Sleepy

Fearful avoidant attachment style (Disorganized attachment)

Let’s talk about attachment styles! In learning more about myself, I also started to see links with Jeff and a certain attachment style. I am gonna try to explain why I feel the disorganized attachment style can apply to Jeff’s way of looking at relationships.

First, let’s explain better what this certain attachment style is.
Disorganized/disoriented attachment, also referred to as fearful-avoidant attachment, comes from an intense fear, often as a result of childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse. Adults with this style of insecure attachment tend to feel they don’t deserve love or closeness in a relationship.

Fearful-avoidant attachment is often caused by childhood in which at least one parent or caregiver exhibits frightening behavior. This frightening behavior can range from overt abuse to more subtle signs of anxiety or uncertainty, but the result is the same. When the child approaches the parent for comfort, the parent is unable to provide it. Because the caregiver does not offer a secure base and may function as a source of distress for the child, the child’s impulse will be to start to approach the caregiver for comfort but will then withdraw.
People who carry this fearful-avoidant attachment into adulthood will exhibit the same impulse to approach and then withdraw in their interpersonal relationships with friends, spouses, partners, colleagues, and children.

But there are more reasons why someone can develop an fearful avoidant attachment style and it’s not hard to spot the reasons that can be relevant in Jeff’s case:

→ The caregiver experienced depression caused by isolation, lack of social support, or hormonal problems, for example, forcing them to withdraw from the caregiving role.
→ The primary caregiver’s addiction to alcohol or other drugs reduced their ability to accurately interpret or respond to the child’s physical or emotional needs.
→ Traumatic experiences, such as a serious illness or accident which interrupted the attachment process.
→ Physical neglect, such as poor nutrition, insufficient exercise, or neglect of medical issues.
→ Emotional neglect or abuse. For example, the caregiver paid little attention to the child, made scant effort to understand their feelings, or engaged in verbal abuse.
→ Physical or sexual abuse, whether physical injury or violation.
→ Separation from the primary caregiver due to illness, death, divorce, or adoption.
→ Inconsistency in the primary caregiver. The person experienced a succession of nannies or staff at daycare centers, for example.
→ Frequent moves or placements. For example, constantly changing environments due to spending the early years in orphanages or moving between (foster) homes.

Now stop here for a second. We know Joyce had trouble being there for Jeff emotionally ever since he was a baby. She was dealing with PPD after Jeff was born and didn’t emotionally connect with baby Jeff. It is very important for infants to feel safe and have this connection. According to the book Serial Killers: the method and madness of monsters, the most common factor attributed to serial killers is the likely absence of infant bonding. “An infant that is denied human touch and affection develops a sense of only itself – it becomes completely oblivious to others. This is necessary for the infant to survive but can become a destructive trait in adulthood.”

During his childhood, Jeff’s home environment wasn’t a really safe one. Lionel and Joyce fought a lot. Joyce wasn’t there emotionally and Lionel was gone a lot for work and his own education. Joyce was dealing with her own mental health. She admits in her chapters in The Silent Victims that she wasn’t ready to be a mom and made mistakes. She writes, “I now realize how damaging the constant arguments, anger and physical confrontations were on the boys, especially Jeff. Although I was rarely angry with Jeff, he was constantly subjected to a barrage of fury and anger directed toward Lionel and he toward me. It must have been extremely frightening and paralyzing to him, it surely drove him off to spend more time alone, drove him further into himself.”. Joyce also got admitted into a mental facility for her mental health when Jeff was 15. This too can be a traumatic experience for Jeff and he lost his mother figure for some time.

We also shouldn’t forget the hernia operation that I feel was a critical turning point in a young Jeff’s life. This really made an impact on him mentally and he really felt violated (the beginning of his splanchnophilia). We can assume both his parents didn’t offer enough comfort before and after surgery to make the child feel safe again. And we also know that in the first 8 years of his life, Jeff moved around a lot. That can cause the feeling of unsafety and insecurity too.

People with fearful avoidant attachment want to form strong interpersonal bonds but also want to protect themselves from rejection. This leads them to seek out relationships but avoid true commitment or to leave as soon as a relationship gets too intimate. Fearful-avoidant attachment is often considered the worst in terms of potential negative outcomes. For example, multiple studies have shown that there is an association between fearful-avoidant attachment and depression.
Research found that it’s the negative view of the self and the self-criticism that accompanies fearful-avoidant attachment that leaves those with this attachment style vulnerable to depression, social anxiety, and negative emotions, in general.
Meanwhile, another study found that, in comparison to other attachment styles, fearful-avoidant attachment is predictive of more sexual partners in one’s lifetime and a greater tendency to consent to sex even when it’s unwanted.

Jeff never really tried to form a real romantic relationship. He probably didn’t even know what it meant. But reading this, you can see similarities in Jeff’s way of thinking. Jeff had serious abandonment issues. If it was real or imaginary, it doesn’t matter. It felt very real to Jeff. So real that in order to avoid being rejected or alone again, he started killing his victims so they never had the chance to leave him.
He also admitted to having sex with a lot with strangers. He didn’t kill every guy he had sex with. But he never learned how to emotionally connect with people. His personality disorders also played a factor in this but it is safe to say it all started in childhood. His teacher in first grade told Lionel that Jeff impressed her as being inordinately shy and reclusive. She told Lionel that he had not been able to engage in conversation with other children. He had not responded to their casual approaches, nor made any approaches of his own. On the playground, he’d kept to himself, merely pacing about the schoolyard, doing what she described as “nothing”.

A person with a fearful avoidant attachment style may crave closeness and reassurance from their partner, fearing that they will abandon them. In another instance, they may begin to feel trapped or afraid of how close they are with their partner and attempt to distance themselves.

