Infamous Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer May Have Had AS

Post Reply New Topic

The Case of Jeffrey Dahmer: Sexual Serial Homicide from a Neuropsychiatric Developmental Perspective

I was in disbelief when I read this, but it seems we aspies are in the company of more than just scientists, engineers, mathematicians, artists, writers, and collectors; unfortunately, we may have to count certain serial killers among our neurodevelopmental peers. In this article, mention is made of Dahmer's intense fascination with morbid preoccupations beginning in childhood. His father gives an account of a socially ill-at-ease boy who preferred solitude to his peers. His desire but ineptitude at achieving relationships led him, typically while drunk, to murder the people he found somehow beautiful.

I suppose, if Jeffrey Dahmer really had Asperger's syndrome, every sufficiently large categorization of people is going to have a mixture of good and bad people. After all, priests are supposed to be holy and at service to the community, but some of them have molested and raped children in their trust.

/me shrugs


It is sad, but it happens.

Which is why retro-diagnosis is so stupid. Usually, only attractive prospects get attention and only one attribute, intelligence, is deemed attractive. Hardly scientific, is it?

Jerry Newport

How about Jack the Ripper? Just imagine a fellow obsessed with cutting up the hookers, clever enough to look like a vulnerable, creepy trick until he works his magic?

Actually I kind of like Jack the Ripper. >_>

... he never got caught.

I don't know - it seems to me that Dahmer's obcession with relationships sort of makes him not AS - he was so afraid of people leaving him that he killed them to prevent that . . . that doesn't sound too aspie to me . . .
I think he's a pretty good example of plain old antisocial personality disorder with some very impressive attachment issues . . .

Criminology is one of MY obcessions

Have you ever seen an interview with Dahmer's father? Talk about facinating . . .

Dahmer's behavior and attitudes are much better explained by antisocial personality disorder coplicated by Reacative Attatchment D/O than by AS.

Articles like this are the down side to AS entering more into mainstream awareness...everybody thinks they are a diagnostician. Lets' just hope that AS does not follow the path that ADHD did in the 90's. Every kid who is shy in the 3rd grade will end up with the diagnosis.

Last edited by stlf on 19 Jun 2005, 11:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

Being from Wisconsin, proud home of dahmer, I can remember the media blitz that broke when he was arrested nearly 14 years ago

Dahmer did not have AS. His MO was to pick up gays and transient men at local hang-outs, take them to his apartment which was the house of horrors.

To pull off his stunt, dahmer had to pass himself off as someone else, then make up excuses to his victims about his smelly apartment.

Not to mention that he was a pathalogical liar and he lied to, and convinced the police to return to him, victim #15.

Not very AS sounding to me.

I don't think his behavior is due to AS at all.

Neither do I. It is such a shame that the media can take one little bad thing (or probably, more accurately, unfortunate) and blame it on some minority group.

I enjoy reading about serial killers. It's my morbid curiosity, I guess. Most are sociopathic. It has some similarites to AS, but it is very, very different. We learnt about Dahmer in my psychology class. It didn't seem like he had AS at all.

When I was a little kid (before I was diagnosed, or my family even knew about AS) my mother thought I was going to grow up to be a serial killer. She doesn't think that now.

Actually, I have studied about Dahmer quite a bit, and honestly from what I've studied of him more in detail (other than the apparent gruesomeness of the crimes) it really wouldn't surprise me if he had AS or Schizoid PD (two very similar disorders).

From what I have found in the very least-- aside from AS-- Dahmer doesn't fit the picture of Psychopathy. He wanted to be with his victims and most of his murders were about him not being able to fathom the idea of letting them go. He wanted relationships with these men, but he didn't understand how to get that and communicate that to them. Yes, he could lie. So can I. But nevertheless, his crimes weren't motivated to cause these men harm but to keep them with him ALWAYS. He knew so little of how to be with other people that he found it easier to even be with them when they were dead.

