Regarding Dahmer's hernia surgery surgery as a child: I'm just a few years younger than him. I was hospitalized when I was 3 years old, I was in the hospital for 3 weeks. I was in the hospital alone. My family visited for maybe an hour or 2 on some days (not daily). I have memories of the giant crib, the room, the other kids, the smell, the feel of the wash cloths, the echo of the sounds. To this day have difficulty with fear of abandonment. I believe that hospital experience is responsible for that. Dahmer seemed to have a number of other stressors in his childhood. He didn't catch a single break in life, which doesn't excuse his crimes but it sure didn't help.
May I ask you.. have you ever had the need to "keep" someone? Your fear of abandonment.. were you awkward with opposite sex? I mean, we all are to an extent but please tell me .. did you ever feel an abnormal need to keep someone you loved closer than close to you? And to try to make you feel comfortable enough to answer that I will share slightly.. I was an only child and also share a fear of a andonment. I had a hard time connecting to others and learned to mimick .. I struggle with substance abuse and chose to enter into therapy but it never goes away.. may I ask what you were hospitalized for and at what age and how that has played out for you? may I add that I was a 70's baby and my mom lost three before me and she was heavily medicated so to not loose me ..hence. . I am the real bi-polar with schizophrenic tendencies.. I heard the whispers as a child but grew out of it... Let's talk .
@@kariann3198 ASPD doesn't make someone a monster. I deal with psychopathy (don't meet diagnostic criteria for ASPD mainly because my symptoms at the time more closely aligned with psychopathy 1 vs psychopathy 2.)
I'm 44 and I remember clearly as a child hearing adults say things like "animals don't feel pain they same way we do" or babies don't remember pain/trauma. Adults did not feel like they needed to be particularly nice to children. People cursed at kids, smoked around them. There was a lot of emphasis on not "being a baby" about feelings, physical pain. Children were often left to their own devices outside all day. Back then it wasn't uncommon for parents to split and the dad just left and never comes back "A clean break". Things were very. very different but still no excuse
People get it wrong. Their perceptions skewed. Animals are more Stoic than us because they dont necessarily feel as deeply as we do, and dont sit over thinking and doubting themselves, or sit with regret and shame like humans. They live truly in accordance with nature and their own, and go with the flow and take life as it comes, and they get on with it. Animals with a nervous system and a brain feel pain to warn of possible damage to themselves, like we do. Animals dont feel anger and spite as deeply as us humans. We can be the cruelest of animals because of that. Animals show a semblance of anger and hate, but not like man. Aggression isnt same as Anger or hate/rage we see in humans. Animals are more Stoic than us. They can just drop things and get on with their life, even after nearly getting eaten, or having a brutal fight over a mate. They can go fall asleep or start to graze after showing extreme fear or aggression. Animals dont turn mole hills into mountains, like us humans with our over active imagination. We all feel, but we all feel differently, we all perceive and judge things differently. We are animals too, but we all have different components and that determines our ability. Different beings perceive things differently, we all do. How a bear perceives and judges reality and the stimulus of life and the events/situations that happens to it. Will be different to your own. We can feel sorry for things, that dont feel sorry for its self, it will take life as it happens and get on with it, despite how you think it looks, licking its wounds etc. Dont think for a minute a bear or lion feels sorry for its self like a human does. We are our own worse enemies when it comes to that type of pain and torment humans can cause themselves. In that sence some animals dont feel pain like we do. They feel pain as in the stimulus caused by harm. But the type of self inflicted mental and inner pain humans cause themselves isnt the same in some animals. Theyre more Stoic than us 😎👍
@@Woodman-Spare-that-tree Me, too. Or, furthermore, that you owed a huge bill at age eighteen for necessities accrued during childhood. I'm surprised we're not ALL serial killers !! What an awful time.
What makes the case with the 14 year old boy even more tragic is that Jeffrey had gone to court for molesting his older brother (who was still a child) and got away but Jeffrey got released and pretty much suffered no consequence. And those officers actually didn’t even get fired, they were suspended for a short amount of time and got their jobs back. Truly so disgusting how not only Jeffrey was so twisted but the system just let him get away with it. So sad
One example of exposing them to healthy sexuality would be healthy physical affection between parents. Seeing your parents hug and kiss and cuddle is innocent but gives a love map to lock into.
As someone born and raised in Milwaukee, I couldn't watch this Netflix series. I tried, but it was just too much. I remember being 9 months pregnant and watching the news in August of 1991. I remember the huge vats being wheeled out of his apartment building. It still makes me physically ill and so sad for victims' families.
