In the previous post in this series, entitled Typologies and Categories, I used philosophy to expand the categorical and typological definitions of both serial-murder and the serial-killer. Throughout this post, entitled What is so philosophical about serial-murder and serial-killers?, I will present a three-fold argument. Firstly, I will highlight that psychopathic serial-killers present a significant challenge to conventional philosophy and morality by contesting that psychopathic serial-killers may not be ‘morally guilty’ for their actions as a consequence of their behavioural deficits. Secondly, I will contest that Ian Brady appropriation of the Nietzschean corpus in The Gates of Janus is based on a misunderstanding of the aforementioned.Thirdly, I will contest that the serial-killer challenges the extent of the subject of contemporary society through their radical alterity to the norms and standards of behaviour in contemporary society. In order to demonstrate the first argument, I will firstly elucidate upon the nature vs. nurture debate and this debate’s relationship to serial-killers. This will be followed by contesting that psychopathic serial-killers may not be ‘morally guilty’ or morally responsible for their actions.  In order to make the second argument, I will explore Ian Brady’s self-portrayal of his actions as being characterised by the ‘will to power’ in The Gates of Janus and subsequently demonstrate how such a self-portrayal is based on a misunderstanding of Neitzsche’s concept of the ‘will to power’. In order to make the third argument, I will first revisit the concept of the subject and the Body Without Organs and demonstrate the mechanisms through which  the serial-killers challenge the limits and extents of the subject.

As we observed in the first post in this series, psychopaths possess an array of behavioural deficits that categorise them as psychopaths. However, in this post, we will explore the developmental origins of psychopathy and contest that, irrespective of the outcomes of the nature v.s nurture debate, psychopathic serial-killers may not be ‘morally guilty’ for their actions. Neuroscientific studies have contested that varying physiological factors contribute to the development of psychopathy in differing populations. Firstly, in an article entitled Daily oxytocin patterns in relation to psychopathy and childhood trauma in residential youth, Fragkaki et al (2019) hypothesised that a sample of fifty seven male psychopaths had, on average, lower daily oxytocin levels – a hormone that is commonly associated with empathy, trust and the development and maintenance of relationships. The results indicated that primary psychopathy was linked to lower daily oxytocin levels and that the aforementioned may be an early indicator of primary psychopathy. Secondly, in an article entitled Analysis of monoaminergic genes, childhood abuse, and dimensions of psychopathy, Sadeh et al (2013) examined how serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) polymorphisms and monoamine oxidase-A (MAO-A) relates to psychopathy in a sample of two hundred and thirty seven men with enhanced childhood adversity. The results indicated that molecular genetics correlates to the prevalence of psychopathy in adulthood. On the other side of the nature vs. nurture, various studies from a plethora of academic disciplines have contested that various social, economic and political factors contribute to the development of psychopathy. Firstly, in an article entitled The Relationship Between Parental Psychopathic Traits and Parenting Style, Cox et al (2018) concluded that specific parenting styles have specific relationship to the varying traits of psychopathy. For example, authoritative parenting style tends, in the sample studied, to be more conducive to the development of psychopathic traits in children. I have opted to italicise tend here as not as children who developed under authoritative parents become psychopaths – in fact, in my experience, some become well-rounded and psychologically ‘healthy’ individuals. Secondly, in an article entitled Recalled parental bonding, current attachment, and the triarchic conceptualisation of psychopathy, Craig et al (2013) contested that attachment functioning mediates the effects of parenting on traits associated with psychopathy. They concluded that avoidant attachment styles in parenting are most conducive to the development of psychopathic traits in children. Irrespective of the outcome of the nature vs. nurture debate with specific relation to psychopathic serial-killers, we can safely contest that psychopaths have little choice or control over their process of ‘becoming-psychopath’. In addition, as Vargas notes in Are Psychopathic Serial Killers Evil? adherence to the conventional rules of morality require an understanding of the philosophical reasoning that underpins them. As opposed to conventional rules, specific rules are tied to specific societies, times and localities. For example, the specific rules that surround driving relate specifically to the society in which an individual is driving. When my partner, an American, drives to McDonalds the rules governing that journey relate to the rules prescribed by the government of the United States of America, whereas when I, an Englishman, drives to McDonalds’s the rules governing that journey are prescribed by the government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. On the other hand, conventional rules are not tied to any specific society, time or locality. For example, if I parachuted from an aeroplane into a random country I could safely assume that punching the first individual I encountered would be met with general disregard as we, myself and the individual I’m punching, recognise that punching an individual for no prior reason is morally reprehensible. Therefore, this rule is a socially shared moral law. Psychopaths cannot recognise or understand the reasoning underpinning both specific rules and conventional rules – “the inability to distinguish between these kinds of rules means that psychopaths are in a tough position – they can’t recognise that they are breaking rules that matter a lot to us” (Vargas, 2010: p72). In a convincing counter to the aforementioned, Howard contends in Serial Killers as Practical Moral Sceptics that the motivation to be moral arises from living within a society with recognisable moral boundaries: “If this is the case, then our reasons to act will depend on the context we are in” (Howard, 2010: p59). The individual in a moral context will act morally, and an individual in an immoral context will act immorally. However, this argument concurrently suggests that an individual’s moralistc behaviour is determined by the discursive locality in which they live and that they have the capacity to determine their own course of actions. Furthermore, such an argument negates the possibility that moral actions occur in immoral contexts. For example, the German industrialist Oskar Schindler was accredited with displaying extraordinary feats of tenacity and bravery in order to save the lives of approximately one thousand and two hundred Jews during the Second World War. Children and psychopaths share a common deficit – they similarly fail to recognise the common basis upon which specific and conventional laws are premised upon. I can recognise that evil is beyond a banal experience, however, psychopaths fail to recognise that evil is nothing more than an experience outside the ordinary. As Vargas contests, psychopathic serial-killers are a naturally evil phenomen not dissimilar to viruses or hurricanes: 

