Chapter 22 - Imprinting on Powerful Events

Summary

Some future lust killers had an early identifiable traumatic experience. By the time they become adult, the experience has been relabeled with some positive qualities and forms a target of desire. This appears to be something like fetishes and partialisms linked to objects. Harold Shipman witnessed the death of his mother in association with a medical injection of morphine. Later he sought to repeat the experience on his patients. Shipman is included here as an example of necrophilia, even though we don’t know that he had physical sexual contact. Albert Fish was witness to severe corporal punishment as a child and later inflicted this on others. Anatoly Slivko witnessed a police officer killing a dog and getting blood on his shoes. He also witnessed blood from a boy, a Young Pioneer, killed in a traffic accident. Later he killed a series of boys dressed in the uniform of Young Pioneers.