I was 4 months pregnant in August of 1991 and gave birth to a boy in January of '92. I was in grad school getting a masters in counseling, so Dahmer was often the topic of conversation with my classmates and professors.
I lived on 25 th street as a 3 year old on Wisconsin ave and 25th street and my father had a carpet cleaning business and he contacted my father to clean his carpet I don't think any of this is funny that area of downtown milwaukee was really dangerous during that time and how racist it was at that time with the police and the milwaukee county city government I remember at that time the northside certain parts of all white and certain parts was all black
From what I've read about Dahmer, he wasn't a sadist, but he was a necrophile. He wanted a completely passive partner who couldn't reject him and wouldn't require anything of him, basically a human object. And his fantasies only grew darker and more deviant as time went on. I wonder if he also had partialism - a sexual attraction to a specific part of the body - but instead of fixating on external features, he got aroused from internal things like bones and organs.
The show revealed how Dahmer constantly felt alone, unlovable, and desperate for closeness. But he also seemed afraid of closeness at the same time... afraid that he'd be rejected and they'd leave, etc. I empathize with these emotions, which aren't uncommon. SO, why did he deal with those emotions through murder? Tons of people feel that way and had early traumas, but would never do what he did. It makes me think that there must be some genetic or medical component involved here...neurological impairment to impulse control or empathy? I dont want to believe trauma and desperation alone led to this. But it's puzzling.
Wow that's well put. My train of thoughts exactly after watching the series. Edit: on second thought, he had the chance to have healthy/consensual relationships but that didn't not satisfy him and maybe that's where most people can't relate/ emapathize with him
I thought about this too. Feeling lonely, empty, and having a hard time with people leaving makes total sense. I feel bad catagorizing his childhood trauma as "not that severe", as everything affects everyone differently, but what he went through as a child feels almost minute in comparison to what he went on to do to others. But watching the documentary it's clear that he was a necrophiliac with severe abandonment issues. Knowing this, his actions make more sense. He was not only a gay man desperate for closeness, he was sexually disturbed and the only thing that could satisfy his needs was a completely submissive man that would not leave him and that he could do whatever he wanted with.
Lot of people in that exact same scenario wouldn't have turned out like him. We want a reason to understand someone like that. It comes from a place of empathy. So that itself wouldn't allow us to ever understand that behavior. The lack of 3mpathy is what brings about that behavior. And many people wouldn't comprehend it.
He talks a lot in interviews how he wanted closeness, but also wanted to have complete control over their actions. He literally says in the show "I just want a guy who wants to see the same movie *I* wanna see". He basically wanted a person who would never leave them, and who would do anything they want. So to him, the concept of them having free will was viscerally terrifying because, in his mind, nobody with freedom of choice would ever want to stay with him. That is SAD. That is so, so so sad. And it really messed with my head because seeing scenes like that, I almost felt bad for the guy! And I'd have to remind myself that he still brutally raped and murdered almost 20 people. I don't need that kind of cognitive dissonance in my life.
This is my own theory about Dahmer after watching many interviews and documentaries on him. I always found his need for understanding his compulsions and acknowledgment that everything he did was horrific and wrong was unique in a way that you rarely witnessed from other serial killers. I want to first make clear I am not a "fan" of his, I do think he was incredibly sick and emotionally and socially crippled but I am a fan of the psychological side that makes a human go from fantasising terrible things to actually doing them. Thr first thing is when it came to Jeffrey and the roadkill, he was already fascinated by it as their house was on a large woodland property that, in the early stages of this "hobby", Jeffrey would explore and started to find these things on his own, often they were in the advanced stages of decay. His father, being a chemist, was - for lack of a better word - desperate for Jeffrey to show an interest in SOMETHING, ANY THING. So when the boy started being fascinated with dead animals, roadkill and their individual inner parts, his father Lionel decided to give Jeffrey a hand finding it as a way to bond and spend time with his son because his mother was often too busy with her own life/suffering to put any effort nurturing their eldest son. Lionel thought Jeffrey was interested in preserving the skeleton so he showed him how to properly strip the decaying meat and flesh off the bones and preserve the skeleton, like they display in museums of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Plenty of humans take part in this hobby, as morbid as it might seem to others but they do. I honestly believe that Jeffrey had a fear of people leaving him, ever since he was a child, starting with his mother suddenly abandoning him, which turned from fear to absolute frustration. The killing of people was his minds very immature and irrational way of working out how to make them stay. He never wanted to hurt anyone, he knew it was hurting them but that is why he drugged them, so that they wouldn't be conscious while he killed them. He is different from a sadist as they enjoy the moments of fear and suffering before their victims die. They want to draw it out for their own amusement. Again, I am not romanticising or condoning anything he did as it was obviously cruel and wrong but that was his irrational way of getting them to stay. He didn't know how to form a relationship and get someone to stay because they genuinely *liked* things about him, Jeffrey didn't even really like anything about himself so how would a stranger see those things if he didnt? He didn't know how to put forth his good traits because he didn't believe he had any but he craved someone that would stay. To me, it's very much like a small child throwing a violent tantrum, smacking and pulling their parents hair, when their parent needs to go out, the behaviour is the last thing that would make the parent want to be close to the child but in that scenario, the parent knows its the childs desperate attempt to show their fear and insecurity and try to get them to stay. But it's one thing seeing this with a 4-6 year old child. It's another to see it out of an 18 year old young man. Plus you add puberty, self hate and repression due to being gay and being raised in a very conservative family during a conservative time, and his addiction to drinking starting around middle school, I think are all things that contributed and snowballed into the man that he became unfortunately.
