Jeffrey Dahmer Deserved the Death Penalty Essay Example

animals for his own private cemetery. A fascination with dead creatures was evident from a young age. Also as a teen, Jeffrey’s parents ended their relationship by divorce.

(biographychannel) In the fall of 1978, Dahmer entered Ohio State University, where he remained intoxicated for the majority of the semester and inevitably flunked out. After ignoring an ultimatum from his father, Jeffrey refused to look for a job. His father then drove him to the recruiting office to join the Armed Forces in January of 1979.Although he seemed to enjoy life in the Army, he was discharged early for habitual drunkenness.

(bestgore) Not long after his dishonorable discharge, Dahmer was sent to live with his grandmother where he got a job, but before long was arrested for drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Soon, the offenses worsened as his alcoholism and emotional issues intensified, including but not limited to indecent exposure, child molestation, and culminating with his arrest for multiple murders in July of 1991. At the 1989 sentencing of Dahmer he was charged with child molestation.According to the most recent classification system written by the American Psychiatric Association, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV TR (Text Revision), Dahmer’s complete diagnosis would look like: Axis I: Posttraumatic stress disorder (hernia surgery and moving as a child) Axis II: Antisocial Personality Disorder, Paraphilia (withdrawn, violating, and disregarding rights of others) Axis III: Alcoholism (evident from high school on, the reason for military discharge) Axis IV: Parents’ divorce, failing first semester of college, military discharge Axis V: 1-10 (Persistent danger of severely hurting self or others) (psychiatric) Explanation: The psychodynamic perspective would conclude that Dahmer’s excessively

abnormal behavior was due to underlying psychological forces of which he was not consciously aware. Freud would describe Dahmer’s behavior as an embodiment of his id impulses.According to Freud, the personality is shaped by the dynamic interaction of three very different aspects; the id, the super-ego (a reflection of socioculteral norms, the judge of what is acceptable and what is not, including the conscience), and the ego (unconscious seeker of gratification, doing so according to the reality principle and guiding an individual to know when we can and cannot express these impulses).

(psychiatric) Psychodynamic clinicians describe a healthy individual as one who develops an efficient working relationship between these three aspects of the personality. That being said, a mentally dysfunctional individual is one whose id, ego, or super ego is in excessive conflict.As mentioned by his father, Dahmer seemed to lack a conscience; therefore, he lacked feelings of guilt when he committed these horrific acts. (psychiatric) The next area a psychodynamic therapy would focus on would be dreams. The idea is that repression and other defense mechanisms operate less completely during sleep and dreams can reveal unconscious needs, instincts, and wishes.

Freud specified between two kinds of dream content; manifest content being what is consciously remembered, and latent content being the dream’s symbolic meaning. (psychiatric) In the case of Dahmer, who obviously had several issues to be addressed (paraphilia, pedophilia, necrophilia, antisocial personality disorder), short-term psychodynamic therapies would be best applied.In this type of psychodynamic therapy the patient and therapist together decide on a dynamic focus, or a single problem, to work on. Through several short versions, more problems are able to be addressed and

assessed psychodynamically. In the limited number of studies performed pertaining to this method of therapy, findings suggest the approaches are sometimes quite helpful to patients. (psychiatric) Due to the presence of such a multitude of abnormal behaviors, the most helpful form of psychodynamic treatment available would be the short-term psychodynamic therapies that focus on one individual issue at a time.

Perhaps the abnormalities could have been deciphered and treated separately through this type of therapy in order to improve his behavior.It is impossible to say for sure, but had Dahmer sought or been forced into treatment for his many abnormal behaviors, therapists may have been reasonably successful in identifying the underlying causes before he felt compelled to take innocent lives. (psychiatric)Work Cited 1. "Jeffrey Dahmer Biography, Crime Scene Photos and Documentary.

" Best Gore. 29 Apr. 2013 ;lt;http://www. bestgore. com/murder/jeffrey-dahmer-biography-crime-scene-photos-video-documentary/;gt;. 2.

"Jeffrey Dahmer Biography. " Jeffrey Dahmer. N. p. , 2011.

Web. 29 Apr. 2013. ;lt;http://www.

thebiographychannel. co. uk/biographies/jeffrey-dahmer. html;gt;. 3. "Psychiatric Testimony of Jeffrey Dahmer.

" Psychiatric Testimony of Jeffrey Dahmer. 29 Apr. 2013 ;lt;http://www. criminalprofiling.

com/Psychiatric-Testimony-of-Jeffrey-Dahmer_s115. html;gt;.