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Originally posted by curious4
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Had he wept the entire time he did it, we would say that he had lost emotional control. He was not clinical, he was not detached, he was not Spock-like. That would be incorrect. Technically speaking, when it comes to feelings or their attendant behaviors, it is not a loss of control until it forces someone to act against their own interests, or they cannot regain their normal state. Whatever was going on in his head, he was not forced to act against his own interests. Any emotion, anger, anxiety, pleasure, is perfectly normal. And expressing those emotions is normal. Of course with serial killers there's a different scale, since serial killing is clearly not a healthy expression of anything. THIS serial killer was pretty clinical. Fairly contained up until the mutilation of Eddowes face. Not devoid of emotion, but wrapped up pretty tight. Then he was less tightly wrapped. He showed anger or frustration or fear, something. Which is actually not unusual for serial killers. Dahmer was similar in that his first kills were pretty basic. Pretty clinical. But once he started figuring out what he wanted, that's when **** got weird (pardon the expression). And Dahmer wasn't out of control. He was relaxing into his groove so to speak.
A lot of things can crack open a tightly wound killer. First of all, he may have finally been confident enough in his skills that could relax and enjoy it. Or being indoors meant he didn't have to devote half of his attention to listening for someone coming. Or maybe he had enough experience to know what he wanted, and could take pleasure in that. If Jack were a natural glutton and was forced by circumstances to live with the bare minimum until he got to what would be the murder equivalent of an all you can eat buffet, we might expect him to indulge where he had not previously. Or if he was finally laying his hands on a victim he actually had an emotional connection to, and is confronting her in a spectacularly unhealthy way, we would also expect to see increased activity. We have no idea what his emotional "normal" was. He probably didn't know. Despite how basic it sounds, it's actually a pretty tough thing to figure out. He might have cracked a little. He might have simply been coming into who he really was. He might have just had a good night because he won $20 buck at poker an hour earlier. But he wasn't forced to act against his own interests, and there's no evidence he could not return to his baseline state.
And he clearly didn't lose functional control. Unless he did it in the corner while someone else did the cutting. Shaking and sputtering, unable to hold a knife, maybe wetting himself.
There was no screaming or shouting, pretty common when people lose it. There were no golf ball sized chunks of mystery flesh strewn about the room. There were no tearing injuries, like he ripped her apart with his bare hands. She was not hacked to pieces. There were not 107 stab wounds. Her organs were cut out, and carefully. Not torn out. And not dumped on the floor or chucked in the fireplace, but sorted in a weird way around the room. Her facial mutilations were meticulous. He destroyed her, but carefully. His hands were steady. His movements purposeful. It looks like he enjoyed it. Reveled in it even. Which is more than we had seen of him in the past. But that's not a loss of control. It's not even a loss of control compared to his other work. It's not exactly the same, but then no two victims ever were. Does someone who did what was done to Chapman end up doing what was done to Kelly? Yeah. That makes sense. There's a difference between losing it and losing yourself in it. There's also a difference between losing control and loosening up.
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