Let's narrow down some Ripper 'facts'

[The Good Michael]

DSM-III through DSM-IV-TR

The term "paraphilia" was introduced in the DSM-III (1980) as a subset of the new category of "psychosexual disorders". The types of paraphlias listed were: fetishism, transvestism, zoophilia, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, and "atypical paraphilia". The DSM-III-R (1987) renamed the broad category to sexual disorders, renamed atypical paraphilia to paraphilia NOS (not otherwise specified), finessed transvestism as transvestic fetishism, added frotteurism, and removed zoophilia, relegating it to the NOS category. It also provided seven nonexhaustive examples of NOS paraphilias, which besides zoophilia included telephone scatologia, necrophilia, partialism, coprophilia, klismaphilia, and urophilia.[43]

The DSM-IV (1994) retained the sexual disorders classification for paraphlias, but added an even broader category, "sexual and gender identity disorders", which includes them. The DSM-IV retained the same types of paraphilias listed in DSM-III-R, including the NOS examples, but introduced some changes to the definitions of some specific types.[42]

Paraphilias are defined by DSM-IV-TR as sexual disorders characterized by "recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or behaviors generally involving (1) nonhuman objects, (2) the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one's partner, or (3) children or other nonconsenting persons that occur over a period of 6 months" (Criterion A), which "cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning" (Criterion B). DSM-IV-TR describes 8 specific disorders of this type (exhibitionism, fetishism, frotteurism, pedophilia, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, voyeurism, and transvestic fetishism) along with a ninth residual category, paraphilia not otherwise specified (NOS).[44] Criterion B differs for exhibitionism, frotteurism, and pedophilia to include acting on these urges, and for sadism, acting on these urges with a nonconsenting person.[12]

Some paraphilias may interfere with the capacity for sexual activity with consenting adult partners.[12] According to the DSM, "Paraphilias are almost never diagnosed in females,"[12] but some case studies of females with paraphilias have been published.[45]

The DSM provides clinical criteria for these paraphilias:

Exhibitionism: the recurrent urge or behavior to expose one's genitals to an unsuspecting person, or to perform sexual acts that can be watched by others.
Fetishism: the use of inanimate objects to gain sexual excitement. Partialism refers to fetishes specifically involving nonsexual parts of the body.
Frotteurism: recurrent urges of behavior of touching or rubbing against a nonconsenting person.
Pedophilia: strong sexual attraction to prepubescent children.[46]
Sexual Masochism: the recurrent urge or behavior of wanting to be humiliated, beaten, bound, or otherwise made to suffer for sexual pleasure.
Sexual Sadism: the recurrent urge or behavior involving acts in which the pain or humiliation of a person is sexually exciting.
Transvestic fetishism: arousal from wearing "clothing associated with members of the opposite sex."[12][47]
Voyeurism: the recurrent urge or behavior to observe an unsuspecting person who is naked, disrobing, or engaging in sexual activities, or who is engaging in activities usually considered to be of a private nature.[48][49

How was David wrong? In fact since psychology is such political BS, how is anyone wrong?

Mike

[The Good Michael]

[QUOTE=The Good Michael;206059]DSM-III through DSM-IV-TR

"The term "paraphilia" was introduced in the DSM-III (1980) as a subset of the new category of "psychosexual disorders". The types of paraphlias listed were: fetishism, transvestism, zoophilia, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, and "atypical paraphilia". The DSM-III-R (1987) renamed the broad category to sexual disorders, renamed atypical paraphilia to paraphilia NOS (not otherwise specified), finessed transvestism as transvestic fetishism, added frotteurism, and removed zoophilia, relegating it to the NOS category. It also provided seven nonexhaustive examples of NOS paraphilias, which besides zoophilia included telephone scatologia, necrophilia, partialism, coprophilia, klismaphilia, and urophilia.[43]

The DSM-IV (1994) retained the sexual disorders classification for paraphlias, but added an even broader category, "sexual and gender identity disorders", which includes them. The DSM-IV retained the same types of paraphilias listed in DSM-III-R, including the NOS examples, but introduced some changes to the definitions of some specific types.[42]

