How Sexual Desire Works- The Enigmatic Urge

by Frederick Toates

  Evidence (Chapter 15) points to anger being a trigger to the approach system and hence it could add its effect to that of sexual desire. As an approach motivation, anger is associated with increased relative neural activity of the front part of the brain’s left hemisphere (Carver and Harmon-Jones, 2009). Such increased activity is particularly evident when there is the combination of anger and the perception that action is possible to change the situation. It seems quite possible that the rape victim often serves the dual role of sexual pleasure and anger resolution. Power motivation underlies a number of rapists, who show ‘striving to exert control over what threatens them’ (Lisak and Roth, 1988, p. 795). It would appear that sometimes apparently consensual low-level sexual behaviour turns even to murder as the man finds his progression resisted and anger at frustration escalates (Britton, 1998)2.

  Clearly, power conflict as advanced by feminist theory and social learning can contribute to a tendency to rape. A brain that has strongly fused aggression and sex could prove receptive to toxic messages. The suggestion of a contribution from reactive aggression that is triggered by thwarting is entirely compatible with such ideas. Genetic contributions to high aggression could all act in the same direction.

  Rape is found even in societies that are sexually permissive and there is abundant consensual sexual contact, which might suggest that it is not an act necessarily performed out of deprivation (Zillmann, 1984, 1986). However, even in a permissive society some will feel left out.

  One possible scenario for the development of the brain of a rapist is the accidental pairing of aggressive feelings with sexual arousal (Zillmann, 1984). Thus, a man might be sexually aroused but rejected by a woman, which leads him to fantasize about forceful sex, maybe accompanied by masturbation. The combination of aggression and sexual arousal then leads to the deliberate strategy of seeking sex through violence.

  The next chapter illustrates these same points but in an even more extreme form.

  In summary

  Coercive sex needs to be understood, not only in terms of what is present, but what is deficient or absent: a role of empathy derived from early social interactions.

  The hierarchical nature of the control of desire is evident, with such factors as stress and alcohol switching weight away from those higher layers of control that are involved in inhibition in the interests of long-term consequences.

  Sexual desire can sometimes only be understood in terms of its interactions with the systems controlling anger and aggression.

  The ubiquitous role of stress as a contributing factor and stress reduction as a source of reinforcement emerge as central to understanding.

  Twenty one Sexually associated (serial) murder

  But many people are abnormal in their sexual life who in every other respect approximate to the average, and have, along with the rest, passed through the process of human cultural development, in which sexuality remains the weak spot.

  (Freud, 1953, p. 149)

  What exactly is it?

  Sexual homicide consists of (Burgess et al., 1986, p. 252): ‘one person killing another in the context of power, control, sexuality, and aggressive brutality’. A defining feature is: ‘the infliction of physical or psychological suffering on another person in order to achieve sexual excitement’.

  The motivational basis

  Not all serial killings arise from sexual motivation, though many do (Hickey, 2010). As a broad generalization, Buss (2005, p. 219): ‘serial killers murder because they seek vengeance for status denied’. Non-sexually linked serial killings are motivated by the desire for such things as attention, financial gain, political action (e.g. ‘mission killings’ to rid the world of undesirables) or ‘pure anger’ associated with retribution (Holmes and DeBurger, 1998).

  So-called lust killers merge the motivations underlying sexual desire and aggression (Ressler et al., 1992) and find sexual arousal, pleasure and temporary satisfaction in their activity (Hickey, 2010). The desire for vengeance merges with sexual desire. Where sexual assault is involved, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle and attach relative weights to sexual and power/aggression/control motivations. They are interactive in promotion of the behaviour, while the reinforcing feedback obtained from behaviour would presumably sensitize desire. Such murderers report that ‘total domination becomes erotic’ (Holmes et al., 1998a, p. 115).

  Some so-called ‘killings without motivation’ (Burgess et al., 1986) might involve a sexual element. Although serial killers are psychopaths, it is estimated that for every one serial killer there are 20,000 or 30,000 psychopaths who are not (Hare, 1993). They are probably engaged in domination and power struggles in industry or within their families.

  Sometimes sexual homicide is the outcome of motivational escalation from near normal behaviour, similar to addiction. The individual finds conventional and consensual sexual relations inadequate in attaining arousal (Heide et al., 2009; Sounes, 1995). In other cases, rape is preliminary to homicide but this also proves inadequate as a source of arousal (Ramsland and McGrain, 2010). There is sometimes no preliminary phase of consensual sexual activity (Ressler et al., 1992). Some killers find that reality is not as good as fantasy and they kill in order to reach the ‘ultimate high’, a form of escalation and addiction (Carlisle, 1998; Ramsland and McGrain, 2010).

  That there is a change of levels of control at the time of sexually associated aggression derives support from those committing the act. They tend to report opposing forces battling for supremacy and periodically feeling what they term being ‘outside my own body’ (Ramsland and McGrain, 2010) or even a condition of ‘possession’ (Masters, 1985). In some cases, an act of sexual homicide reflects careful long-term planning, whereas in others it is somewhat opportunistic (Ressler et al., 1992). There can also be a combination of these: the individual has a desire congruent with killing and then happens upon a suitable situation.