“Rabid dogs, hurricanes, floods and viruses can bring lots of harm to the world without being morally responsible in the ordinarily, full-blooded sense of the phrase” (Vargas, 2010: p74

The hurricane or the virus acts in an evil manner without the motivation to do evil. COVID-19 may have wrought evil upon its victims, however we cannot, reasonably, say that it did so with the motivation to do evil or if it, indeed, possesses the capacity to do evil. If the argument I have outlined above is correct, we must contest that psychopathic serial-killers are not ‘morally-guilty’ for their actions.  Irrespective of the above, we are presented with the notion that an individual can perform acts that we can reasonably label as evil without possessing the intent to do evil. The psychopathic serial-killer intends to do harm for no other reason but the desire – and the sexual satisfaction that such a desire presupposes – to do harm. As Vargas succinctly notes: “evil is a category that picks out people or actions that desire to see other people harmed for no reason beyond the desire itself” (Vargas, 2010: p75). Here, the term ‘desire’ appears to represent a limited definition of the various motivating factors that drive psychopaths to become psychopathic serial-killers. As Howard notes: “”They are motivated by fame and public portrayals, by fictionalisiations, by fatigue, by anger and more” (Howard, 2010: p62). However, these specific motivators are interrelated to the concept of desire. For example, an individual motivated by the need for fame desires to be perceived as an infamous serial-killer in the same manner as Hannibal Lecter or Dexter Morgan. As opposed to this categorisation of evil, individuals who commit atrocities in order to ascertain world domination or a utopian political order are qualitatively different from psychopathic serial-killers as their evil acts are committed in order to achieve a further goal. Dictators and genocidal political revolutionaries are evil, but in a very different sense of the term to the one previously outlined. Therefore, the psychopathic serial-killers presents us with an irreconcilable moral duality – an individual who is not ‘morally-guilty’ for their actions yet, nevertheless, are characterised as evil. What, therefore, can be done to counteract an individual that embodies such a duality? To return to the parable of the virus, specialist medical practitioners enact highly rigorous quarantine procedures to ensure that the infected individual presents no further danger to the population. The psychopathic serial-killer must be quarantined in order to ensure that they can present no further harm to the peaceful coexistence of society: “We have good reason to keep ourselves and the disease apart, but the disease and its carriers are themselves not evil” (Vargas, 2010: p74). Imprisonment, therefore, in specifically designed units that can securely house psychopathic serial-killers whilst providing them with treatment for co-occurring mental disorders.If we consider psychopathic serial-killers to be morally-guiltless for the reasons described above, it appears that we are demanded to “abandon our moralised reactions (e.g. indignation, resentment and so on)” (Vargas, 2010: p75) to the psychopathic serial-killer. However, as we have observed, an individual can be morally-guiltless for their actions and be categorised as evil. As Vargas briefly summarised: “Nothing about their non-responsibility would affect whether or not they are truly evil” (ibid).

