Under The Microscope: Jeffrey Dahmerâs Mental Disorders
I have decided to start analyzing certain criminals or crimes more in depth in a ââseriesââ I have decided to call Under The Microscope. Disclaimer! I want to be clear that I am not a professional in any field related to crime, mental health or anything related else for that matter. This is simply me analyzing different crimes and trying to answer some questions.
Jeffrey Dahmer did not suffer from a mental disease, at least in the legal sense, though it is clear that he had issues with mental health for many years. What was he diagnosed with? How were the symptoms expressed through Dahmer? Was he disturbed from a non-legal standpoint? Could he have been saved?These are the questions that will be discussed in this text.Â
A timeline of Dahmerâs mental health
The first time Jeffrey Dahmer spoke to somebody about his mental health was in 1987 after he was found guilty of disorderly conduct after exposing himself by a river. Dahmer had to go through two tests, the first one consisting of statements he had to claim as true or false and the second one consisted of completing sentences regarding Dahmerâs personal life. Â These were the statements Dahmer wrote were true in the first test:
Lately, Iâve begun to feel lonely and empty
Ideas keep turning over and over in my mind and they wonât go away
Iâve become quite discouraged and sad about life recently
Looking back on my life, I know I have made others suffer as much as I have suffered
I keep having strange thoughts I wish I could get rid of
The second test, were Dahmer completed sentences looks like this (cursive text is Dahmerâs words):
My father always worked hard
My earliest memory of my father is when he went to work
When my father came home I was happy
When my mother came home, I was watching TV
Dahmer also had to go through therapy sessions after his conviction, but he rarely spoke and often became angry with the doctor. His doctor describes Dahmer as paranoid when angry, which she considered being genuine. The doctor also reported that she was certain Dahmer suffered from schizoid personality disorder with some paranoia. Â Dahmer also had sessions with a clinician who reported that Dahmer was easily hurt and disappointed and that he seemed to be impatient (Dahmer often tapped his fingers on the table as if he was in a hurry). The clinician believed that Dahmer could become a psychopathic deviant with schizoid tendencies, as well as worsening his alcohol abuse.
Dahmer also spoke with another doctor before his trial for disorderly conduct in 1987 and described being anxious, tense, and depressed. Dahmer also told the doctor that he felt alienated from society, and the doctor concluded that Dahmer needed long-term psychological treatment. Two months after speaking with this doctor, Dahmer was interviewed by another one. This doctor reported that Dahmer seemed suspicious of otherâs intentions as well as manipulative and self-centered. He summarized by describing Dahmer as a disturbed person and a possible danger to society.Â
Dahmer was prescribed anti-depressants (which kind he took is not known) and continued with his sessions at the doctorâs office.
In 1991, after Dahmerâs arrest, he was interviewed by several psychiatrists and doctors, which led to different diagnoses. Dahmer was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, anti-social personality disorder, personality disorder not otherwise specified (featuring borderline, sadist and obsessive-compulsive traits) alcohol dependence, psychotic disorder, and necrophilia.
Dahmer continued taking anti-depressants (Prozac, also known as Sarafem and Fluoxetine, is an SSRI which Dahmer took while in prison) for some time during his incarceration but decided to stop taking the medicine for unknown reasons.Â
Dahmerâs mental illness in his daily life
If we start by analyzing the different traits doctors and Dahmer himself described, it is clear Dahmer had struggled with his mental health for a long time. A depressed state of mind is a recurring theme in Dahmerâs life, which can be observed even in his younger years. For example, Dahmer never seemed to plan his future (his father and step-mother almost made all decisions for him, like enrolling in a university and enlisting in the army) and drank to numb his feelings (which he of course also did to cope with his necrophilic thoughts). As Dahmer got older, he seemed to exhibit even more symptoms of depression such as distancing himself from his family (he had almost no contact with his mother and brother until his arrest in 1991), suffered from suicidal thoughts (he described that he had thought about injecting formaldehyde into his veins, but was afraid that it would be a painful death) and low self-esteem.
Dahmer also showed signs of sadistic and paranoid tendencies. The sadistic trait is, of course, easy to apply on Dahmerâs life since many of his murders were extreme in the sense that he sometimes would drill holes into the skull of his victim and inject muriatic acid or hot water into the hole. The paranoia Dahmer supposedly felt is harder to find any concrete examples of, but since it was noted by several doctors and psychiatrists, it is possible it was most noticeable when meeting Dahmer as an outsider with knowledge and education in mental illnesses. Dahmer was also described as manipulative by one doctor he met in 1987 and this is definitly correct. Dahmer managed to get out of many situations by manipulating people around him; one of many examples is when he managed to convince the police that 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone was his 20-year-old lover and that they had a consensual relationship, even though the boy was young-looking and tried to escape from Dahmer several times.
Now, onto the diagnoses, the first being borderline personality disorder. I have previously made a text about Jeffrey Dahmer and the possibility of him having BPD (you can find it by clicking here), but it can be summarized like this; Dahmer showed many signs of suffering from BPD, such as extreme fear of abandonment (his motive for his murders were that he did not want his victims to leave him), dissociation (Dahmer reported sometimes seeing himself as if he was another person looking at himself, especially when committing his crimes) and reckless behavior (such as his alcohol abuse). Regarding schizotypal personality disorder, Dahmer experienced many of the symptoms such as bizarre fantasies and ideas (the best example of this is Dahmerâs plan to create a shrine made of bones and skulls of his victims so that he could feel eviler and feed his obsession), lack of close friends (Dahmer never had any real friends; the only ones he ever had were in high school, and those friendships were mostly superficial) and paranoia (as previously stated, this was noted by several mental health professionals). The third personality disorder Dahmer was diagnosed with was personality disorder not otherwise specified, which indicates that Dahmer did not fully meet the criteria for a specific personality disorder according to the person making the diagnosis (this diagnosis was set by clinical psychologist Samuel Friedman), but it was clear that he suffered from some form of personality disorder. The last personality disorder Dahmer was diagnosed with was anti-social personality disorder. There are many symptoms of this disorder, but Dahmer seems to fit some of them such as a disregard toward othersâ feelings and lack of remorse (the fact that Dahmer killed people without thinking about his victims and their families is probably the best example of this. Dahmer stated that he felt some remorse for his crimes, but he admitted to probably not feeling as much remorse as he should have), criminal behavior (Dahmer was in contact with the police even as a teenager; he had to be escorted out of a bar by a police officer because he refused to leave, exposed himself on at least two occasions, molested several men and boys and of course murdered 17 people) and superficial charm (Dahmer was described as charming and pleasant to be around by many people, such as the detectives who interviewed Dahmer).Â
Dahmer was, without a doubt, a necrophiliac an an alcoholic. Dahmer had reccuring fantasies and urges of having sex with dead people since his teenage years, and he sexually assaulted almost every victim once they were dead. Dahmer was drinking daily since he was around the age of 16-17, and often turned up drunk to school and spent his nights drinking at home or bars during his adulthood.Â
Dahmer was, as previosley mentioned, unwilling to get help for his problems. It was only after his arrest he decided to tell his full story, but while in therapy before his crimes were exposed, he often sat silent and became defensive when asked questions he did not like. Dahmer was not willing to get help, and therefor he could not be saved.
Jeffrey Dahmer had issues with his mental health from a young age, and he was diagnosed with many different disorders. He was definitly a disturbed person from a young age, and he was not open to get help. Could he have been saved, if he had gotten the help he needed? Perhaps, perhaps not. That will continue to be a mystery.