I agree. And I also think there is a very strong possibility that he was on the Autistic Spectrum, and that certainly didn't help the situation either. I think it's also insightful to see this quote by Dr.Frederick Fosdal, who interviewed Dahmer for a total of 20 hours; ″They were not brutal, sadistic acts. He said he killed them in the most painless way he knew. It all boils down to the question of control.″ I just think it's a very tragic story for everyone involved. I think the best we can do is to learn as much as we can from it and try to prevent it from ever happening again.
I agree that parents that argue constantly have a massive negative impact. My mom and her sister turned to drugs and alcohol starting as teenagers and never stopped both died at 44
I keep going back to the issue of his diagnosis of schizoid personality disorder (a severe attachment disorder) and him stating, that he wanted his victims to "stay within him"... he seemed to have absolutely no ability to connect to other humans in any way or form. This then becoming a terrible problem when he hit puberty during which humans are driven to connect, physically, mentally and emotionally, to others. The missing "software" to build human connections combined with sexual desires might have turned into a recipe for disaster in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer.
True, I finished Grilling Dahmer by Patrick Kennedy, the detective who interrogated him and Jeff had said he wanted to become one with his victims. In a very disturbing fashion, let's just say he became the real Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre at a point during his crimes and more. Needless to say I needed to take a small pause, there are some moments in the book where they do and don't hold back any details
He was diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder, a schizophrenia spectrum disorder which doesn't cause hallucinations and delusions like schizophrenia but does cause the person to have a magical/very odd/borderline delusional way of perceiving the world around them. I don't remember him being diagnosed as schizoid, but he also was diagnosed with bpd, which similarly severely affected his attachment to others. Except, in the opposite way, instead of being super detached from others he actually was extremely clingy even if he tried to hide those emotions from others. But his stpd (schizotypal) and bpd made it hard for him to connect to people in the first place, as he always appeared odd. Personally I think he had autism since asd and stpd can look so similar (you can also have both), and my main reason for that is because he was always considered a loner and had weird, specific interests, even by his own dad, meanwhile you can't technically diagnose a child with a personality disorder.
It's hard because as someone who had an upbringing very similar to Dahmer's, from the medical trauma, to relational trauma and neglect/abuse from parents, to substance abuse in my teens, and even having interests like Dahmer's (biology, taxidermy, anatomy etc), I didn't end up killing people or even fantasizing about doing that. What made him go down that road but made me not?
@Sonna Not to defend Dahmer but in his interviews he said that he didn't like the killing part. He had to drink heavily and watch the Exorcist III to get into the mood. As for torture in the form of dismemberment and rape, I don't think he intended to torture them. He just wanted to have total control over them and make them stay with him forever. But then again he could have been full of it and lacked empathy and didn't care about anyone else.
@Sonna Yes, he was a sick and twisted person. Thank God God he's no longer on this earth. It's tragic and sad that he had to take 17 or more people with him.