A person with a fearful avoidant attachment style may display some of the following characteristics:
→ find it difficult to open up to others and discuss their feelings
→ have difficulty trusting others
→ have a negative view of others
→ have a negative view of themselves
→ have difficulty regulating their emotions
→ dissociation
→ lack healthy coping strategies for stress
→ withdraw in times of intimacy and closeness

But back to adult Jeff and his view of (romantic) relationships. Apparently people with a fearful-avoidant attachment style also have associations with symptoms of borderline personality disorder. Which is one of the personality disorders Jeff has been officially diagnosed with. A person with a fearful-avoidant attachment style is often at an increased risk for behavioral addictions and/or compulsive behaviors surrounding sex. Some theories suggest that persons with a fearful-avoidant attachment style may use sex or have higher rates of sexual partners as a way of trying to get their core needs met for connection and belonging that typically went unmet in childhood.

Jeff his compulsive behaviors surrounding sex were a little extreme in comparison to what the people in the article mean but it was still a compulsion to find the best looking guy to have sex with. To have complete control over them. To make sure they never could leave. In the bathhouses were Jeff started drugging his victims he admits in a interview Dr. Frederik Fosdal that he had sex with 200 different men. He said “You don’t develop a lasting friendship there.” and that he was not routinely rejected or disappointed. Jeff said that there were very shallow relationships amongst each other in the bath houses.
In the Psych Reports we can also read in the interview notes of Dr. Fosdal that he didn’t believe Jeff tried hard enough to find a compatible partner and that Jeff got abandoned over and over again with his heart broken so that he had to do what he ended up doing.

Dr Fosdal said “I’m not impressed – that you started so many relationships and that you were abandoned and jilted and had your heart broken time and time again and finally you resort to what you did.”
Jeff: “No I didn’t — no.”
Fosdal: “I would assume that there are a lot of people out there that would have liked to have an ongoing relationship. It’s just a matter of finding each other.
Jeff: “Uh-huh, no I didn’t. I guess I didn’t look hard enough.”

It seems Dr Fosdal forgets that Jeff needed more than what a partner mostly likely is willing to give but it can also be why Jeff never tried to look for a real steady relationship is because he felt like he didn’t deserve one or the fear of being abandoned and ending up alone again is what kept him from it. It’s easier to have shallow relationships that only revolve around sex. His fearful avoidant attachment style could have played a role in this.

One more snippet of the interview:
Fosdal: “In talking about your personality style you are a kind of stand-offish kind of guy in general with people. There is no reason why you should be extremely warm and honest and get real close to a gay man.”
Jeff: “Yes, that was my mindset. I was never one that was really interested in getting involved with a big group of people or anything – even from my earliest childhood.”
Fosdal: “Where you lonely? Did you miss people – were you missing something?”
Jeff: “During high school it was frustrating to not be able to meet someone of my interests so it was frustrating – yeah it was lonely.”
Fosdal: “Like in Milwaukee – are you lonely?”
Jeff: “Uh huh”
Fosdal: “You felt lonely – being lonely and being by yourself – kind of sad – Some people don’t mind it.”
Jeff: “I can take it to a point, but not years and years.”
Fosdal: “See, maybe had you been a little more susceptible to form a relationship with some other guys – maybe none of this might have happened.”
Jeff: “And if I didn’t have such a desire for total control and domination – right – if I wasn’t so selfish. I have to admit what I was doing was the ultimate in selfishness.”

I must admit Dr Fosdal seems a bit naive. He made it sound like a boyfriend would have fixed Jeff when we all know that wasn’t so easy. Jeff’s issues went far deeper than that. But I wanted to share this part because Jeff admits to being lonely and it seems he wanted to connect with people. Not big groups but maybe one person. Someone special that he could share his interests with. But his fear of rejection withheld him from this. He never learned to open up, his home environment never was a safe enough place to share his emotions even if he wanted. His emotional needs were never met by his parents so why would a potential boyfriend accept him and his needs? Why even bother to try to open up if you end up getting left alone anyway? Jeff sought out other disturbing ways to keep someone with him forever.

Again I want to make clear that there were more deeply rooted problems with Jeff than just having a disorganized attachment style. Even if this was already a thing back in the days and he worked on his attachment style, in his case that wouldn’t have solved his desire to have complete control and dominance over someone and his personality disorders. But I just wanted to point out that if we forget his crimes for a second and just focus on his desire to want to be with someone, if it was possible for him to have a normal romantic relationship, if he wanted to connect with a guy and learn to be better at communicating his needs, he would have had to deal with a fearful avoidant attachment style like many of us in the present time. If he were in a relationship or maybe just dating, he would constantly have the fear of not being good enough. He probably would have a really hard time being vulnerable and opening up to his partner. He would constantly fight the urge to leave before the other person leaves him. He probably look for any sign from his partner that they didn’t really like him. It would not be easy to form an emotional connection with Jeff even if he didn’t have his dark intrusive thoughts.

Sources [x] [x] [x]

Jeff’s mannequin

Jeff Dahmer did not want to be with a person who would move, be energetic, express desires of his own, perhaps suprise him and demand too much of him. Jeff wanted a person who would lie down and permit himself to be stroked and admired, and finally used merely as an aid to masturbation. Obviously these people are not so easy to find so Jeff tried to find replacements so he wouldn’t have to kill. He got a mannequin from a Boston Store. Jeff saw the male mannequin and decided he wanted it. He used a big sleeping bag cover to put it in. He carried it right out of the store after closing time. He never thought of the store maybe having cameras or the possibility of being locked in the store. He got a taxi and took it home.

