Dark Side: Doubling

Serial killers typically target absolute strangers. On a practical level, this creates a more difficult challenge for law enforcement without the benefit of knowing the motivation or the relationship between victim and killer. This may be only half of the story, however. Compartmentalization is a psychological facilitator that serial killers use to overcome or neutralize whatever pangs of guilt they might otherwise experience. It may be an immense exaggeration to suggest that most serial killers are totally lacking in human warmth and concern. Instead, they may be able to compartmentalize their moralistic predilections by constructing at least two categories of human beings—their circle of family and friends, whom they care about and treat with decency, and individuals with whom they have no relationship and therefore victimize with total disregard for their feelings.

 

For example, Hillside Strangler Kenneth Bianchi clearly divided the world into two camps. The individuals toward whom he had no feelings including the twelve women he brutally tortured and killed.

 

Indeed, the killer can take advantage of the normalcy of compartmentalization, when he interacts with those in his inner circle. Thus, the compartmentalization that allows killing without guilt may really be an extension of this existential phenomenon. An executive might be a heartless “son of a bitch” to all his employees at work but a loving and devoted family man at home. A harsh disciplinarian at home can be highly regarded by his friends and acquaintances. Similarly, many serial killers have jobs and families, do volunteer work, and kill part-time with a great deal of selectivity. A sexual sadist who may be unmercifully cruel in his treatment of a stranger he meets in a bar might not dream of harming his family members, friends, or neighbors.

 

According to psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, the Nazi physicians who performed ghoulish experiments at Auschwitz and other concentration camps compartmentalized their activities, attitudes, and emotions. Through the extreme psychological process known as “doubling,” any possible feelings of guilt were minimized because the camp doctors developed two separate and distinct selves—one for doing the dirty work of experimenting with and exterminating inmates and the other for living the rest of their lives outside the camp. In this way, no matter how sadistic they were on the job, they were still able to see themselves as gentle husbands, caring fathers, and honorable physicians.

 

 

The process of compartmentalization operates to the advantage of a serial murderer who kills for profit, that is, he robs and then executes to silence the eyewitnesses to his crimes. The investigation proves that physicians may be more susceptible to doubling than are the members of many other professional groups. To practice medicine objectively, they must become accustomed to dealing mundanely with the biological basics of humanity—blood, internal organs, and corpses. As a result, doctors learn to develop a “medical self.” They become desensitized to death and learn to function under demands that would be abhorrent to most laypeople. A few medical practitioners may even develop a fondness for the pain and suffering of their patients.

 

Compartmentalization is aided by another universal process: the capacity of human beings to dehumanize “the other” by regarding outsiders as animals or demons who are therefore expendable. Serial killers have taken advantage of this process in the selection of their victims: They often view prostitutes as mere sex machines, gays as AIDS carriers, nursing home patients as vegetables, and homeless alcoholics as nothing more than trash. By regarding their victims as subhuman elements of society, the killers can delude themselves into believing that they are doing something positive rather than negative. They are, in their minds, ridding the world of filth and evil. The behavior of a serial killer after his capture provides some insight into his level of conscience and his use of dehumanization. Genuine sociopaths almost never confess after being apprehended. Instead, they continue to maintain their innocence, always hoping beyond hope to get off on a technicality, to be granted a new trial, or to appeal their case to a higher level. A few sociopathic serial killers have confessed to their crimes, not because they were remorseful but because they considered it in their best interest to do so.

 

By contrast, serial killers who possess a conscience may confess to their crimes, even if it is no longer self-serving to do so. So long as they are still on the loose and alone with their fantasies and private thoughts, they are able to maintain the myth that their victims deserved to die. After being caught, however, they are forced to confront the disturbing reality that they had killed human beings, not animals, demons, or objects. At this point, their victims are rehumanized in their eyes. As a result, these serial killers may be overcome with guilt for the sadistic crimes they committed and freely confess.

 

Not unlike sadistic serial killers, soldiers in combat learn psychologically to separate the allies from the enemy, treating the latter as less than human. As a result, countless normal and healthy individuals who would never dream of killing for fun have slaughtered the enemy in combat. They are not, in their minds, killing human beings—only “gooks,” “krauts,” or “kikes.” While in the midst of combat, they continue to hold dehumanized images. After returning home, however, they typically adopt prevailing attitudes toward the members of the same groups with whom they now live at peace.

 

Similarly, it is easy to argue that brutal terrorists who target civilians and government officials are sociopaths whose lack of conscience makes possible doing the most despicable things to their innocent victims. Yet the dehumanization process may mean much more than an absence of conscience in facilitating a terrorist who kills civilians. Arab terrorists refer to Jews and Christians as “pigs” and “dogs.” Their terrorist acts may be more altruistic than selfish, designed to give them a place of honor in their religious community and to influence changes in policy they regard as detrimental to their national interests.

 

Acknowledgements:

www.politie.nl  and a Chief Inspector – Mr. Henk van Essen©

www.aivd.nl       AIVD – Mr. Erik Akerboom ©

 

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