Psychotic Causes Of Serial Killers

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When people think of a serial killer they automatically assume that they are psychotic. However, many people do not know the true definition of psychotic. A psychotic person doesn’t necessarily have to be a criminal; a person who is psychotic suffers from a form of psychosis. Psychosis is a severe mental disorder in which a person’s thoughts and emotions become so impaired that they lose their sense of reality. Psychotic people tend to hallucinate thinking that people are out to get them. They begin to lose the meaning of reality and focus more on their hallucinations. Serial killers are more psychopathic than psychotic. A psychopath is person who commits crimes and feels no empathy for others. They lack compassion and are more of a danger …show more content…
They attack a person because their psychosis symptom makes them feel threatened. While serial killers murder a person because they want to, someone with psychosis kills because their mental illness causes them to. They become paranoid and start thinking that anyone who feels like a threat to them should be attacked. A person with any form of psychosis won’t kill because they felt like it. They would kill because their mental illness makes them hurt anyone who feels like a threat to them. An individual suffering from any type of psychosis is not a dangerous threat to the people around …show more content…
Serial killers are aware of what is around them and the difference between right and wrong. Serial killers know that they are killing someone and it is against the law. In the book “What Makes Serial Killers Tick”, Shirley Lynn Scott writes “Always looking to manipulate, serial killers will do just about anything to convince the authorities of their insanity” (26),they often start acting like they are crazy in front of the jury and judge, so that their sentence won’t be as bad as it would be if they acted like their normal selves. Sometimes serial killers will try to act like they have dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) to put the blame on their alter ego. They do this to try to convince the jury and judge that they are insane. “Does the offender understand the difference between right and wrong?” says Scott “If he flees or makes any attempt to hide the crime, then the offender is not insane… his actions show that he understood that what he was doing was wrong,” a person who kills someone and tries to cover up their tracks is not psychotic they are normal people who are psychopaths. For example, when Ted Bundy got pulled over by a cop in the late seventies, they found suspicious materials that would link Bundy to numerous crimes. Bundy ended up clearing his car and selling it so law enforcement wouldn’t be able to connect the crimes he did. Bundy