He used the mannequin to lay with and masturbate but was disappointed with it because it wasn’t like the real thing. “I just went through various sexual fantasies with it, pretending it was a real person, pretending that I was having sex with it.” But it wasn’t enough to satisfy him.

Brian Masters says in the Shrine, “This behavior seems less odd when one considers how many shops devoted to sexual aids sell a great number of inflatable dolls which men use to extend onanistic activity; nor the number of times men in art museums, thinking themselves alone, are seen by hidden cameras to run their hands over the bodies of statues.”

Even though Jeff pretended to have sex with the mannequin, it ofcourse did not actually involve penetration. That was not his purpose. It helped with the fantasy. He said: “I was walking around Southridge and saw this mannequin that sort of caught my eye. I wanted that mannequin, so I went into the store. There’s nobody in there. Stayed there until closing time. No alarms went off. Nothing. I got the mannequin undressed, got a taxi back home, and stored it in the closet at Grandma’s house. And I used to play around with it after.. dressing it up and undressing it. Pretending it was real.”

After a week or two his grandma stubbled on it. She asked Jeff what it was and how he got is. Jeff told her a story that he got it from a store that had extra mannequins for sale. His grandma called Jeff’s dad so Jeff got rid of it. He took it to the basement and smash it up and put it in the trash.
According to Lionel, Catherine Dahmer told Shari about the mannequin in one of their conversations about Jeff drifting downward again. She was wondering how he got. Did he steal it or order it somewhere? Jeff’s grandma couldn’t imagine what Jeff wanted with such a thing. After Shari told Lionel, he called him up. Jeff’s reaction was completely calm and unemotional. He said that he had taken it only to prove that he could. He liked the clothes on the mannequin but taking the mannequin itself was just a prank. Lionel thought Jeff was acting on an impulse which was natural to him. But Shari saw it differently. She thought the mannequin was a sign of something deeply wrong with Jeff. She said, “There’s something wrong with this story, I don’t know what it is, but there’s something wrong.”

Jeff said he wanted to have something real instead of fake like the mannequin but he needed to have complete control. In the end it seems the only way he thought that was possible was killing the men he found beautiful, who had the best physique.

“It would have been better if I’d just stuck to the mannequins. Much, much better.”

Necrophilia or somnophilia?

When we hear his name, Jeffrey Dahmer, one of the first things that pop into our heads probably will be “necrophilia“. His attorney, Mr Boyle, based his defense mostly on this “illness”. But necrophilia isn’t or wasn’t seen as a mental disorder. The definition of necrophilia is a bit complex. When people talk of necrophilia they usually mean sex with dead bodies. And yes that’s accurate. But necrophilia also means being sexually attracted to a dead person. The most common motive for necrophilia is possession of an unresisting and unrejecting partner. So in what sense was Jeff a true necrophile? Or is the term somnophilia a better fit for him? Maybe both?

Somnophilia generally refers to a sexual interest in engaging in sexual activity with a sleeping person. Other definitions have since been offered, although they tend to be inconsistent. This appears to be largely due to their emphasis on different elements of the interest (e.g., the specific state, the context, the recipient’s reaction, the lack of consent). For example, while Money’s original definition in 1986, was directed towards sleeping people, subsequent definitions were broadened to encompass ‘unconscious’ people. Somnophilia is also sometimes regarded as being synonymous with sleepysex. However, sleepysex refers to one or both partners being in near-sleep states whilst engaging in sexual behaviors. Here, sexual arousal is thought to stem from the intimacy of the interaction. These two additional concepts increase the scope of the term somnophilia, making it unclear as to whether it refers to an interest in sleeping people, waking people up, having sex in a sleepy state, or all of the above. Based on this, and the dearth of empirical data on somnophilia, it is difficult to form any firm conclusions about its definition.

Somnophilia has been theorised to lie along a continuum with necrophilia due to the passivity of the target individual. Some have even suggested that somnophilic behaviour functions as a substitute for necrophilia as it bypasses the crimes associated with the latter. Deehan and Bartels recently examined this proposed link empirically. They found that, in community-based male participants, fantasising about somnophilic behaviour and necrophilic behaviour were positively correlated. In their study, Deehan and Bartels also found that a subset of people interested in sexual activity during sleep were more interested in being the passive/sleeping person – which the authors termed ‘dormaphilia’. This bears a similarity to other paraphilias that have a seemingly complementary opposite (e.g., sadism and masochism; or exhibitionism and voyeurism). Deehan and Bartels did a study on somnophilia. They recruited 232 participants online to discuss the content, origin, sexual appeal, emotional appraisal, and behavioural enactment of their somnophilic and dormaphilic interests and fantasies. 30.4% participants mentioned the act of taking control, being dominant, and, as Participant 82 stated, having “total power” over the passive partner. Some participants described being able to control their partner’s body, as well as controlling what occurred within the sexual encounter without having to interact with their partner (“Somnophilia puts me in charge, and it allows things to be attempted that can’t be done if the other person is awake” – Participant 48). Some also mentioned the passive partner’s inability to resist the situation or the advances of the active partner. Here, the appeal of somnophilia lay in the guarantee of control.

People who have somnophilia may not wish to cause harm or force violence on someone but they receive sexual arousal and orgasm by intruding on and touching or fondling a sleeping person. If these urges are acted on as part of a consensual fantasy scenario, this can be perfectly safe, fun and legal. Those who can’t control urges around somnophilia may seek treatment.