@@dalee72 Alcohol should be illegal to consume lol. In my opinion it's the main reason why this guys feelings were so potent to commit thise crimes. If he didn't drink and become drunk I think he would've committed those sick crimes. I mean come in...eating human flesh. He definitely was wasted 100%
This may seem ‘simple’ of me because it has nothing to do with Jeffery’s psychopathy, but I’ve read a few books and I’ve seen all the shows that profile him, but I’ll never understand how someone working at Club 219 never put 2 + 2 together with Jeff and the last guy that went missing. A large number of his victims were known to leave the club with him and they were never seen again. Nobody thought there might be a problem there? Nobody connected the dots after 3, 4, 5 guys went missing from the club after meeting Jeffery? I know it was 1990, but I went to clubs all over Boston at that time, and I just don’t see how someone didn’t make any connection between Jeff and the string of guys that were never seen again after leaving the club with him. 🤷🏻♂️
That's the thing though, even if they did connect the dots, think about his neighbour who was calling the police CONSTANTLY to report strange things going on in his apartment and she was disregarded and dismissed. Even if someone at the club did suspect Jeffrey, considering the clubs he went to were in the African American community, his victims were mostly coloured as well, and the majority of cops were white and homophobic, it was unlikely that they would have been taken seriously. It is a very sad and unfortunate set of circumstances that allowed Jeffrey Dahmer to get away with his crimes for as long as he did.
A missing adult man, especially one the police homophobicly dismiss as living a certain lifestyle, is not going to be investigated very thoroughly. Even if a bartender had a gut feeling,the police would say "what is your relationship to the missing person? How do you know Dahmer doesn't just talk these guys into catching the next bus out to San Francisco? Adults can go missing even if it upsets their friends and family" Ask me how I know. I worked in gay bars in LA during the 90s. It's hard to get investigations into missing adults. You might as a concerned stranger or acquaintance get them to do a wellness check if you had enough information. But even then. Without the body or more signs of foul play to indicate and abduction, they don't do much.
@@jabberjaws94 hate to break it to you, but that neighbor you're talking about, and I assume you mean the one you know from the Netflix drama, never lived in the same building as him. The only times when his actual neighbors complained was about the smell, and never about suspicion of murders and such. In fact, his real neighbors took a liking to him
He lived in a complex completely ran by crack..nobody was calling the cops no matter what they probably didn't even notice anything besides their addictions tbh
I listened to the guy who played dahmer and he said they purposefully shot it from one of the victims point of view every episode and not glorifying dahmer...I think people are just fascinated by the psychology of how somebody could end up doing such depraved acts
You're right about the reasons for people being so fascinated by Dahmer. His crimes are, arguably, the most depraved ever encountered in modern history. The manner of death and dismemberment of his victims is bad enough. The necrophelia and consumption of the remains are beyond anything we, as a society, have ever had to deal with. It's all so unimaginable that it is fascinating, the same way that any disaster that befalls humanity is fascinating. It's unbelievable, but it's true!
I watched two episodes and had to stop. So dark and traumatic to think about what his victims went through and see it portrayed so vividly. How retraumatizing and painful for the victims and their families.
I disagree with Humberto! There are so many people with a healthy interest in horror, taxedermy, anatomy etc and like Kirk said those people go on to become Biologists, Anatomists, Surgeons, Morticians etc totally healthy expression of the interest, it's not fair to project a once in a lifetime crazy person onto every else!!
I feel like there would be multiple reasons. Depends. I would think: desperation (if stealing necessary items like food, hygiene). Immaturity and/or entitlement/lack of empathy. To get a rush/dopamine seeking My family on my dad's side would always steal. Interested to know why.
On the poverty side you feel like you deserve things others feel entitled to and you feel like the other people can recuperate faster than you. Also if it's from an institution like say Wal mart you might feel like the institution is itself stealing from their workers. On the upperclass side it can be a very for help. There's a lot of fun movies about rich girls going crazy and acting out more and more to see who will stop them because they go unnoticed by society and want more direct attention. People act out for love. Also- general entitlement, sometimes a God complex- feeling advice consequence.
The whole deal of stealing, the leading up to it, the thrill of getting caught etc is so intense that it blocks out any unwanted thoughts or other feelings. It occupies the mind. Then the ultimate rewarding feelings of getting away with it make it desirable and wanting that again and again. Dr. Kirk has explained it a bit with Winona Ryder if I remember correctly. Stuff like gambling and losing lots of money, anything compulsive could be on the OCD spectrum and stem for example from childhood trauma. (If that helps from not a Doc or therapist haha)
By the time he ran into Steven Hicks he already had been consistently fantasizing about taking advantage of a hitchhiker & was intensely attracted to the male chest/torso and Steven having his chest out hitch hiking felt like the perfect opportunity to him
IKR!? If only his grandmother hadn't thrown his mannequin away! It might have saved lives. The mannequin also got him used to having a sexual partner that was still, quiet, and compliant so he could create his fantasy and do whatever he wanted. He didn't like partners who had their own ideas about sexual activities. He needed to be in control.