In A Philosophy of Serial Killing: Sade, Neitzsche and Brady at the Gates of Janus Schmid undertakes an account of the “philosophical context” (Schmid: 2010: p30) of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley’s crimes. Born in Scotland in 1938, Brady experienced a childhood characterised by family instability and numerous episodes of adolescence crime before moving to England in 1954. From 1963-65, Brady and Hindley murdered a minimum of five children and are suspected as being responsible for a number of other murders. Their crimes woild come to be labelled as the ‘Moors Murders’ by the popular media which referred to the couples tendency to dispose of the bodies of their victims upon the Yorkshire Moors. As Schmid notes:

“Partly due to the young age of the victims, and partly because of Hindley’s active participation in the extraordinarily cruel crimes, the Moors Murders are probaly Britian’s most notoroius criminal case after the Jack the Ripper murders, and Brady and Hindley are undoubdetdely the most reviled people in British criminal history” (ibid)

In a philosophical context, Brady’s choice of reading initially drew widespread condemnation as an amoral literature. Brady’s personal library contained volumes by the Marquis De Sade, Friedrich Nietzsche and discourses on Nazism and the events of the Holocaust – the aforementiomed pieces of litarture and philosophy constitute a general disdain with the widely recognised tenets of modernity and contemporary modernity and an obsession with the macabre. In addition, Brady’s choice of philosophy demonstrated a desire to question and delineate the categories through which we label ‘good’ and evil’ and reveal them to be constructed upon specific and temporal discourses. During Brady’s trial, the lawyers drew upon Brady’s choice of literature and criticised not only the subject matter but also that Brady, who had grown up in a working-class slum in Glasgow “had the audacity to present himself as an educated and cultured person” (Schmid, 2010: p31). The lawyers, judges and journalists surrounding the case considered evil, and consequently good, to be a case of ‘black and white’. They considered Brady to be unquestionably evil, and his attempts to develop philosophical justifications for his actions threatened their notion of evil and subsequently “the reason the Moors Murders case recieved such widespread coverage was because it was quickly identified by many as being symptomatic of larger changes taking place in British culture in the 1960s” (ibid). In his autobiographical novel entitled The Gates of Janus, Ian Brady contests that the extreme isolation and the certainty of his death in captivity confers a number of benefits upon him: “Unlike the merely physically free individual, no hellish circles or social graces and essatz respect bind me to censor beliefs. I am not under the least obligation to please by deceit any individual whomsoever. To all practical intents and purposes, I am no longer of your world” (Brady, 2001: p44) Brady has transgressed the subjective limits of life and considers himself separate for the relativist limits of the subject and from the anxiety of death and subsequently stating that he is exempt from our traditional definitions of morality. In addition, frames the serial-killer in Nietzschean terms by adding: “What the average serial-killer seeks above all is power and the will to power” (Brady, 2001: p86). For Neitzsche, the will to power is central to the practice of philosophy and the philosopher’s “creation of the world” (Neitzsche, 1989: p16) is an inherently aggressive activity. In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche contests that the philosophers “knowing is creating, their creating is a legislation, their will to truth is – will to power” (Neitzsche, 1989: p132). Philosophy is an aggressively creative activity that requires the philosopher to recognise and transcend the boundaries of what defines conventionally moral and immoral behaviour within that particular social context . Therefore, the philosopher goes ‘beyond good and evil’. On the other hand, Brady mistakenly characterises violence as the transgression of the conventional boundaries of moral and immoral behaviour. By acting violently, Brady re-affirms what we can conceive as immoral behaviour. Zarathustra, the titular character of Thus Spake Zarathustra, would recognise Brady as a practitioner of a kind of evil that was specific to the society in which he lived rather than a transgressive philosopher.  As we have observed, Brady attempted to weaponize Neitzsche to frame his crimes within a mystifying philosophical framework, however we ‘rescued Neitzsche from his grasp by highlighting that his assumptions are based on mis-interpretations of the Nietzschean corpus. 