Sources: 1 , 2

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Brain Masters made in The Shrine also an interesting observation about Jeff’s polaroids and necrophilia:

“Police officers found 74 Polaroid pictures in Dahmer’s drawer, which does not take into the scores he had taken and subsequently destroyed. This was not a hobby, it was imperative – pressing, impatient, ineluctable. There are some of the body whose bowels had fallen out, which implies that the photographer was working in conditions of unspeakable foulness. Why? Because the taking of photographs is an inherent part of the compulsion itself. It was strong enough to banish the smells, render them impotent, and unable to interfere.

The camera completes the objectification of the victim, destroys the last vestige of his individuality, robs him of his independent being. Just as murder creates a compliant corpse, so the photography of that corpse demonstrates total ownership and control – it is a step further in the same direction. The person, once threatenjngly alive, now exists only in so far as the photographer allows him to exist through images of his creating. It is the translation of life into death, of sentience into petrification, of will into object, the dissolution of all into one triumphant thing – the photograph.

Erich Fromm has analysed what he calls the necrophilous character, which may show itself in seemingly innocuous acts. Men who feel more tender towards their cars than their wives are demonstrating the dangers of inanimation (literally, soullessness). They wash it lovingly, even when they could afford to pay someone else to do it, they may give it a nickname, they caress it and gaze at it. The car has become, in such cases, almost a love object, which does not, unlike a love subject, occasionally refuse one’s attentions. The murderer is doing precisely the same in turning his love object into a still image, turning love (aliveness, mutuality) into pornography (passivity, self-gratification). With his camera, he conceptualises and conquers that which was once a free being, and in this way, uses the camera as a kind of weapon or instrument of control. The camera is a thing which records things, framing them, solidifying them.

It is important to recognise that the camera does not enhance. It reduses (in so far as the person photographed is now no more than an image), and it insultingly proclaims ownership, too. It has become a substitute for involvement, and in that regard, Dahmer’s photography of his corpses, his dismemberment, his trophies, is a loud signal of the condition which afflicts him – necrophilia.”

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Based on this, I think Somnophilia also applied to Jeff, maybe even more than necrophila. A lot of sources use necrophilia to indicate a person having sex with corpses. Not only to indicate being sexually attracted to a dead person. Jeff himself said he would prefer to have a complete compliant person (alive) to do whatever he wished sexually, not to consider the other person’s needs. One of the reason why he started drugging the men in the bathhouses and why he tried to make ‘zombies’. So technically he is a necrophiliac because he had sex with the dead bodies of his victims, but he was more aroused by their unconscious state because it made him have complete control.

Please share with us your thoughts on this!

“I’d always see him drinking a beer and standing near the trash container in the backyard. And there’d be all these cats around him. I don’t mean a couple, I mean a lot of cats, following him all over the place. And the guy didn’t just go into his apartment, like most people open the door and go in. He squeezed in. He’d open the door just the littlest bit and squeeze through. He did that a lot.”

– Douglas Jackson, downstairs neighbor of Jeff Dahmer in the book ‘Step into My Parlor’.

Jeff and his mom

Joyce was 24 years old when baby Jeff was born. According to her, it was not planned to get pregnant so soon after she got married to Lionel. But Lionel has said that his birth control method was foolproof. It happened after two months of marriage anyway and unfortunately it wasn’t an easy pregnancy. Joyce said it was filled with nausea, pain and bed rest. Her doctor prescribed her medication for anxiety that made it a bit more bearable. Joyce said that Lionel demanded sex constantly near the end of her pregnancy and it caused her to go into premature labor. She was rushed into the hospital and after the emergency delivery, she woke up alone. No recognition of the birth of their son or the labor.

Lionel too has said it wasn’t an easy pregnancy. Everything seemed to bother her, every single noise or odor. This so afflicted her nerves that she began to develop uncontrollable muscle spasms, which distressed her even more. She would get some type of seizures. During these, her eyes would bulge like a frightening animal and she would begin to salivate, literally frothing at the mouth. Joyce has denied she had these seizures. But according to Lionel she got injections of barbiturates and morphine to help her relax. The doctor could not find any medical reason for these attacks. He said they were rooted in Joyce’s mental state.

Joyce grew up with an alcoholic father. According to the Shrine, Joyce often had said she felt helpless and lonely as a child but did not know why. She knew the emotion of abandonment very early. In the Silent Victims, Joyce also writes she has been abused by him.

On May 21, 1960 Jeff was finally born. When Lionel first saw his son, he was sleeping quietly. When he was allowed to go home, Joyce held him gently in her arms. The first few days there was a happiness that settled over Lionel and Joyce. Joyce kept a scrapbook about Jeff where all his first achievements were lovingly recorded. But the feeling of happiness only lasted for a short time. Joyce stopped pretty fast with breast feeding. It made her nervous and she dreaded it terribly. Brian Masters wrote that this abrupt change may have felt like a rejection or distance to the baby.

According to the book Serial Killers: the method and madness of monsters, the most common factor attributed to serial killer is the likely absence of infant bonding. “An infant that is denied human touch and affection develops a sense of only itself – it becomes completely oblivious to others. This is necessary for the infant to survive but can become a destructive trait in adulthood.”

Jeff himself has said he later in his life learned that Joyce had mental problems and that there were times she was gone a lot. But that she was never mean or unkind to him and she actually could be very comforting. He overheard his aunt saying that after he was born, Joyce had suffered a severe case of post partum depression and had to be hospitalized. He said he didn’t know at the time what it was but that he still felt responsible for it, like he had done something to cause her illness. Joyce writes in The Silent Victims she mourned the loss of her dreams, of her life, of her pride. She felt like she and Lionel became a recreation of her own family.