I really feel his parents did a number on him psychologically It’s sad that so many who need mental health help are failed He clearly needed assistance He was failed as was society My heart breaks for all his victims that the cops didn’t care enough about Sadly not surprised They miss so much that’s right in front of their eyes
@@heatherhensley9183 Empathy has its limit. He had necrophiliac fantasies that likely never would have gone away even with a good childhood and support.
Possibly really no way to know since he never had consistent therapy Dr Honda discusses human behavior on his most recent comments episode how u can’t predict human behavior
@@heatherhensley9183 This is the same man who molested a minor and brutally murdered a 14 year old boy. Once you harm kids you get no empathy from me . Sorry not sorry. I don't care how shitty your upbringing is, that doesn't give you the right to go out and do what he did.
When I was little I spent many nights imagining killing my abuser. When I was older I lashed out at anyone who threatened me and nearly killed an ex boyfriend who threatened me. I'm old now and have learned that the abuse I encountered was running my life. It no longer does.
I did that also .. I planned out the murder for long time .. down to how I would have to cut them up in the bathtub an then how would I get rid of the evidence .. after much thought an planning I realized I would not be able to pull this off an I gave up on the plan thank goodness
also THANK YOU for suggesting we PREVENT the neglect of kids instead of turning their misery into entertainment. honestly we dont do enough to make all parents aware of what they need to do to protect their kids rights
If you wanna do a psychology discussion about a scripted, fictional TV show: HBO's 'House of the Dragon' has a lot of complicated family dynamics and enmeshment. I personally find the characters of Alicent and Viserys really compelling: They are torn up - in conflict with themselves and the external interests of their family.
I have had a difficult Childhood with mentally absent parents. At 15 I went to a mental health doctor for help. One week later I had an accident and couldn’t visit the doctor. He called my telephone number and my mum was on the phone. so she got to know my plan. She rushed to the hospital, made me looking ridiculous and had forbidden to go there again, because „i shouldn’t make things up“. That was 1983. I was depressed then and I am depressed since then, for 40 years now. Imagine that! No therapy later could have helped me any more.
I wish you well. Emotionally absent you mean (now that i m thinking of it mentally is valid too lol but for most ppl sadly). I visited a psychiatrist at 22yo & he diagnosed me w depression/prescribed meds after literally 1 phrase:"ppl are bad" (i eent for migraines, i wasn t sad, i didn t mean all ppl but he didn t bother to ask. With a condescending look he told me:"you should had come earlier" (like i was some lost case). I m 40yo & i think ppl are dumb (the normal ones who re able of living unconsciously & gave up their humanity. I wouldn t like such parents either & there isn t much difference. It isn t a matter of time imo bcs an empathetic, attuned mother just wouldn t do what you describe.
I could not bring myself to watch the show after reading the details of the crimes. I can’t imagine how much pain must have been felt by those families. Idk, if I’m just in my feelings or because I have a brother in that age group but the thought of anyone doing that to him is horrific. I would think it would be incredibly hard to see them be reduced to their last moments and have it be immortalized and used for entertainment. I think part of why this hits close to home for me is having had family members be kidnapped/disappeared in Mexico. A lot of the relatives of missing people in Mexico talk about how it’s a fate worse than death because you just don’t know what happened you don’t know if they are being tortured or have been dumped in a mass grave. There isn’t a body you can at least mourn or a grave where you can drop off flowers While I agree that it can’t be expected that this type of media won’t be made, I do think that by the nature of cinematography and story telling it does sensationalize these issues. Regardless of how careful the people in these productions are, we all may have to sit with the discomfort that no one ever wins in these stories even if some depictions are better than others.
I think it’s heinous to be profiting off of the dramatization of this horrific story. I refuse to watch it out of respect for the families. This isn’t a very distance thing. Many of those effected by this are very much alive and some have spoken out about having to relive this tragedy. I can’t get behind this.
I really love how you guys show empathy for the show creators and the victims and show the nuance. I will say, especially the "silenced" episode did put the focus on the victims more than most true crime. Like, I cried so much during this show. I will say one thing that I really don't like about how they handled the little boy's story is that Dahmer actually asked to take his picture while he was at a mall. Dahmer's whole thing there would be to walk up to people and say "wow you look like a model" and offer to do photography. I'm not saying that if Dahmer had been offering the boy beer that the victim would have been "asking for it", but you shouldn't imply that he was into underage drinking if there isn't evidence of that.
This show exposed a lot of the problems our society has, consumption of alcohol being one of them. It's not the reason why he killed them, but it was a part of the problem. And this series + the LIB episode about Jared's drinking just made me realize it even more.