Paraphilias are defined by DSM-IV-TR as sexual disorders characterized by "recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or behaviors generally involving (1) nonhuman objects, (2) the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one's partner, or (3) children or other nonconsenting persons that occur over a period of 6 months" (Criterion A), which "cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning" (Criterion B). DSM-IV-TR describes 8 specific disorders of this type (exhibitionism, fetishism, frotteurism, pedophilia, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, voyeurism, and transvestic fetishism) along with a ninth residual category, paraphilia not otherwise specified (NOS).[44] Criterion B differs for exhibitionism, frotteurism, and pedophilia to include acting on these urges, and for sadism, acting on these urges with a nonconsenting person.[12]

Some paraphilias may interfere with the capacity for sexual activity with consenting adult partners.[12] According to the DSM, "Paraphilias are almost never diagnosed in females,"[12] but some case studies of females with paraphilias have been published.[45]

The DSM provides clinical criteria for these paraphilias:

Exhibitionism: the recurrent urge or behavior to expose one's genitals to an unsuspecting person, or to perform sexual acts that can be watched by others.
Fetishism: the use of inanimate objects to gain sexual excitement. Partialism refers to fetishes specifically involving nonsexual parts of the body.
Frotteurism: recurrent urges of behavior of touching or rubbing against a nonconsenting person.
Pedophilia: strong sexual attraction to prepubescent children.[46]
Sexual Masochism: the recurrent urge or behavior of wanting to be humiliated, beaten, bound, or otherwise made to suffer for sexual pleasure.
Sexual Sadism: the recurrent urge or behavior involving acts in which the pain or humiliation of a person is sexually exciting.
Transvestic fetishism: arousal from wearing "clothing associated with members of the opposite sex."[12][47]
Voyeurism: the recurrent urge or behavior to observe an unsuspecting person who is naked, disrobing, or engaging in sexual activities, or who is engaging in activities usually considered to be of a private nature.[48][49"

How was David wrong? In fact since psychology is such political BS, how is anyone wrong? The goal of psychology should be to heal people. Instead it seems to be about classification in order to put someone into a neat bin in order to see what they are, and then to use drugs to help them control their natural state. Fact: teachers have been analyzing 100s of students a year without classifying them and without suggesting drugs and have helped many. So who's the real psychologist?

Mike

[DVV]

Thanks, Mike. Paraphilia is merely the updated version of Anderson's old "sexual mania", and it englobes "necro-sadism", thus telling us nothing new about JtR.

Ironically enough, Errata, while trying to furiously advocate paraphilia, merely said : "IF Jack was a paraphiliac, that is important", whereas it is important but already well-known. Hence my last comment :

Here is the proof that you have missed my point from the start.

OF COURSE Jack was a paraphiliac. But since we already know he was something like a necro-sadist, it tells us nothing new - necro-sadism being, OF COURSE, a paraphilia.

[harry]

'there was method in his madness'.An old saying,out of fashion now.Not exactly contained to how things were done,but as to why.Now I am ignorant of the present mumbo jumbo used to describe the various manias that seem to abound, and which few seem to understand,but I was once told there is a reason for everything ,so there was a reason for what was done to Kelly.Wish I knew what it was,but I would expand in her case to three reasons.The disfigurement of the features,the mutilation to the torso area,and the stripping of the flesh,In a vague sort of way I can understand the injuries to the face,having been in ,and seen many altercations in which the face becomes the prime target,and the greater the flow of blood and abundance of lacerations give the greater pleasure,but I never ever e xperienced an erection in doing so.So for those that know,what mania did I suffer from?

[Abby Normal]

If you want to have sex with your house plant repeatedly, but it is not required for you to function sexually, you don't break the law, no one gets hurt, and you aren't crying yourself to sleep over it, thats fine. It is not a Paraphilia. It's a fetish. And there is nothing psychologically wrong with fetishes. An anthropologist might have a field day with you, but a shrink has nothing he can hold you on.

Hi Errata
Thanks again for responding.

Fantasies, behaviors, or objects are paraphilic only when they lead to clinically significant distress or impairment (e.g. are obligatory, result in sexual dysfunction, require participation of nonconsenting individuals, lead to legal complications, interfere with social relationships)."

"B: The fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important ares of functioning."

If this behaviour is discovered by a spouse, family members, coworkers, friends, neighbors, etc. than it would most certainly cause the underlined above. So, again, my point is the behaviour exists, but if not discovered it is not considered a paraphilia, if it is then it would be-BY THE DEFINITION ABOVE. IMHO it just makes no sense. Its like saying the moon does not exist if you are not looking at it.