Around 1970 Joyce’s fragile health collapsed. She had been steadily increasing her consumption of drugs. Eventually she was taken to a hospital, where she spent a month in a mental ward. The Shrine says Jeff’s response to this was classic. He blamed himself for his mother’s illness. He had known for as long as he could remember that she had been depressed following his birth, and that he had therefore caused her illness. He also must have caused every relapse. He could not articulate his pain, for fear of tipping his mother over the edge again. He had to keep himself to himself, say little and do less, to protect her, to keep a little calm in the house. The more she saw of him the worse it would be for her. Jeff quite simply felt he did not belong and that if he were to belong he would only do harm. The fact that Jeff had not been troublesome or demanding as an infant ought not to earn suprise. The child who does not ask for attention, wheter or not because he has learnt not to expect it, betrays as inner deadness which can be mistaken for goodness and sweetness of character.

Joyce writes that as Jeff grew older he began to turn inward, became more and more withdrawn and introspective which mystified and disturbed her greatly. She also says that Jeff did came home drunk when he was a teenager and he did seem to spend an inordinate amount of time alone. When she decided to leave to Wisconsin, Joyce says she asked Jeff to come with her and David but that he decided to stay so he could attend the University. He said he could handle it and she should go ahead. Afterwards they spend some holidays together. They were not the warm, loving encounters she had hoped for but she made the best of it, having him for the holidays made a difference to her. Joyce said she felt compelled to stay in touch with Jeff. But he refused to answer.

When Jeff was assigned to group therapy by the terms of his probation, it was noted that Jeff seemed to be very uncomfortable in talking about his mother. In the reports of his probation officer Donna Chester, it was reported that on March 25, 91 Joyce had called him and they talked to each other for the first time in 5 years. She knows he was gay and had no problem accepting it. In the report it said, he was happy.

Joyce was reflective in The Silent Victims. She asked herself how she could be so careless that Jeff felt so insignificant in their lives. She felt like she should have done something earlier, should have known something was up and should have tried harder. Since Joyce had a dad who was an alcoholic, she admits she saw the signs with Jeff and asks herself why she never did anything to help him.

She writes, “I now realize how damaging the constant arguments, anger and physical confrontations were on the boys, especially Jeff. Although I was rarely angry with Jeff, he was constantly subjected to a barrage of fury and anger directed toward Lionel and he toward me. It must have been extremely frightening and paralyzing to him, it surely drove him off to spend more time alone, drove him further into himself.” “I am aware now that my own difficult childhood prefaced my children’s. I, after all, had learned my parenting skills from my parents. I never actually took the necessary steps to unlearn what came naturally to me. And my boys suffered because of it.” “Little did I or anyone else know that the ‘baggage’ Lionel and I were carrying would be so devastating to one quiet, lonely, withdrawn, little boy.”

After Jeff got arrested, it seemed the bond between him and his mom finally got better. They were talking and writing each other. Joyce visited him in jail often as she could and Jeff told her his whole story. He, almost desperately, wanted to make sure she knew he didn’t want the victims to suffer. That he wasn’t mean. To me, this is Jeff in some way wanting to have his mom’s approval, to not disappoint her even more. After this heavy conversation, it seemed mother and son established a comfortable routine. They finally seemed to have the relationship they always wanted but couldn’t find. Despite the circumstances. But unfortunately it wouldn’t last long.. A prison warden called Joyce to tell her the devastating news that Jeff had been killed.

My personal opinion:
I know some dislike Joyce a lot and I respect that, I can understand it. I have disliked Joyce a lot for a long time too but after going deeper into their relationship and realizing, most of the stuff we know about Joyce, comes from Lionel.. it has changed my views. Yes she obviously has made some huge mistakes. But I do believe towards the end of her life she was more self aware of it and even admitted it. I think she cared deeply about Jeff but had too much issues of her own to properly show it. Moms with PPD often dont get taken seriously, especially back in these days. I think this had a big influence on Joyce bonding experiences with Jeff and ultimately Jeff’s feelings of neglect and loneliness. It’s so important for babies to bond with their moms. She also supposedly had BPD. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for Jeff growing up with a mom that was dealing with some severe mental health problems. But Lionel deserves to be held responsible for Jeff’s neglect in his childhood as much as Joyce. Lionel should have been more present and protecting Jeff. They both should have paid more attention to him but were too busy with each other. They both failed the little boy that was already lost but still had a chance to be saved.

Jeff and STPD

Jeff Dahmer, was according to the Psych Reports, diagnosed with Schizotypal Personality Disorder.

A little background info:
This type of personality disorder falls under the cluster A of personality disorders. The STPD diagnostic criteria for DSM-5 consist of:

ideas of reference
odd beliefs of magical thinking
unusual perceptual experiences and bodily illusions
odd thinking and speech
suspiciousness or paranoid ideation
inappropriate or constricted affect
behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric or peculiar
lack of close friends of confidants, other than first degree relatives
excessive social anxiety that doesn’t diminish with familiarity and tends to be associated with paranoid beliefs.

Five of nine criteria are required for a diagnosis of STPD.

STPD remained significantly associated with bipolar I and II disorder, PTSD, BPD and NPD. Twin studies have provided evidence that STPD is determined by both familial-genetic and unique environmental factors. A number of forms of psychological trauma and chronic stress have been associated with STPD. Over half of patients with STPD have had > 1 episode of major depressive disorder and 30 to 50% of them have major depressive disorder when schizotypal personality disorder is diagnosed. These patients often also have a substance use disorder.