I also felt the father grasped at different “reasons” for how Jeffry turned out (blaming the mom/hernia surgery) because he may have been trying to avoid the guilt he felt for having the same fantasies believing he may have passed that down to Jeffry.
And the hernia op at such a young age in basic terms was he went to hospital and the adults/doctors made him go to sleep/unconscious and when he awoke he had a hole in his body where had been operated on, this is what he did to his victims kinda.
The more I hear about this story I can that no one can claim that no one had a childhood or life like Jeff. So the statement “other people had shitty childhoods but it didn’t make them monsters” just isn’t accurate because these people did not have his dna, his parents, his surgeries, his home environment and so on. I am sure the combination of all that shot that happened with him is the reason it’s not one thing. I don’t think anyone can excuse his actions but there are definately reasons.
Can’t wait to listen to this later! Ever since I became a mom, I’ve been so intrigued by serial killers and how their childhoods effected them, probably just to help calm my irrational fear that my kids will grow up and turn out to be like that 😅 Thats definitely one of the top 5 calls you don’t want to get as a parent 😭
@@areebah2528 -Top 5: We've discovered that your son is a serial killer... -Top 4: We've discovered that your son is a serial child rapist... Top 3: We've discovered your son is a Mafia Boss responsible for thousands of deaths, kidnappings, tortures... Top 2: Your son is the new leader of a terrorist organization, and has killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, and is planning to bring a nuclear apocalypse... Top 1: Ma'am, haven't you heard? Your son is the new Adolf Hitler!!!
@@areebah2528 haha I don’t actually have a list but I would say things like getting a call your child has been killed, getting a call from your child telling you they killed somebody, your kid is missing, etc. 😅
@@Madeinargentina92 thank you! You’re probably giving a bit more credit than deserved because a lot of it has to do with me having irrational fears 😂 I do try hard to make sure I’m not messing them up, hopefully it pays off 😅💓
If you're interested in how trauma is the cause of virtually every addiction, check out Dr. Gabor Mate and, in particular, his book in the realm of hungry ghosts
Putting Dahmer at the center of attention in the show is understandable since he caused the whole thing and he will draw views but after all the show was not solely about exploiting the gruesomeness of the crimes but the show also shines light on the social problems and police incompetence. Maybe they should’ve chosen a different sub title, and a bit less of Dahmers past and more of the victims lives and made the show around that angle completely. But then again, the title and first part of the show seem to be like a clickbait to then really show the center of the problem that’s bigger than Dahmer.
I haven't seen it yet, snippets of other docs, but I would like for some of these movies/documentaries to zone in a bit more on who the victim is, as to make the audience realise that 1. This is real. 2. And its really happening to people like us. 3. Help other victims realise they're not alone in falling for/seeing the good in- a person that is a monster behind closed doors. 4. Always believe someone asking for help. Cause these crazy things unfortunately happen, it would be cool to see a little on how to spot a sociopath or a psychopath (maybe specific to the case) and how people that knew them might have known if they had listened to their gut feeling. I'm typing a way too long comment 😅 sorry.
Funny thing, when I heard Kirk and Umberto speaking about Dhamer compassionately creating boundaries to stop him from harming others yet getting his needs met… I actually gave into compassion for myself fit the first time. It occurred to me, I’m nothing close to a Dhamer and if he deserves love and attachment as a human right, then we all do. Creating a system to protect victims and heal criminals might be a better path to end crime. Maybe people commit crimes because they can’t identify with the humanity in themselves and others. It’s the same reason we punish criminals in the way we do, we can’t identify with them.
There are some criminals you just can’t heal. Do you honestly think someone like Dahmer could be fixed? When dogs are rabid and pose a threat to society, we put them down. Serial killing child rapists should be no exception. Sometimes people are just irreversibly defective.
@@ShesMongolianASMR I don’t know… I just feel hopeful. I wouldn’t free him to test it. The risk is too great for any benefit we could get. I just think there are ways we can humanly treat criminals that might decrease the recidivism rate in inmates who could be freed.
but criminals aren't human beings. Human beings don't do that sort of thing. I don't believe in humanising bad people. I think they should all be dehumanised.
@@SuperMichelleDJ I'm glad you're not the one making the decisions about how we mete out criminal justice in this, or any, country. I'm a little worried about you and your connection to your own humanity, given your willingness to deny the humanity of anyone convicted of a crime. There's a very good reason why we shouldn't judge one another. It's because we can't. Try not to be so hard on yourself.