[Garry Wroe]

In fact since psychology is such political BS, how is anyone wrong? The goal of psychology should be to heal people. Instead it seems to be about classification in order to put someone into a neat bin in order to see what they are, and then to use drugs to help them control their natural state. Fact: teachers have been analyzing 100s of students a year without classifying them and without suggesting drugs and have helped many. So who's the real psychologist?

Since DSM is a psychiatric manual, your vilification of psychology serves only to expose your ignorance in yet another subject area.

[caz]

Hi Caz,

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you're saying that the brevity, lack of privacy, risk of discovery and the darkness were more important than what he did. If so, I don't quite agree with you. After all, he could have done any number of things instead of lifting their skirts, opening their legs & mutilating their abdomen, but he didn't. Those mutilations were clearly his driving force.

Hi Frank,

Apologies, I can see how what I wrote was ambiguous. I consider the brevity, lack of privacy, risk of discovery and darkness to be the disadvantages of doing what he did outdoors. He presumably felt it was all worth it - particularly after his first repeat performance - for what he managed to do at the scene each time. I agree that the mutilations must have been extremely important to him or he wouldn't have attempted any a second time.

I just wonder how this killer could have hoped or expected to satisfy a morbid curiosity about the female body, knowing his next encounter was likely to be another of the briefest kind, in the dark, under the noses of a watchful police and public. If curiosity and a desire to 'explore' were what motivated him he was setting himself up for disappointment each time.

Love,

Caz
X

[The Good Michael]

Since DSM is a psychiatric manual, your vilification of psychology serves only to expose your ignorance in yet another subject area.

I know what DSM is. It means Doltish Satire and Mockery, of which I am a respected student. Analyze that, mental giant.

Mike

[Garry Wroe]

I know what DSM is. It means Doltish Satire and Mockery, of which I am a respected student. Analyze that, mental giant.

Wrong again. It’s Diddly Squat Michael – a reference to your intellectual prowess.

[FrankO]

Apologies, I can see how what I wrote was ambiguous. I consider the brevity, lack of privacy, risk of discovery and darkness to be the disadvantages of doing what he did outdoors.

Thanks for clearing that up, Caz!

If curiosity and a desire to 'explore' were what motivated him he was setting himself up for disappointment each time.

Pure speculation of course, but maybe that’s why he did for Chapman in the early morning light, then went back to doing things in the dark as dawn turned out to be a bit too risky, and was finally able to find someone with a room of her own.

All the best,
Frank

[Errata]

My point is this. Forget Paraphilias. Forget Schizophrenia, forget antisocial personality disorder, forget all of it.

Psychology is a science. Granted a social science, but still an observation and classification of mental illnesses. And data has been collected on any number of problems the human mind can come up. The data is a valuable tool, whether you agree with science or not.

Try it this way. I am Bipolar. I have been diagnosed, am being treated etc. Being Bipolar is my problem, not anyone else's. I'm the one who suffers from it. As far as any of you are concerned, I might as well not be Bipolar because it doesn't affect you. Now, let's say I have a manic episode that results in a Schizoid break. Which happens. And lets say I go mental on a few of you. And any one of you might understandably say "My god, She's schizophrenic." You could look up the definition of schizophrenia, and it would fit what you observed. And you could easily make the assumption that I am going to get progressively worse, harder to control, harder to understand, that I was dangerous. But a couple of days later, I'm fine and it never happens again. Suddenly the explanation for my behavior no longer makes sense.

This is where diagnostic criteria comes in. Someone familiar with the diagnostic criteria for Schizophrenia would defer judgement. Someone familiar with my status as Bipolar would likely immediately know what was going on. They would know that I would be back to normal in a few days. That I wasn't a threat.

As far as Paraphilias go, you say he is a necro-sadist. Which usually is a Paraphilia. You lump him in with a "harmless foot fetishist". That is incorrect. Can a foot fetishist be a Paraphiliac? Yes. Absolutely. But most aren't. How do we know? Diagnostic criteria. It doesn't matter what the definition of the condition is if you can't get diagnosed with it.

Case in point. Jeffrey Dahmer was a Paraphiliac. And you say "of course he was, he had sex with disembodied heads" oddly enough, not his Paraphilia. His Paraphilia was one that had been taken off the list. Homosexuality. He was so obsessed and disturbed by his homosexuality that he killed men he had sex with, and men who would not have sex with him. The necrophilia and cannibalism came after, and was not his preferred behavior, when he became obsessed with the idea of a zombie lover who would be eternally willing, submissive, and secret. In his case, a normal sexual behavior became abnormal and harmful. Thus a Paraphilia.