People with STPD often come across as aloof, flat or emotionally distant, and are preoccupied with fantasy and daydreaming. People with this disorder may ignore ordinary social conventions (for example, not make eye contact), and because they do not understand usual social cues, they may interact with others inappropriately or stiffly. They are very uncomfortable relating to people. They interact with people if they have to but prefer not to because they feel like they are different and do not belong. However, they may say their lack of relationships makes them unhappy. Signs and symptoms of schizotypal personality disorder, such as increased interest in solitary activities or a high level of social anxiety, may be seen in the teen years. The child may be an underperformer in school or appear socially out of step with peers, which may result in teasing or bullying.

Now let’s look at Jeff and some of his behavior that could be related to his STPD:

If we look at his childhood there are obvious signs he kept to himself. He didn’t have many friends, he didn’t interact a lot with other kids at a young age. There were two incidents that are mentioned in The Shrine that could have “started” his STPD. The incident with the tadpoles, where the teacher gave Jeff’s present to her, to another kid he thought of as a friend. He killed the tadpoles with motor oil when he found out. This could have been a trigger for him to be suspicious of people who are kind to him. The other incident is with a choking game he played with the other kids. When it was Jeff’s turn to choke a kid, the kid ran to the teacher to tattle on him. Another betrayal in his early life that could have started his paranoid and suspicious beliefs.
In his teens we can see some of the behavior that is odd and peculiar. The things he did that were seen as Doing a Dahmer. I know this was also a way to hide his true self, his dark thoughts he was already having but it could also be related to early signs of STPD if you think about it.
He obviously never had any close relationships besides his parents and grandmother. Not that he was particularly close to his parents but yeah.
His paranoid beliefs also can be seen in his alarm system he bought but never fully installed. He might have thought just to look of it might scare people away if they wanted to break in.
Examples of his odd thinking of beliefs can be seen in him thinking the yellow eye contacts could give him the same power as The Emperor in Star Wars. Jeff seemed to be obsessed with obtaining a certain power or control over people.
His idea of creating a Shrine. The Shrine he was building was for remembering the physical appearance of his victims but also another way for him to get some sort of power.
Jeff mentioned often it was like he was possessed by an evil force that gave him these compulsions he could not get rid of. He truly thought he was Evil.
Another odd or magical belief could be him thinking that wearing a victim’s face or eating their body parts would make them one with him. That they would continue to live on inside of him
Some people mistake Jeff for being a psychopath because of his lack of expressing or showing emotion. But this is also a typical sign of STPD. Dr. Norman Goldfrab mentioned: His voice was devoid of emotional shading of life and that Jeff was “suspicious of the motives of others, a classic schizoid trait.” Dr Evelyn Rosen’s has said that Jeff had a “schizoid personality disorder with paranoid features.” And added a dire prognostication: “Jeff is not psychotic, but not much is needed to push him and alcohol serves this purpose.”
Schizoid personality disorder is also a personality disorder often mentioned in The Shrine but Jeff was never officially diagnosed with it according to the Pscyh Reports. The symptoms between STPD and Schizoid Personality Disorder do show similarities
While people with schizotypal personality disorder may experience brief psychotic episodes with delusions or hallucinations, the episodes are not as frequent, prolonged or intense as in schizophrenia. It is possible, if we believe Tracy Edwards story, that Jeff might have experienced at that time a brief psychotic episode.
Jeff’s crimes were based on his bizarre fantasies. His whole life was focused on chasing the ultimate fantasy he had of the perfect orgasm and control.

A study has shown that people with Stpd have more chances of having olfactory identification impairment which can explain how it was possible that Jeff lived in a small apartment with rotting bodies and cutting open to viscera without getting sick of the smell himself.

These are the first few signs of his STPD that I came up with. I am open to feedback and things you might know about him that could relate to his STPD. Just to be clear, I am not an expert on personality disorders. During my study I had only one short term on mental health conditions, so my own knowledge is limited. The things I mentioned with Jeff’s behavior related to STPD is how I see it. I just found it weird how little this disorder is mentioned in Jeff’s case.

Jeff and his addiction to alcohol

According to the book, Milwaukee Massacre, the first time Jeff’s relationship with alcohol was noticed, was in seventh grade. A classmate noticed his stash of gin in the locker. He said “I don’t remember much about him other than his drinking. He pretty much kept to himself all the time.”

Alcohol lowers people’s inhibitions. In Jeff’s case he would start doing clown acts that became known as “Doing A Dahmer”. This included things like bleating like a sheep, faking epileptic seizures, sitting in the library and yelling out the librarian’s name. Another classmate said “His behavior manifested a deep need for some sort of attention. He was desperate for attention. But he wasn’t considered anybody’s responsibility. No one ever confronted him or tried to help him. No one ever did anything about it. We just found ways to ignore him.” One of the most haunting things must be the National Honor Society photo. In one of his pranks, Jeff sneaked into the group portrait, where he certainly hadn’t earned a spot. There’s a spooky silhouette, blacked out with a marking pen. The president of the group was so incensed that he ordered Jeff’s image blotted out. It became something of a cheap metaphor for Jeff Dahmer’s life. He tried to get attention, but wound up being erased.

There was one time that we definitely know of that a teacher saw him drinking. In the Shrine it says: One of the teachers at Revere High School saw him sitting on the grass outside the parking lot, with a twelve-pack of beer in a brown paper bag. Three of the cans were already empty. The teacher, Mr Smesko, told Jeff that he really ought not to bring alcohol to school and that he would have to report the matter. Jeff told him that he was having ‘a lot of problems’ and that the guidance counsellor, Mr Kungle, knew all about it. The ‘problems’ were thought by both teachers to revolve around his parents’ divorce. They did not know that he was also struggling with dark thoughts in his head. Mr Smesko could not help noticing, not only that Jeff’s eyes were glossy and bloodshot, as one would expect him to observe, but also that the boy was ‘solemn and depressed’. It is not often that a teacher in the course of a routine reprimand should notice such a detail of mood.