Psychopathic serial-killers challenge our commonly held perceptions of morality, however the generalised phenomenon of the serial-killer challenges the limits and extends of our functions as subjects of contemporary society. For Foucualt and Deleuze and Guattari, the subject is a psychologically and physically structured totality in which Panoptic space functions as both a mechanism of supervision and as a strategy of truth. As a mechanism of supervision, it functions as a method of discreet surveillance within a fixed locality, whereas, as a strategy of truth it probes the surface of the body in order to separate the healthy from the ill or the criminal from the innocent. The aforementioned has been infamously labelled as Panopticonism.  As Foucualt notes in Discipline and Punish:

“Panopticonism would assure the automatic and subtle functioning of power insofar as the observed are caught up in a power situation of which themselves are made to be the bearers” (Foucault, 1995: p201)

The assembled and organised subject resembles a fully grown tree. We have roots, branches and leaves that have a singular and organised function towards a singular objective. At work, my arms, feet, legs and brain work in unison in order to achieve a goal. For example, my brain must recognise and understand the strict time scales required for the submit an invoice, whilst my hands and eyes must work in unison in order to carry out the actualised activity of preparing and submitting the invoice. Furthermore, our conceptions of security and the ‘correct’ management of the population are discursively defined. As Foucault corpus teaches us, the modern subject is a being whose politics place his existence as a living being in question. In The Politics of Life Itself, Rose, from a Foucauldian perspective, argues – “Political authorities, in alliance with many others, took on the task of the management of life in the name of the well-being of the population as a vital order” (Rose, 2007: p52). Genocide in the twentieth century revealed the extent of both ‘positive’ and ‘negative eugenics, and the transformation of genetics into a liberal discourse resulted in “the norm of individual health replaced that of the quaility of the population” (Rose, 2007: p62). We are the subjects of this discourse, and as a result our minds and bodies are organised in an arborsescent manner. The serial-killer is the antithesis of the norm of individual health and delineates the organised indices of the subject – therefore, we can perceive the serial-killer as a Body Without Organs. For Deleuze and Guatarri, “the body without organs is an egg: it is criss-crossed with axis and thresholds with latitudes and longitudes and geodesic lines traversed by lines marking the transitions and becomings” (Deleuze and Guattari: 1983: p19). This ‘egg’ resists the process of becoming, and is continuously involved in a process of ‘becoming’. More succinctly, the Body Without Organs is a surface of random desires that resists both structure and subjectification – a zone that is constantly in a state of ‘becoming’. The Body Without Organs is “depraved, derelict -in other words, abnormal” (Bruns, 2007: 709). In order to further illustrate this concept, we turn, as we often do, to literature. In J.G Ballard’s nightmarish novel Crash, the characters roam the non-place resisting the organised structure of the motorway and the social conventions that govern the en masse perceptions of the automobile crash. By transcending the aforementioned, Dr Vaughan, Ballard and the sinister ensemble created around them are characterised as Bodies Without Organs which are interjected and dissected by the harsh metal and plastic that compose the contemporary automobile. For more on this particular subject – please see https://aftertheeerie.co.uk/reading-high-rise-and-crash-with-deleuze-and-guattari/ .  As we observed in the first post in this series, the female serial-killer delineates the traditional image of the female in a process of ‘becoming female serial-killer’ and subsequently evolving into a Body Without Organs. As Schechter and Schechter note in Killing with Kindness: 

“In the female serial-killer, we see a dark and grotesquesly distorted versions of truths that have been traditionally associated with women: fatal care taking, lethal nurturing and depraved romantic devotion” (Schechter and Schechter: 2010: p124)

