He was picked up by the police. It wasn’t as if Dahmer was unknown to the criminal justice system before he was eventually caught. It’s not as if there weren’t warning signs that he was giving out with the constant alcoholism. He fell through the cracks in the sense that the mental health and criminal justice systems that exist didn’t work for him. They didn’t provide enough of a safety net to get him, and for several years he engaged in a killing spree.

What is erotophonophilia?
That is the technical word for the type of paraphilia which Dahmer experienced.

A very extreme paraphilia?
Right. I would use that word in his case interchangeably with lust murder.

Are those predominately male disorders?
Yes. It’s very rare in women. There are women who have paraphilias that are a function of killing, but with women it isn’t as extreme as having sex with a dead body. I’m not thinking of any women off-hand. There are many instances of women, who, as a function of murder, engage in some obsessive compulsive behavior, but I’m not thinking of any women who have been as extreme in their paraphilias as someone like Jeffrey Dahmer.

Did you choose to showcase Dahmer because he is the most well-known?
We chose to showcase Jeffrey Dahmer because the belief was that he really represented the extreme form of lust murder or erotophonophilia. Deviant sexuality was very much a part of his serial sexual killing. He is the quintessential lust murderer. Since the focus of the book was to help demonstrate how the theoretical models that exist on serial murder and the theoretical models that exist on sexual homicide could be integrated by focusing on the role of paraphilias, and in the extreme erotophonophilia, he was really the best case that allowed us to illuminate how our theory actually works.

I’ve read there are different approaches to profiling, for example, psychological, forensic, investigative, and socio-psychological. What type of approach do you endorse?
Clearly in the context of this book it’s been more of a socio-psychological approach.

Do lust murderers generally target a particular type of victim? For example, I think Jeffrey Dahmer targeted black men.
In Dahmer’s case he went after young men who were people of color. That is essentially what he did. Most people who are serial murderers or rapists have behavioral patterns, and those patterns are a part of the process of engaging in criminality and a part of their personality.

The Psychology of Lust Murder concludes with suggestions linked to clinical prevention, diagnosis, treatment strategies, etc. What are you personally most concerned with?
Well, in the context of lust murder, because I’m more of a researcher than a practitioner, I’m more concerned about the need for more theory development and theory testing in order to understand the phenomenon of lust murder. This means that I’d like to see several aspects of the theory tested.

What aspects of the theory?
For example, finding out how important low self-esteem is to understanding the model of lust murder that we’ve proposed, and how it works. Another example is how important fantasy development is as a way of expressing low self-esteem and the kind of fantasies that are involved. How early do these fantasies have to occur? Does it matter whether or not all of these fantasies are of a certain type? What is the intensity and duration of the fantasy system that eventually develops?

Are there that many similarities in different offenders?
Well, that’s the thing. Before we can go too far into the realm of practice and give too many recommendations to psychologists and criminologists, as well as the mental health and justice communities, we really need to make sure we are testing what we think we are testing. Because I am a researcher, I would err on the side of caution. The suggestions in The Psychology of Lust Murder are very provisional in terms of clinical treatment, diagnosis, and prevention. There are also very provisional recommendations in terms of law enforcement, tracking, profiling, and apprehension. And lastly, there are very provisional recommendations in terms of law and public policy, particularly around sexually violent predator statutes. The work that needs to take place now, out of all those areas that were recommended, is around research. Specifically in the realm of research, better theory development, model making, and theory testing. That is always the way research grows and benefits the practitioner community.

There must be a need for research since lust murder isn’t a common crime.
On this topic, I also want to send out a caution. Lust murderers are a small fraction of all murderers. Murderers are a small fraction of all persons who commit crime. We are talking about a fairly small segment of society, but one that does reach out and bring different types of systems to bear on the problem of lust murder. I think we have a fair amount of research on sexual homicide and serial murder, but the way in which they can be integrated in a useful, practical sense has been underdeveloped. And this is what the book attempts to showcase.

Is The Psychology of Lust Murder the first book to integrate sexual homicide and serial murder?
Yes, the first with which we are familiar.