  Associated activities

  Amongst the principal interests of men who commit sex-related violence are masturbation, pornography, fetishes and voyeurism, activities that do not require any reciprocal personal involvement (Arrigo and Purcell, 2001; Ressler et al., 1992), and have a relatively low immediate risk, if any. Fetishes (e.g. female underwear and high-heeled shoes) were evident in the childhood of the sample studied by Burgess et al. Such items were incorporated into ritualized aspects of the murders that they were later to commit. In some cases, the sequence of escalation passes through fetishes, voyeurism, then rape, and finally to serial murder (Rule, 1983). Each stage brings increasing excitement, but this appears to prove insufficient after a time.

  Sometimes fetishes, such as an item of clothing or a body part, play a central role in the killing, being the target of particular attention and occasionally being kept as a souvenir or ‘trophy’ (Holmes, 1998). Their attraction appears to owe something to classical conditioning. A number of killers take photographs of the victim, such that the crime can later be re-enacted in the imagination (Hickey, 2010; Rule, 1983). A number have even videotaped their rapes prior to killing (Gibb, 2011). Some return to the body to masturbate over it (Ramsland and McGrain, 2010).

  Prior to the start of his killing, Dennis Rader of BTK (bind, torture, kill) notoriety had a history of voyeurism, stalking women and breaking into their homes to steal underwear (Wenzl et al., 2008). Subsequently, accompanying the murders, underwear was stolen to play with later and cuttings were made of pictures of women’s clothes taken from newspapers. Extensive stalking took place between murders.

  What does it feel like?

  Prior to the first killing, the Boston Strangler described the motivation as ‘building up’, while it was perceived as getting out of control (Carlisle, 1998). The Californian serial killer Edmund Kemper used the expression ‘an awful, raging, eating feeling that was threatening to consume me from within’ (Holmes, 1998, p. 110). This appears to have at least something in common with the kind of deprivation effect described by some in connection with
conventional sexual behaviour.

  Sexually linked serial killers commonly use strangulation as the method of killing, as opposed to, for example, shooting. This appears to be a way of prolonging arousal and maximizing the degree of control (Gibb, 2011).

  Power, anger and control

  Some argue that in serial killing any sexual element is secondary to the motivation for power and control. A similar argument is made concerning rape. However, one is left to speculate why the sexual element needs to be included at all since power and domination can be achieved through many different, and it might seem, much less risky, means. Also, offenders frequently reach orgasm in the context of their assault (Myers et al., 2006). Sexual offenders almost always target victims of a gender corresponding to their own sexual attraction. Female victims tend to be of reproductive age. The self-reports of serial sexual murderers, ranging from the fifteenth-century French nobleman Gilles de Rais, indicate typically that they attained a state of heightened sexual arousal and pleasure in their activity.

  Stress

  In many cases, attacks occur at a time of stress, for example rejection by a girl-friend or dismissal from work (Chan and Heide, 2009; Douglas and Olshaker, 2006; Schlesinger, 2001). Stress can strengthen the dopaminergic systems underlying appetitive activities (Pitchers et al., 2010) and also appears to lower restraint on behaviour. Fantasy seems inadequate as a coping strategy and the scales are tipped in favour of acting out (Heide et al., 2009). Acting out appears to serve as a coping strategy, whereby the individual is driven (Maniglio, 2010, p. 300) ‘to gain relief through action’ and a sense of equilibrium (‘satiety’) is achieved, albeit often only temporarily (Hickey, 2010).

  Development of a serial murderer

  Early traumatic experience

  There appear to be multiple trajectories that lead to sexually linked killing. However, it is possible to identify a few common factors. In many, if not all, cases, there was an early traumatic experience that can be captured by such terms as ‘pain’, ‘shame’ or ‘humiliation’, involving loss of self-worth and a feeling of being dealt a bad hand (Hale, 1998; Hickey, 2010; Leake, 2007; Sullivan and Maiken, 1983). There can be a combination of negative feelings, with the term humiliation capturing a universal feature. One can speculate that, rather than diminishing over time, this painful emotion becomes ‘self-reinforced’. Tragically, this early trauma occurs at an age when the neurons of the brain are rapidly forming new connections. Subsequently, the negative emotion appears to form associations with a range of other triggers beyond the initial ones but which have similarities to the original trigger. Later frustrations excite the sensitized pathways. Years later, the individual feels compelled to offer a violent response to the long-lasting effects of this challenge to self-worth.

  Various early initial triggers can instigate these emotions, which some famous cases exemplify. Meloy (2000) suggests that many sexual homicides are generalizations from rage directed at the offender’s mother (O’Brien, 1985). In the case of Russell Williams, the striking facial similarity between one of his victims and his mother has been noted (Gibb, 2011). Jerry Brudos detested his mother because of her rejection of him (Hale, 1998). The Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger gave an account of his early life in his autobiographical novel entitled Purgatory. Leake (2007) writes (p. 38):

  A recurring theme in the novel is Jack’s quest for his mother. He yearns for her to come and take him away from his unhappy world, but she never does. His grandfather tells him that she is a ‘tramp with no time for you’.