Firstly, the sub-category of female serial-killers commonly labelled as ‘Angels of Death’ are inversions of the feminine image by transgressing  the traditional image of the care taking woman. We perceive female healthcare practitioners as akin to the spectral image of Florence Nightingale in their compassion and nurturing of their patients, however this spectral image is dissected by the ‘Angel of Death’. For example, Kristen Gilbert was convicted of the murders of four veterans whom she induced an artificial heart through an injection of an overdose of epiniherine and subsequently attempted to reusciate her victims. The ‘Angel of Death’ presents as an image of a subjectified healthcare practitioner in their overt care for their victims, however their actions reveal that they invert this care to inflict further pain on their victims for their own satisfaction. The feminine image of the caretaker dies with the ‘Angel of Death, and consequently ‘becomes’ something wholly more sinister. Secondly, ‘Black Widows’ delineate the traditional subjective role of the wife by inverting their image as obiedent, loyal and subservient by murdering sucessive husbands. For example, Betty Lou Betts was conviencted and executed for the murder of her fifth husband and numerous assults on her previous husband. As a society and culture, we value and impose a set of discursively defined expectations for women who enter into marriage with a man such as cooking and preparing,  emotionally protecting and nurturing and submitting to his physical dominance. Betts proved to be a radical reversal of the aforementioned as she reversed her spouses history of history of domestic violence and imposed it with the utmost escalation of violence in a manner that is untypical to the sub-category of female serial-killers and female serial-killers in general – death by shooting. The category of wife incurs a series of subjectfying discourses, and the ‘Black Widow’ radically transgresses these limits.  Finally, female members of ‘killer couples subvert the discursive assigned to the member of a male-female partnership. As with the wife, we expect the female member of this partnership to prepare meals, emotionally and submit to the male’s physical and sexual, however the female member of a ‘killer couple’ evolves into a Body Without Organs by conforiming to the aforementoned ideals to an extent in which they are revealed as ridicoulous. For example, Carol Bundy – no relation to Ted Bundy – transformed her relationship with the sadist Douglas Clark by reimagining the sterotyical image of heterosexual into “sadistic lust murder as sex play” (Schechter and Schechter: 2010: p122). Bundy and Clark formed a relationship that became increasingly deprived to the extent in which she purchased the revolver that Clark used to dispatch his victims and applied make-up to the severed heads of his victims in order to make them more appealing to Clark. In regressing to a state of childlike subservience to Clark, Bundy made visible to the artifical social constructs that remain at the heart of the heterosexual relationship which consequently reveals the limits of those constructs. In the ‘killer couple’, the female role in the aforementioned is fetishised and revealed as little more than a social construct. As we have observed, “there is an incredible tension between the image of femininity that the female serial-killer projects and the image of femininity that she simultaneously violates (Schechter and Schechter, 2010: p125). In their process of becoming a Body Without Organs, female serial-killers seek out the same care-taking tasks and responsibilities that are projected by the image of femininity: romance, home maintenance and child raising – “without possessing any of the more basic emotional traits that we want to believe motivate those behaviours in the normal case” (ibid). The female serial-killer inverts and dissects the image of femininity.  To briefly summarise this section, the serial-killer delineates the arborescent and tree-like structure by, in some cases, quite literally slashing the tree by its roots. In a grotesque reversal of Deleuze and Guattari’s infamous statement in A Thousand Plateaus: “We should stop believing in trees, roots, and radicles. They’ve made us suffer too much” (Deleuze and Guattari: 1988: p15). The processes of subjectification may be psychologically ‘deadening’, however the serial-killers process of ‘becoming’ and escaping their roles as subjects presents a threat to the norms of individual health and security. Not all freedom is positive freedom. 

To conclude, through the adoption of a plethora of philosophical approaches we have placed serial-murder and the serial-killer in a philosophical framework. Initially, we have explored a variety of genetic and social causes of psychopathy and argued that whilst psychopathic serial-killers may be de facto guilty for their actions they may not be ‘morally guilty’ for their actions. They are not dissimilar to a destructive hurricane or a deadly virus: they wreak havoc and inflict pain without being psychologically and philosophically responsible for their actions. Secondly, we rescued the Neitzschean corpus from the grasps of the serial-killer. In The Gates Of Janus Ian Brady characterised his actions as being defined by the ‘will to power’, however we demonstrated that, for Neitzsche, philosophy is premised upon destroying the limits of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in order to create and Brady did little but reaffirms our society’s conception of evil. Thirdly, and finally, we observed that the serial-killers transgresses the limit of the subject. In a further exploration of the female serial-killer we observed that their actions delineates the traditional and spectral feminine image. The principle of framing serial-murder and the serial-killer in a philsopophical framework remains unchanged to the purpose of this series – to develop our understanding of their categories and typologies, their philosophical charecterisations and motivations and their presentation in the media in order to prevent them from committing further crimes. 

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