Biopsychosocial Case Study of Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffrey Dahmer was a notorious serial killer in the late 70’s throughout the early 90’s. What made him stand out from most serial killer’s was what he did to the bodies of his victims. During this research paper, I will cover his childhood life, what led to his lifestyle of killing and cannibalism and also the crimes that were committed during his murderous acts. I will also compare what theories relate to Jeffrey Dohmer and what could possibly be the reason why he did what he did.

Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 in West Allis,Wisconsin. He and his parents, Lionel Dahmer and Joyce Annette, were an average american family who strived for the best. Jeffrey’s father was a graduate student who wanted to pursue a career as an analytical chemist. His mother worked as a teletype machine instructor. However, Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother was not a stable women. She had a history of psychological problems which meant that her son was susceptible to mental illness due to genetic factors. Growing up, Jeffrey had trouble with interacting with his peers. He also had a peculiar fascination with dead animals and “according to his father, his son was ‘oddly thrilled’ by the sound the bones made and instantly developed a fixation for playing with and collecting animal bones (“Jeffrey Dahmer” Wikipedia).” As he got older, he developed an addiction to alcohol. He started drinking heavily during high school which negatively affected his grades. Another issue that Dahmer faced in his early life was

After the move, when Dahmer went back to school, he was scared and very reserved from everyone else. His teacher even told Dahmer’s parents that Dahmer was not doing as well in school and that he was showing a disinterest in his school work. As Dahmer continued to grow up, his parents’ absence took a toll on him. He continued to become more and more isolated. Dahmer became frustrated easily, but held everything inside. He did not participate in any activities and rather spent his time walking around the woods or exploring the insides of animals. His mother eventually got sent to a neuropsychiatry facility for a month. Dahmer put a lot of her illness on himself, blaming himself for all the issues going on in their family.

Biography of Jeffrey Dahmer, A Murderer Jeffrey Dahmer was born May 21, 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He had a typical family, which consisted of his father Lionel Dahmer, his mother Joyce Dahmer, and his little brother David. When Jeffrey was eight years old, he and his family moved to the small town of Bath Township, Ohio. Since Jeffrey didn't have any friends there, he would spend most of his time in the woods behind their house. There he would mutilate and decapitate small animals, mostly dogs, cats, and squirrels.

Jeffrey Dahmer was a fun and active child. He liked to wrestle, run and play with other children. But when his parents started to fight, he felt alone in the world. He began hiding in the woods and collecting the carcasses of dead animals. These carcasses gave him the comfort his family and classmates did not. At the age of 31 he went to jail for the murder of 17 people, where he was killed by a fellow inmate a few years later. What drove such a happy child to become a serial killer?

Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 to parents Lionel and Joyce Dahmer (Davis, 1998). While living in his birthplace of Wisconsin, Dahmer was described by his father to be “’[v]ery exuberant, he liked to wrestle, liked to run around, ham it up for the camera and he liked to play with kids and get together with them’” (Harris, 1996). As Dahmer entered adolescence, his father earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and the family began to move around Ohio (National Center for Crisis Management, n.d.). After the move, his parents fought often and eventually divorced. During this period, Dahmer became “withdrawn and uncommunicative” (Jeffrey Dahmer, 2017) and

This isn’t to say that Dahmer wasn’t responsible for his crimes- a jury of his peers determined he wasn’t legally insane at the time of the murders, but society made Dahmer. Next, this paper will use the strain theory to analyze Dahmer and his crimes.

When he realized that he was a homosexual, the thoughts of naked men, with dead things would arouse him even more. It would not be until the age of eighteen, when Dahmer would lure his first victim, and then take his life. He picked up a hitchhiker, they drank alcohol, had sex, and then when Dahmer did not want the man to leave, he would hit him over the head with a dumbbell. In an interview he once had with a FBI profiler, he stated “the guy wanted to leave, and I did not want him to.” He now had a dead human being lying on his floor, for him to have his way with. He would masturbate on to the body; he cut him up, put him into trash bags, and dumped the bags into a ravine. His parents would soon be settling for a divorce, which did not go over well with Dahmer, especially with his abandonment issues. He started drinking, which would cause him to steal to get money to buy more alcohol, which led him to drop out of college, and down a path of self-destruction. With no other choices, he joined the army where he became a cook, which is where he picked up his butchery skills. The alcohol once again got the best of him, and he was discharged from the army. A few years later his urge to kill had grown stronger and could not resist it any longer. He started luring men to him apartment, where he would drug and disremember them. He would start to experiment with trying to

