Sexual murder : catathymic and compulsive homicides

415 Pages·2004·4.325 MB·English

by  Louis B Schlesinger

Sexual Murder
Catathymic and Compulsive
Homicides
Louis B.Schlesinger

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schlesinger, Louis B.
Sexual murder: catathymic and compulsive homicides/Louis B.
Schlesinger.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8493-1130-6 (alk. paper)
1. Forensic psychology. 2. Sex crimes. 3. Murder. 4. Homicide. 5.
Women-Crimes against. 6. Violence. 7. Sex offenders. I. Title
RA1148 .S48 2003
614′.1—dc21 2003048993
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Library of Congress Card Number 2003048993
Dedication
Eugene Revitch, M.D.
(1909–1996)
This book is dedicated to Eugene Revitch who was
my friend, colleague, teacher, and mentor. Dr.
Revitch was born in Riga, Latvia, attended the
University of Montpellier in France, and graduated
from the University of Paris Medical School in 1936.
He received his psychiatry and neurology training
in the United States and served in the U.S. Army
during World War II, evaluating and treating
military prisoners at Fort Missoula, Montana.
During his 22-year affiliation with the New Jersey
Diagnostic Center (the state’s forensic facility), Dr.
Revitch published some of the first papers on sexual
aggression and sexual murder. He was a clinical
professor of psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson
Jr. School of Medicine and made a substantial
impact not only on the lives of his students and his
patients, but to the field of neuropsychiatry and
forensic psychiatry as well. For those who knew Dr.
Revitch, even casually, he was clearly an