So what I'm saying is, it doesn't matter what the Paraphilia was. And to be frank, unless Jack was quite young it is unlikely that it was necro-sadism, because statistically that crops up quite early. I'm saying that that there are behaviors common in all Paraphiliacs who indulge in a behavior after a prolonged period of self denial. If those behaviors are present, then it eliminates other conditions. Like Schizophrenia. If it were just kink, or just "perversion" there would not be a set of observed behaviors common to all Paraphiliacs.

[Wickerman]

Hello Jon.

"Whatever happened to being just plain evil?"

Well, it's been new spoken out of existence. Social science, you know.

Cheers.
LC

Everything has to have a label these days. Effectivity is lost when no-one can agree on what the labels mean, and whether they are correctly applied...

Regards, Jon S.

[lynn cates]

logician

Hello Jon. My friend, you should have been a logician.

Cheers.
LC

[Garry Wroe]

Everything has to have a label these days. Effectivity is lost when no-one can agree on what the labels mean, and whether they are correctly applied...

I certainly take your point, Jon, but then you might care to read up on linguistic specificity hypothesis to better appreciate the importance of categorization in cultural and scientific advancement.

As for DSM, it is a reference work compiled mainly for and by the psychiatric community and is thus best left alone by the layman. Psychiatry isn't a science. It is largely interpretative, which explains the frequent disagreements between practitioners regarding diagnoses and treatments. As I said in an earlier post, I don't trust any discipline that continues to take Freudianism seriously, and I certainly wouldn't waste my time in trying to fathom the seemingly contradictory nature of DSM definitions. Life's too short.

[Errata]

As I said in an earlier post, I don't trust any discipline that continues to take Freudianism seriously, and I certainly wouldn't waste my time in trying to fathom the seemingly contradictory nature of DSM definitions. Life's too short.

What? You're saying rampant cocaine use DOESN'T cure depression?

Psychology is a science, though clearly one that lacks the comforting predictability and exactitude of say, physics. I wouldn't have nearly as much err.. "excitement" in my life if it were. But, it has the advantage of of having a collated and well documented set of observable behaviors that go together. Through Psychology we know that if someone is delusional, and has been for a while, then they also likely have disordered thinking, big mood swings, and the occasional loss of coherence. And if all of those things are true, they are going to get worse. Fast. Now, we tend to call that grouping "Schizophrenia". And we think we know why it happens. But for our purposes here, on this board, it doesn't matter what it's called. What matters is the grouping of behaviors.

To illustrate: If Jack the Ripper exhibited these signs, disappeared, and reappeared 20 years later, we would know we might have a problem. Schizophrenics tend to lose about 20 years of their life by virtue of the disease. Thus the life expectancy is less. Back in the Victorian era, the aging process of a Schizophrenic was faster. At 40 they would have a 60 year old body. The odds of a Schizophrenic Jack being physically able to repeat his earlier crimes are pretty slim. Therefore, a copycat.

The reason I kept arguing about Paraphilias (and will no longer in case you were afraid of that) is that Paraphiliacs have similar symptom groupings that they do not share with non Paraphiliac fetishists. If a guy isn't bothered by his foot fetish, he isn't going to kill over it. Whereas if a guy is in profound psychological torment because of his foot fetish, he very well might. With Paraphiliacs, there tends to be a long(ish) period of self denial, a buildup of tension, they indulge in the behavior, the tension releases, and then there is profound shame and rage. Non Paraphiliacs don't particularly deny their urges, don't experience tension, and don't feel shame. For our purposes, some guy with a foot fetish that he's okay with is not our guy. Someone with a sexual predilection that causes distress (or is patently illegal) is our guy. Whether he's a necro-sadist or a puritanical (and very conflicted) voyeur doesn't matter as much as you think it might (or would in a modern investigation). It is the behavior patterns common to all Paraphiliacs that predicts and explains.

It's kinda not unlike those pamphlets you get when you go camping that tell you how not to get attacked by bears. I mean, you could still get attacked by a bear, but a lot of guys watched a lot of bears so they could tell you to store the food in a tree upwind of camp, thus preventing a majority of people from getting attacked by bears. Just cataloging behavior for (hopefully) some useful purpose. And sometimes, like the banana slug biologists, just for fun party stories.