Jeffrey Dahmer, also commonly known as the Milwaukee Cannibal, is one of America’s most notorious serial killers. In the span of nearly 15 years, between the years 1978 and 1991, it is estimated that Dahmer was responsible for the death of fifteen to seventeen young men (Radford University). As his nickname suggests Dahmer was known for drugging his victims, then raping them, then disembodying them, and if the mood fit him, cooking and eating his victims. Dahmer’s unique case resulted in him being psychologically analyzed and diagnosed by at least seven different psychologists during his trial (Palermo & Bogaerts, 2014). This paper seeks to explore the diagnostics given to Jeffery Dahmer and prove, through the use of available information, their accuracy.

Dahmer’s mother had pregnancy issues and took several different drugs to help; his mother was also extremely depressed--after a while, his mother developed an addiction to the drugs and abused them severely, which is extremely pernicious to the health, both physical and mental, of a growing fetus (Giannetakis). While growing up, Dahmer enjoyed to be by himself. He often took walks into the woods near his house. He would find dead animals and examine their innards; although he liked to dismember dead animals, he didn’t wish to inflict pain onto any living creature (Giannetakis).

Serial killers have fascinated the imaginations of people for a long time. One of the most notorious serial killers is Jeffrey Dahmer whose gruesome murders shocked the nation. Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer also known as Milwaukee monster was a notorious American serial killer and sexual offender in the 1980s and early 1990s. Between 1978 and 1991 Dahmer had murdered 17 men. His victims were usually raped, tortured, dismembered, and cannibalism was also involved. Jeffrey was a troubled child psychologically and his social skills had a lot to be desired. All the way through his childhood he was ignored and had queer fantasies of cadavers. In his adulthood this psychosocial status quo didn 't change and was in fact aggravated.

And, although it is rare, they may not understand the nature or quality of their actions. A real life example of an insane killer is Jeffrey Dahmer. Jeffrey was a happy child until he reached the age of six. When he was six he had a minor surgery to fix a double hernia, after this surgery his little brother was born. After these two life changing events Dahmer seemed to have changed becoming more insular and lacking confidence. By the age of fourteen he began having thoughts of killing people and necrophilia. Necrophilia is wanting to have sexual intercourse with a corpse. Many believed that his parents divorce acted as a catalyst for Dahmer to begin acting on his thoughts of murder. Dahmer took his first life when he was eighteen. The name

His background and early life mentioned earlier proves his actions of aggression and impulsivity. His diagnosis is ASPD comorbid with substance abuse, and accompanied with sadistic, necrophilia, and obsessive features. The sadistic and obsessive feature comes from his sexual pleasure to harm and control others. Also his obsessive features can be linked with his canabalism. “Dahmer reported that he felt an intense need of consuming the flesh of the dead body in order to incoporate the other in his own self, and he experienced this as a sexual sense of closeness and unification” (Martens,2011, pg.504). His necrophilia feature has been present sense his early adolescence. His low self-esteem, and unsocial behaviors may have easily led him down the path to developing ASPD and his other features. Jeffery’s mother also “suffered from hysteria, depression, suicidal

After developing a fascination for the mindset of criminals at an early age, two cases that I personally found most gripping were those of the infamous Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen. Like most people in the UK, I too am familiar with the crimes of Nilsen, the Scottish serial killer well known for forming sexual relationships with his victims. Albeit the second serial killer is less well known in Britain, Jeffrey Dahmer is a household name in USA and became particularly famous for cannibalising and sodomising his latter victims.

One of the most famous cases of cannibalism is Jeffery Dahmer. From a young age, Dahmer was obsessed with death. His father, Lionel Dahmer, recollected on the time when young Jeffery first showed a peculiar interest in death; as Lionel was picking up animal bones from the lawn, he noticed Jeffery, “oddly thrilled by the sound they made. His small hands dug deep into the pile of bones. [Lionel could] no longer view it simply as a childish episode, a passing fascination. This same sense of something dark and shadowy, of a malicious force growing in [his] son, now colors almost every memory.” (Bradsley n.d.) By the time Dahmer was convicted, he murdered seventeen boys and men, many of his murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism and the preservation of their bodies. Dahmer was so infamous in America that he inspired movies and a comic book, which once wrought protests in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Williams 1992). During his trial, Dahmer explained his lust for human destruction, “…it took more deviant behavior to