There was a recording of the officers after they dropped off the boy to dahmer, the officers were joking how they need to “delouse” after interacting with gay guys
That was so disgusting. At first I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they were too afraid to misstep, I thought. Still not a good reason to basically enable everything that ensued after, but it would have made it understandable to a certain extent. However, after hearing that recording, all I felt was rage towards those individuals. They obviously couldn't have cared less as long as they got away with it, which they did.
Yeah. SO much homophobia at that time, and it was so common. When I heard about Dahmer at the time it happened, there was a lot of whisperings about the gay element of it, almost as if it should be expected that the victims were gay? It was pretty bad in the 80's and into the 90's.
Oh boy. Watching the series in a binge fashion over a two day period resulted in me not being able to get the whole thing out of my head. I am having dreams about the crimes. It brings back the whole story and I am so angry that the victims and families experienced these traumas. Dahmer was so manipulative and his dad and grandmother enabled him!
I'm 32, and the worst part of a colonoscopy is the taste of the prep. The actual procedure is just you falling asleep and waking up not feeling a thing.
For "true" psychopaths, is there some measurable, scientific "neurological impairment" or identifiable genetic component that sets them apart from the rest of us? Because many people experience even worse trauma than Dahmer, but would never ever do what he did. What allows some people to turn violent thoughts into action and cross that line, that most people would never cross?
The episode where they showed his relationship develop with Tony and then for Dahmer to eventually still kill him, that episode was difficult to watch. Cause there you could really see the depravity in Dahmer.
I’m so grateful that the is at least another human sees the reason why JD ended up like this . Or at least explain the other side as I have been analysing him like this .
Speaking of medical procedures, I had lead poisoning as a toddler and was traumatized by Dr. taking my blood. To the point that I always look away when I get blood drawn or a shot. Getting an epidural during labor was a struggle because the thought of that needle was stressing me out.
His motive was NOT killing people. He actually said that the murders were a means to an end. He wanted sexual gratification & he wanted them to not leave him
Ya, I felt bad for his Gramma. Especially at the end when she had dementia & they had to search her home. Well & just the way he treated his Gramma, but she wasn't gonna deal with his shit & she even saved the 1 guy by staying up all nite with him.
He said it was very hard for him to do this part, I was wondering how he sleeps at night -does he have a lot of nightmares after American horror story and then this?
There’s one thing I keep seeing when it comes to these analyses and it seems they tend to make Dahmer out to be racist or racially-motivated. I want to make it very clear to anyone reading this. He was NOT motivated by race. He was motivated by the attractive male physique. Anyone he found attractive in the chest and upper arms he would target. It was NOT just black people as he targeted people of other races as well. His first two kills were white, others asian, others latino. The only reason the majority of his victims were black toward the end was a result of where he had situated himself. He was located pretty close to his job. His apartment was incredibly cheap. And yes, it could be argued that due to the times, this was the perfect hunting ground due to the fact that police didn’t much care about crimes or disappearances of black and/or gay people and that could be why he chose to live in such an area but let’s not misconstrue motivation for what he used to his advantage. Correlation≠causation in this scenario. And let this be clear that I am in no way minimizing the horror and tragedy that took place, especially as a person of the LGBTQ+ community, simply setting straight some misconceptions that are certainly understandable considering the amount of poc he killed.
They punished those two cops the best they could. Losing their jobs and pensions is serious. If being stupid and incompetent were a crime they would have went to jail.
Really liked the podcast. Very insightful. Just wanted to say one thing. Psychopaths are irreparable. They like playing games. Therapy or help or any understanding of their behavior coming from any kind of empathy does not help. I've seen this first hand. They are devious. That's the truth. And our empathy cannot save them. Laws might, repercussions might, but empathy or help doesn't. Not on them.
I like and respect that closing argument. I like the idea of treating every human being with empathy and try to provide treatment for them not just for the world's sake but for their own. I belive it's our duty as a society to help damaged people but most importantly trying to prevent their damages in the first place. That is the only way to stop these horrible things from happening. So no one has to go through unnecessary traumas, not the kids, not the offender, not the victims, not their families or anyone affected by the ripple effect. Question is how?
According to a journal entitled "Serial Killer Connections Through Cold Cases" which was published on the National Institute of Justice website in 2020 by Martin, Schwarting, and Chase, one of the signs of a serial violent individual is that they have MORE EMPLOYMENT, interpersonal, and substance abuse problems. So if someone here is working as an HR, though job hopping is now a trend, it might be a red flag too. Dig deeper and make sure to do thorough background checking.
at 1:51:00 - that platform could be prison abolition! many prison abolitionists argue for something very similar, often also advocating for transformative or restorative justice. i’d be interested in your reaction to some abolitionist perspectives. the Medium article “what about the rapists and murderers?” by Angel Parker might be relevant here
Idi Amin (the tyrannical president of Uganda in the 1970's) also had body parts in his refrigerator. I remember how his evil deeds shocked the world. He and Dahmer had very different lives, but they shared the same sadistic behaviors. People wondered if Amin was a cannibal. He denied it and said human flesh was "too salty".