To me, one of the biggest signs of screaming for help during high school is described in the book My Friend Dahmer.
One evening when the school year was coming to an end, the Dahmer Fanclub wanted Jeff to do something big. Like a command performance as how they called it. They started collecting money to give Jeff so he would do his thing in the local mall. The total amount was 35 dollars and Jeff agreed. At the time Jeff was drinking heavily and Derf Backderf recalls in their senior year he never had a normal conversation with Jeff. Not one. Whatever personality he once had was gone. He was always drunk or in character or both. In My Friend Dahmer he says that Jeff already reeked of booze at 7:45 in the morning. Saturday came and it was time for Jeff’s Command Performance. The Dahmer Fanclub picked him up at home and they drove to the mall. During the 10 minute ride, Jeff drank an entire sixpack. It was this moment that Derf was hit with the realization that Jeff was not just odd but truly scary. At the mall, a group was already waiting for him. Waiting to perform his act. Apparently the act went on for 2 hours. Derf recalls it wasn’t as much fun as he anticipated. It actually creeped him out. By late afternoon they had enough. The day would become legend but it ended quietly. There was no grand finale. Derf and another friend walked to the car and made plans for the evening. Jeff was not invited. In the book he says “in truth I couldn’t wait to ditch the guy fast enough.” They dropped Jeff off at home and that meant the end of the Dahmer Fanclub. After this, they excluded Jeff from their friend group. Jeff was alone again with only his own thoughts to keep him company. In the movie My Friend Dahmer you can get a good idea of how chilling an terrifying this must have looked.

By the time Jeff was legally an adult, he was already an alcoholic. His roommate during his one term at Ohio State has said that Jeff used to take bottles to class with him and came back drunk. Jeff got back from the army early because of his alcoholism. In his final year of service, two roommates recalled:
– “He would drink and have his headphones on, kind of be shut out from the rest of the world. He wouldn’t move. He wouldn’t even go out for chow. He wouldn’t get takeout food. He’d drink until he passed out and then wake up and drink some more. There were a lot of people who used to drink, but not like him.”
– “He always had that look about him, something sinister. He would never explode, he never showed anger. He would never act it out. He was very calculating. I don’t know, he was on a steady decline in life. He was on a losing skid and didn’t know how to pick himself up.”

It’s important to remember the effects of drinking alcohol excessively has on the developing brain. Research has shown that young people who drink alcohol regularly, lose motivation to do well in school. This is also noticeable with Jeff. He had the intelligence but went from As to Fs in his senior year. It reduces your feeling of empathy. We know Jeff wasn’t a psychopath but he did seem to not have the normal empathic feelings. He even wondered himself why he didn’t felt more remorse for what he had done. His alcohol dependence definitely had something to do with that. In my opinion it helped him or made it more easier to dissociate himself.

It also makes you act more impulsively and have trouble with your memory. An extreme example and one Jeff has experienced atleast one is the alcohol black out. There are two different ones. But the one Jeff had on the night he killed Steven Tuomi where he experienced complete amnesia, often spanning hours, is known as an “en bloc” blackout. With this severe form of blackout, memories of events do not form and typically cannot be recovered. It is as if the events simply never occurred.

In the Shrine, Jeff said this about the black out:
‘I felt complete shock,’ he recalls. ‘Just couldn’t believe it. Shock, horror, panic, I just couldn’t believe it happened again after all those years when I’d done nothing like this.’ He had a terrible hangover, but fought himself to his feet to ponder what could have occurred. First, he dragged the body to the closet and shut it in, out of sight. Then he spent the next five hours pacing up and down the hotel room, smoking cigarettes non-stop, ‘wondering what to do, how to handle the situation’.
‘It’s almost like I temporarily lost control of myself,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what was going through my mind. I have no memory of it. I tried to dredge it up, but I have no memory of it whatsoever.’ They had been drinking rum, but where was the bottle? It was missing. That might mean that he had taken it out and left the door open, that somebody might have peered inside, it might mean anything. He searched everywhere for the bottle. Had he thrown it out of the window? ‘I looked down, went down to the sidewalk under the window, I don’t know what I did with it. Sometime during the night I must have taken the bottle and put it somewhere. I never did find out what happened to it. That scared the hell out of me, haunted me for a long time.’ If he could not remember when he killed Steven, it was evident from the bruises how he had done it. But why? It was put to him years later that to beat a man to death suggested an access of rage. ‘You’re right, you’re right,’ he said. ‘I can’t side-step that. That shocked me in the morning. Where that rage came from or why that happened, I don’t know. I was not conscious of it. Why I had the rage, why I took it out on him, I don’t know. I must have pounded awful hard, because the rib-cage had broken, I could feel the bone. Everything went blank on me.’

Because alcohol makes you act more impulsively, you can also become more agressive. While sober it seemed Jeff could control his anger fairly well. But while being a drunk shit I do believe he had a temper. I think the best example is when he got arrested for disorderly conduct. He was drunk and abusive. He threatened to shoot the bartender because she refused to serve him. She called the police and 4 police officers were needed to hold Jeff down. He spent the night at the police station.
During his years of killing, Jeff continued to drink heavily. I think it’s amazing he never poisoned himself with it. He needed alcohol during the dismemberment of the bodies otherwise he wasn’t able to. I often wonder how much alcohol played a part in Jeff actually acting on his fantasies of killing people to keep them with him.

Jeff himself said during his hearing for the sexual assault case: “I am an alcoholic. Not the sort that has to have a drink every single day, but when I do drink, I go overboard.”