Dahmer seemed to have also an extreme interest in anatomy and learning through dissection when he was young. He dissected many animals. He didn't kill them first and then dissect them. He would instead collect roadkill and perform experiments. This was a childhood passtime of his, the little experimenter. And he was also very good at chemistry; his father being a chemist I believe as well.

His first murder was when he was just 18, and he invited a guy over to his house (no one else was home) and they hung out together. But then, after a couple hours, the guy wanted to leave. Dahmer got scared and desperately didn't want him to. In a split second, while the guy was trying to leave, Dahmer hit him with a dumbell. This was in no way a planned murder.

His second murder was accidental and he didn't even realize he had done it.

In short, at his trial, Dahmer wanted to be punished for what he had done. Psychopaths would generally deny until they went blue in the face.

It seems that Dahmer killed out of loneliness and the inability to interact and communicate with living people. Not out of a need of sadistic satisfaction. True, his actions would win him the diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder, but this disorder is based solely on behavior and actions and not the underlying cognitive functions. Psychopathy as a separate disorder (not listed in the DSM) is different in that it is a reflection of those cognitions. Dahmer does not fulfill these criteria for Psychopathy.

So, I lean either towards Aspergers or a variation of Schizoid Personality Disorder or something similar.

Again, too difficult to give a psychological diagnosis to an individual postmortem.

But my question is: Do the people on this forum who have passed off at this possible diagnosis of Dahmer as Aspergers do this because they don't believe he had it, or they don't WANT to believe he had it because it would paint Aspergers in a more negative light???

Quote from Sophist....

But my question is: Do the people on this forum who have passed off at this possible diagnosis of Dahmer as Aspergers do this because they don't believe he had it, or they don't WANT to believe he had it because it would paint Aspergers in a more negative light???[/size][/quote]

That's the whole scam of retro-diagnosis and Dahmer is not a good candidate to suit that purpose.

Jerry Newport

The only Aspie who may become a killer is me..... and that is as likely as a deaf-blind man shooting a bird in complete darkness in a country where the bird population is soo small that it is almost none.

That is a very interesting question. I was trying to recall the information I learnt about Dahmer from my high school psychology class, but I don't think I was able to remember everything about him. I trust your assessment, Sophist. Therefore, I think it is a possibility that Dahmer had AS. It seems that he had other issues too.

I am the strongest Autistic in the world! Honestly, all the greatest things about an Autistic can be found in me. People ask me "Ok, so what's fourteen hundred divided by thirty?" to try and see how proficient my Savanthood is, I reply "All that answer would do is impress YOU! What's so good about that? ".

My Panda-like insight even allows me to answer the questions in this thread.

Can an Autistic be evil?

Of course I am! Er, I mean can.

But not in the same way as a Neurotypical. If someone is Psychotic, it is impossible to make an objective determination of wether or not they are Autistic. Forget what you heard about 'obvious' traits such as lack of social skills, etc, they are not so simple. In fact there are a whole range of mental disturbances which bar any measure for Autism. It would have been impossible to tell even when he was alive if Jeff was Autistic and if anyone said so, I would be sneaking into their office at night looking through their files for their second copies of their forged qualifications they got after being suspended from practicing in whatever eastern European country they were from.

Autistics as pure evil don't develop a mental illness as such, but subscribe to the philosophy of Nihilism: Perfect logic without assumption, which automatically concludes that there is no point to life and the existence of everything is invalid. Like Satan only not as fun. They conclude that as there is no inherent value in life, it's only value can come from what we insert into it, our feelings. It is then concluded that because our feelings also don't have any inherent meaning to them except for themselves, they are a fallacy of circular logic and are also invalid. All reasons to live are actually illusions. Because of 'inertia' of thought, it is very hard for a person to break out of this line of thinking once they are in it. I do sometimes wonder how many bad people are just Autistics that became Nihilists.

PS- Psychopathy and Psychotic aren't the same thing.