What would you like librarians to know about this book?
This is a scholarly attempt to feature the problem of lust murder, emphasizing the psychological dynamics by which this problem presents itself in society. More than that, this is a book that endeavors to explain how different but related literatures, like literature on serial murder and sexual homicide, can be sensibly integrated to explain the problem of lust murder. Thirdly, this book is designed to help readers, particularly students, understand how the integrated model we propose explains and, perhaps, predicts cases like Jeffrey Dahmer. This book looks very systematically at the case history of Dahmer and demonstrates how the model that is featured possesses more explanatory properties than any others found in the social science literature.

How did you become associated with your co-author, Catherine Purcell?
Catherine is a former doctoral student of mine. She has had a long-standing and abiding interest in this project. She has always been interested in serial crime, particularly when it’s murder, and the way in which it can be understood through the lense of psychology.

What are you plans for the next three years?
That’s a good question. Well, if I were to think ahead for a second edition to the book, one of the things that I’d like to do is to take the model that was developed and apply it to the case of other lust murderers. If, in applying the model to other controversial, high profile cases we find that it doesn’t have as much explanatory capability as we originally proposed, then fine. The model would need to be reconsidered. However, my sense is that our integrated theory will likely have some greater explanatory capabilities than the existing models that either explains serial murder or sexual homicide. Our model explains both by drawing attention to the role of paraphilias.

What other things are you looking forward to?
There are other things that interest me that don’t relate to The Psychology of Lust Murder. One area that’s of interest to me is the way in which ethics, crime and criminal behavior are interpreted in society. I’m also interested in learning more about the relationship between punishment and freedom. What I mean by this is that I have a belief that when we see instances in the news where correctional officers are videotaped harming persons in prison, or when we see correctional administrators defending the behavior of correctional officers in that instance, the problem with these forms of harm is not that we have too much freedom, but that we don’t have enough freedom. Correctional officers and administrators engage in violence in a form just described not because they believe that they have unbridled authority to do this, but because they are a part of a culture of control that restricts their freedoms. The relationship between punishment and freedom is one that I think we don’t know a great deal about, and it’s something that I’d like to explore more fully.

Have you written anything on this subject?
I actually just did a film review essay of Torture: American’s Brutal Prisons, by Nick London. I also just taught a course for the first time called Punishment and Freedom. So now I’m at a point where I’m beginning to outline my interests in this relationship. My focus isn’t just on punishment in prison. Let me give you an example. I think we live in a culture where we have a very interesting regard for sexuality. We live in a culture where many of us are uncomfortable watching two gay men kiss or even hold hands. Moreover, the majority of us are uncomfortable when witnessing two men hugging one another, whether they are gay or not. These are all public displays of affection. So, what’s the problem? How are we to account for this discomfort? I would suggest that we live in a culture where our discomfort toward sexuality is so pronounced that we make any form of it a transgression (criminally and/or psychologically) if it doesn’t fit within a very narrowly constructed definition of sexuality. Moreover, I would argue that, as a consequence, we punish people quite severely for any deviation from orthodox sexuality, so much so that we then become surprised when we see that we have cases of sexual pedophiles. However, what we must remember is that the conditions of a society at its center tell us a great deal about the nature of behavior at its fringes. We have narrowed what we take to be normal, healthy sexuality to the point that the slightest deviation from it becomes an unacceptable form of touch or relating. Again, take the example of two heterosexual men expressing affection for one another through a heartfelt hug. As a culture, do we value this activity? Do heterosexist men believe that they can freely incorporate this form of relating into their every day interactions without ridicule or rebuke from others? The answer is likely no. So, why would we be surprised to find that we have people in society that are sexual pedophiles? If the conditions of society at its core tell us that only very limited forms of sexuality are acceptable, then the (sexual) behavior that occurs at society’s fringes should not surprise us. In a sense, our tight and rigid restrictions on sexuality have spawned deviations from it. These deviations remind us that, as a society, we aren’t more free; we are less free. We express our lack of freedom by pushing the boundaries of convention. Although our boundary testing is socially constructed as transgression or fringe-like behavior, resulting in sanction (surveillance, ostracism, imprisonment), there is much more to it than this. In fact, these definitions and punitive responses miss the point: the point is to explore the sociological and psychological forces seething underneath the surface of this activity. So this problem of punishment and freedom is not simply a function of how we make decisions in criminal justice, it is a concern for a society that seeds a culture of control. This project is one that has not yet been written, and it’s one worth exploring. It is different than what I’m working on now, but it is the book that I want to get to soon.

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