Feel free to share your thoughts with us on this!

Jeff’s hernia operation

On 19 March of 1964 Jeffrey had his double hernia operation. It’s quite a heavy operation, even on an adult, so for a child it could be really traumatic.
Jeff remembers being in the hospital before the surgery and he watched “Bewitched” with several other kids. When Jeff recovered from the anesthesia he was having intense pain in the groin. According to Lionel, his dad, Jeff asked his mother if they cut off his penis. We don’t know what his mom told him and it’s something to think about how much they did to prepare little Jeffrey for such an intense surgery. As an adult and 27 years after the surgery, Jeff told Dr Judith Becker that the pain was so great he thought his genitals must have been cut off.

According to several studies it’s a fact surgery at young age has a high risk at developing traumatic stress reactions. Several other risk factors have been identified, which may guide services in screening those who may be most at risk. These include cases where:

the family are lacking in social support
the child is in the hospital for a longer period
or a parent is suffering with mental health difficulties or high levels of stress.

Joyce, his mom, wrote in her diary that “Jeff was so good in the hospital but he really disliked the doctor after this ordeal.” According to the Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer, his mom spent as much time as she could with him. At night, Jeff would say to her “You can go home now, mommy. I’ll sleep.”

The pain lasted about a week. He never forget it. Brian Masters wonders, in view of Jeff’s later disturbance and its manifestation, whether this operation was perhaps disproportionately significant in his life. The deep cut in a sensitive area, the exploration of his inside, the feeling that foreign hands were invading his privacy would all find uncomfortable echoes at a later date.
Personally, I think this surgery triggered the start of Jeff’s splanchnophilia.

These uncomfortable echoes could be Jeff’s fascination with “wanting to know how the insides worked”. This started with dissecting roadkill but in a way he also did this later in his life with his victims. About cutting open Jeff’s first victim, Steven Hicks, The Shrine says “In a cruel pitiful echo of the experiments with roadkill, he slit open the belly to see what it looked like inside.” At this point it wasn’t sexual to Jeff yet, more a morbid curiosty. But that would change.
He liked to listen to the noises the bodies made, he would open up his victims, cut off the genitals and he would even put his penis in the viscera to masturbate or rub the organs on his penis. On the polaroids Jeff took of his victims you can see the victims were positioned in a way to show off either their chest or the belly.

Another echo was his obsession with wanting control and complete dominance over a person. The surgery may have left young Jeff with the feeling of being violated. Somebody has touched him, caused him pain in his private area. He felt he had no control over it. Some even think Jeff wasn’t completely sedated by the anesthesia. This would only be a bigger reason for him to feel he had no control over his own life, over what was happening to his body. He made sure later in life that would not happen again. He would be in control even if that meant drugging a person and killing them.

In the Shrine it says: “Suddenly his embryonic autonomy is shattered by a rude invasion; his little powers of decision are roughly withdrawn and he becomes an object in the hands of strangers. His ability to maintain control is undermined, disregarded even perhaps canceled. He experiences ‘loss of control, autonomy and competence’ And he does not know why. Not knowing why, he will wonder and invent. His capacity to handle his emotional reactions to trauma and threat when alone is still very insecure, and his understanding of this, his body, how it works and what one may do with it, is tiny.
Jeff Dahmer’s own imaginings about the insides of people’s bodies began with his hernia operation and the intrusion into his. Control was something lost in infancy and never recovered. With his victims he at last placed himself in the position where he could control not only what happened to them but what happened to their bodies. He could handle their intestines as his had been handled, cut them in the same place as he had been cut, restore himself of that autonomy of which he had been robbed, by stealing theirs. The tactile intimacy of the operation had at the same time mingled the feeling of sexual privilege with that of corporal invasion, which is why he chose to regain control and restore his stolen potency not with his enemies, not through hatred but with a loved object. The combination was disastrous.”

Lionel recalls the operation like this:
“One day in spring of 1964, Jeff began to complain about an area of tenderness in his groin area. This tenderness worsened, and a small bulge appeared in his scrotum. We took him to the doctor right away, and he was subsequently diagnosed as suffering from a double hernia. The doctor explained that the hernia was the result of a birth defect, and that surgery was necessary to correct the problem. Surgery was scheduled for the following week and while Joyce and I stood by, Jeff selected the ragged floppy eared dog he’d slept with since the age of 2 as the stuffed animal he wished to accompany him to the hospital. The operation was performed shortly after and when it was over Jeff was taken to his room, where he remained sedated for several hours. When he awoke, of course, it was to a great deal of pain.
So much pain, I learned later, that he asked Joyce if the doctors had cut off his penis. He remained in the hospital for several days and even after he returned home, his recovery seemed to move forward slowly. For long hours, he remained on the sofa in the living room, his body wrapped in a large, checkered bathrobe. During that period, he moved slowly, ponderously, like an old man. The ebullience which had marked his childhood, his buoyancy and energy drained away. During any period of recovery, of course, a certain flattening of mood could be expected. But in Jeff this flattening began to take on a sense of something permanent. He seemed smaller, somehow more vulnerable, perhaps even sadder than at any time before.”

So I think it’s safe to say his hernia operation had a significant impact on his mental state as a child and later in life. I’m not saying this is the reason why he became a serial killer. But I do think it played a bigger part in it than most people know or realise. And it suprises me how little it is mentioned or taken in consideration in his case. The Shrine continues to come back to it during the story Brian writes but in all the other books I don’t even remember it getting attention, maybe only mentioned briefly.

Sources used:
– The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer by Brian Masters
– A Father’s Story by Lionel Dahmer