  In a confession on why he killed his first victim, Unterweger stated (Leake, 2007, p. 48):

  Well, you know from Purgatory that my mother abandoned me with her alcoholic father when I was a baby. For so long I was full of rage against her, and I think it affected all my thinking and feeling…Something about the way she looked and talked reminded me of my mother.

  A trigger is sometimes actual or perceived sexual promiscuity by the mother, exemplified by Angelo Buono, one of the so-called Hillside Stranglers (Schlesinger, 2001). Sexual killers sometimes acquire a straight-laced and double-standard morality.

  In a few cases, it seems that early discovery of a family secret having a sexual connotation establishes a pathological trajectory culminating in anger towards women. An example is Ted Bundy’s discovery of his illegitimacy, combined with an all-too-familiar pattern of an early absence of the mother, a dysfunctional family, absence of a male role model and possible early exposure to pornography (Rule, 2006). Paul Bernardo learned at the age of 10 that his father was a child molester (Pron, 1995). He was later to discover that the man he took to be his father was not his real father and Paul was called by his mother the ‘bastard child from hell’.

  Not infrequently, future killers were ridiculed in school for such things as social ineptitude, a stammer, ethnic difference or a bad complexion and made to feel inferior (Douglas and Olshaker, 2006; Pron, 1995; Rule, 2006; Sounes, 1995; Gibb, 2011). Some are described as ‘misfits’. Many were raised in households characterized as abusive and either were themselves victims of physical, emotional or sexual abuse or all of these, or at least were witness to it (Hickey, 2010; Meloy, 2000; Ramsland and McGrain, 2010; Sullivan and Maiken, 1983). Harsh and inconsistent physical punishment was an early experience of most serial killers (Anderson, 1994). All such experiences were likely to be highly arousing. In such cases, subsequent sexual assaults appear to act as proxies for (‘re-runs of’) the murderer’s own earlier suffering of abuse. Where such abuse did occur, it is associated with the development of so-called insecure attachment between parent and child (Chan et al., 2010; Ressler et al., 1992). However, of course, only a small percentage of victims of abuse become killers, so clearly this factor must lock into interaction with others to produce the lethal combination (Maniglio, 2010).

  Rejection by parents is common amongst these men (Hickey, 2010). In the family backgrounds of many sexual murderers there are family breakdowns, criminal, psychiatric, drug or sexual problems such that parents were ‘absorbed in their own problems’ (Burgess et al., 1986, p. 254; Pron, 1995; Ressler et al., 1992; Sounes, 1995; Sullivan and Maiken, 1983). The children suffered from such things as shame, isolation and lack of positive social interactions (Berry-Dee, 2007). Development of interpersonal skills was therefore difficult. Moves of the family home and time away from the home, for example in foster homes, tended to be frequent while the killer-to-be was growing up. While still in their youth, most serial killers experienced a break with their parents and had few if any close links with peers.

  However, in some cases, though there was a bad marital situation and a painful divorce (Gibb, 2011), the family circumstances could hardly be described as wholly exceptional or massively abusive. One can speculate that despite only objectively mild triggers, anger subsequently got amplified by a process of mental rumination, accompanied by such sensitizers as school bullying. Laboratory studies on normal controls show that repeated rumination involving a transgression can subsequently lead to displaced aggression in response to only minor transgressions (Bushman et al., 2003; Fabiansson et al., 2012).

  For some, abandonment by a girlfriend has a particularly devastating effect that seems to add to earlier triggers to negative emotion, exemplified by Ted Bundy and Russell Williams (Gibb, 2011).

  Acquisition of aggression and control

  But why specifically is aggression triggered? If, in early development, an aversive state like shame was paired with sexual arousal, why, when adult, do people not simply become shamed when sexually aroused? This might happen in some cases, but presumably they fail to make the news headlines. There is evidence that in various species aversive events can trigger a variety of actions, such as attack, eating or even sexual behaviour. What is triggered will doubtless depend upon various factors such as the availability of a helpless victim to attack. Fear or shame might trigger anger and aggression in the world of fantasy and subsequently in reality.

  Both anger/
aggression and sexual motivation are appetitive motivations involving forward engagement with the world (Carver et al., 2009). Turning negative emotion into attack is much more likely in males than females and indeed, with exceedingly rare exceptions, sexual murderers are male (though see the section on women’s involvement below). Attack is a coping strategy. There is some consensus that extreme aggression as shown by serial killers arises from early experience and is perceived to bring some relief from pervasive lack of self-worth and negative emotions of conflict that arise from early traumatic experience (Hickey, 2010). The action brings a sense of ultimate control over an innocent victim.

  An animal model of control (Cabib and Puglisi-Allegra, 2012) appears to be relevant. When in an aversive situation, the acquisition of control that eliminates or reduces the aversion (a ‘coping strategy’) is associated with increased dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens. This has an energizing effect on behaviour and gives a steer away from passivity. As noted earlier (Chapter 8), such dopaminergic activation might strengthen the strategy adopted, in this case the active one based upon a fusion of sexual desire and violence.