unforgettable character.
Foreword
When I received my doctorate in clinical psychology in 1981, I was
already enamored with the world of criminal forensics. The popular
television fare of “Investigative Reports” the “New Detectives,” “Forensic
Files,” and “CSI” were still years away, but I picked up a book that
profoundly shaped my intellectual journey: Psychopathology of Homicide
by Eugene Revitch and Louis B.Schlesinger. It was a classic.
Drs. Revitch and Schlesinger had set aside descriptive diagnoses and
instead developed a motivational model to help understand why people
intentionally kill each other. The reasons for murder are always
overdetermined, but here were two gentlemen who proposed an elegant
schematic that ranged from purely situational causes for killing to the
unconscious psychodynamics of certain murders which appear, at first
glance, to be inexplicable. I soon came to learn that Dr. Revitch was a
distinguished forensic psychiatrist and had pioneered some of the
earliest investigations of the sexual killing of women. One of his first
papers, “Sex murder and sex aggression,” was printed in 1957 in the
Journal of the Medical Society of New Jersey.
I was equally impressed with the work of Dr. Schlesinger, a student of
Dr. Revitch’s, and my propensity to idealize authorities in the field as a
young psychologist was bolstered by his subsequent work, particularly in
the area of “catathymia,” a word quite foreign to me at the time. Dr.
Schlesinger does not know this, but I was deeply honored when I finally
met him several years ago when he attended a workshop I was giving. We
are great sources of intellectual stimulation for each other, and our
mutual respect continues.
Sexual Murder: Catathymic and Compulsive Homicides will take its place
alongside Cleckley’s Mask of Sanity, Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis,
and Ressler et al.’s Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives as a classic in our
specialized field of criminal forensic psychology. This is not marketing
hyperbole, and as an expert witness, I hope the foundation for my
opinion is persuasive.
Unlike most contemporary forensic psychiatry and psychology
research, which is largely descriptive and behavioral, Dr. Schlesinger is
v
interested in the inner life of the sexual murderer. Although his internal
world may be populated by sexually violent and bizarre fantasies that are
anathema to the conscious sensibilities of most individuals—although
they are readily sought by many of these same people in their local cinema
—an in-depth understanding of the sexual murderer depends on our
ability to tolerate and explore his subterranean landscape. If we have no
understanding of his drive derivatives, affects, defenses, and compromise
formations, how can we fathom his acts?
Our present psychological operations, however, do not function in a
vacuum. They are a product of history and development, and this is another
area in which Dr. Schlesinger finds answers to questions that disturb and
frighten most people: Why would anyone be sexually aroused by
violence? How could anyone contemplate, let alone commit, such
horrendous acts? We live our histories, whether we are the products of
healthy parents who do not abuse, neglect, or sexually titillate, or we are
the products of so-called parents who do.
Dr. Schlesinger also emphasizes the importance of psychological testing
and measurement among those who commit sexual murder. Although
sometimes derided, particularly by some forensic psychiatrists who may
find test data threatening, standardized measures provide for us an
objective reference point with which to compare the results of our
individual subject. This is the only truly scientific way in which we can
speak to abnormality as deviation rather than moral failing. One of our
Rorschach discoveries when we studied a large sample of sexual
murderers was the inordinate number of feral movement responses they
would give. These responses have been validated as measures of
nonvolitional ideation in response to physiological arousal in other
populations, but it became for us another way of defining obsessional
thought in response to aggressive and sexual feelings among sexual
murderers. We thus discovered, quite serendipitously, the first
standardized psychological data that supported the clinical finding which
had been noted over the past century of obsessional thinking in some
sexual murderers.
Data without a theory, however, are just numbers. Dr. Schlesinger’s
writing in this book also emphasizes the importance of theory in
understanding sexual murder. Theory shapes the pursuit of data, and
data in turn modify theory. This is the scientific dynamic that is kept
alive by nurturing a theory of mind along with the collection of empirical
measures. Dr. Schlesinger and I share the same perspective. The most
comprehensive theory for understanding sexual murder is
psychoanalytic, which in its many contemporary forms still
acknowledges two fundamental tenets of Freud: human behavior is
overdetermined and often motivated by unconscious aspects of the
vi
mind. How can we understand sexual murder if we assume all human
behavior is rational and cognitive?
Throughout this book, Dr. Schlesinger underscores the importance of
case studies. The individual case study holds an honored position in
psychiatry and psychology, and most of the important discoveries in our
field began with the observation of one individual doing something that
caught a researcher’s eye. Comparative group studies usually follow, but
now most of our journals err in relegating the case study to a “letter to
the editor.” As Hans Eysenck, the great British psychologist, noted a half
century ago, idiographic and nomothetic approaches share equal
importance in the study of human behavior. Without the case study, we
cannot appreciate the uniqueness of each individual. In my forensic
evaluations of sexual murderers over the years, I have always been struck
by how different each case is, yet how homogenized the public
perception of the sexual murderer is. The brilliance of Anthony Hopkins
notwithstanding, most sexual murderers would not stand out in a crowd,
yet they each bring their own unique and private fantasies and
perversions to the crime.
The final aspect of Dr. Schlesinger’s work that is most enviable is his
development of a motivational model for understanding sexual murder, which
depends on his earlier work with Dr. Revitch on compulsive and
catathymic homicides. This book, Sexual Murder: Catathymic and
Compulsive Homicides, is a brilliant integration and application of previous
theory and research, and advances the field of criminal forensic
psychology. Amidst the words and images that follow, we move closer to
grasping the mystery posed by William Shakespeare over four centuries
ago: “One sin, I know, another doth provoke; murder’s as near to lust as
flame to smoke” (Pericles, 1,1).
J.Reid Meloy, Ph.D.
San Diego, California
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my appreciation to all colleagues, friends, and
students who have supported my work either directly in discussions of
the material or indirectly by their encouragement and patience. Special
thanks go to Becky McEldowney, acquisition editor at CRC Press, who
was very helpful and encouraging throughout the entire project. I am
indebted to Ellen Sexton and Maria Kiriakova, John Jay College’s
librarians extraordinaire, who—at a moment’s notice—are able to obtain
any article or book ever published, and even some that were not. Maria
was especially helpful in translating Hans Maiers’ papers from the
original German. I also want particularly to thank Navis Edwards, my
longtime friend and assistant, who did her usual excellent job in typing,
as well as deciphering my dictation. Finally, I want to express my
gratitude to my wife Beth and son Gene who are always willing to put
aside many of their own pursuits to listen to my endless tales of sexual
murder cases—even during dinner!
The Author
Louis B.Schlesinger, Ph.D., is associate professor of psychology at John
Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, and a
diplomate in forensic psychology of the American Board of
Professional Psychology. He served as president of the New Jersey
Psycho logical Association in 1989 and as a member of the Council of
Representatives of the American Psychological Association from 1991
to 1994. Dr. Schlesinger was the 1990 recipient of the New Jersey
Psychological Association’s Psychologist of the Year Award, as well as

a recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Karl F.Heiser
Presidential Award (1993). He was appointed by the governor of New
Jersey and the commissioner of corrections to be a member (and later
served as chair) of the Special Classification Review Board at the Adult
Diagnostic and Treatment Center (1980–1987), the state’s forensic
facility; he was also appointed (2001) by the president of the New
Jersey State Senate to serve as a member of a Senate task force that
rewrote Megan’s Law. Dr. Schlesinger is co-principal investigator of a
joint research project between John Jay College and the FBI Behavioral
Science Unit, studying various types of violent crime including sexual
and serial murder, rape, bias homicide, suicide-by-cop, and other
ix
extraordinary criminal behaviors. He has testified in numerous forensic
cases and has published many articles, chapters, and seven other books
on the topics of homicide, sexual homicide, and criminal
psychopathology.