I'm having a really hard time getting through this series as well. I think I'm part way through the 4th episode, but it just feels like I have too long a road to travel given the nature of this material. I would say that what I've seen so far has been pretty well done and Evan Peters is putting forth a surprisingly sensitive performance of someone who did some absolutely monstrous things. Which can be a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you don't want to depict someone like this as too sympathetic, but on the other hand, that kind of storytelling may be needed to begin to understand how his mind ended up the way it did. Part of me almost agrees with his mother that his brain should've been studied. I'm thinking that his psychopathy may have been a combination of nature and nurture. But honestly, how will we ever know. On the people worried about exploitation, it's completely understandable, especially the family and friends of the victims. When I first saw the series advertised on Netflix, I was pretty turned off. I also knew that it was from the same creator as American Horror Story, and that show can be pretty damned campy. But I heard some good things and decided to give it a try. It was not an easy watch in the least, and I didn't feel like they were glamorizing him at all. Dahmer was a nice looking man in real life, so casting an attractive person didn't feel inappropriate. I have yet to finish the whole series, like I said, but it seems they are taking an angle that tries to explain how he became the monster while not forgetting the sinister level of corruption, racism and homophobia that allowed him to get away with it so long. But for my own mental health, I can't binge this thing. Can't get it out of my head that it's not fiction and this really happened to real people.
So many people on social media were blaming his mom for everything saying that she was irrational and addicted to pills but I thought the show did a pretty good job of showing how a lot of her issues were the result of women back then having so few outlets for expression and self realization.
Thanks for this, was hoping you'd do a new Dahmer podcast. He always strikes me as a bit of an outlier compared to most famous killers. People like Ramirez and the BTK killer truly sadistically enjoyed torturing and killing people, Dahmer said the killing part was the least important to him and that he didn't enjoy it and tried to make it as painless as possible. The killing was basically a means to an end because he couldn't let the people get away or he would go to jail. It's also interesting that he expressed genuine remorse and he immediately confessed to all the killings, whereas people like Bundy continually tried to deny it until the very end. He took full responsibility and refused to blame his parents, violence in the media, social isolation or anything else.
I haven’t watched the show but I did see a documentary. And I don’t know how truthful this is but it said, after moving in with his religious grandmother he found a chance to renew himself. He was happy to go to church and really wanted to change his killer lifestyle. Eventually his sexual needs came back but he chose to drug them, have his way, then drop them off and not kill them. It wasn’t until he accidentally drugged himself after having a sip of the victims drink on accident that he blacked out and beat the victim to death. He said it wasn’t intentional but after that he felt like well I killed again so might as well keep going.
I don’t think he showed genuine remorse because he said himself he would’ve kept it going if he didn’t get caught. He couldn’t even remember the names of some of the people he killed. You can’t get much lower than that. Confessing was the least he could do and I’m glad he did but I just don’t think someone like him can ever feel genuine remorse for anything unfortunately.
I would actually consider Ramirez an outlier by himself. His methodology is so weird. No preferred ages, or races. Hoping between murder, SA and beatings. Randomly letting some victims go. Even the fact that he essentially went on a year-long spree with little organization or care. I would be interested in his analysis because he just seemed so... Utterly unstable it's a bit bizarre.
because at the end of the day, deep down he liked killing people. He just took full responsibility because he was smart enough to know that nobody else did it for him. He is a fucking horrible person.
@@alexisweakley8918 He might have been in an alcoholic blackout for some of his victims and that's why he couldn't remember their names. I think alcoholism played a big role in his depravity, giving him the liquid courage to lure and capture his victims.
Dahmer always said the killing never gave him pleasure and he had to get drunk to do it, but while in prison and sober he would regularly joke with inmates about his past activities.
One of my mother in law's chores as a kid who came from a family of farmers, was to feed the chickens. she had to witness her own mother behead those chickens and ever since then she cannot stomach the idea of eating chicken. beef? lamb? fish? sure, but chicken? no chance. she's in her 50's now btw.
Great episode. One bit of feedback is it is slightly difficult to stay focused when Berto often interrupts Kirk. Just something to be aware of for the podcast space.
Dr. Honda would you consider watching/going over the tv show The Patient? I think there is still one more episode to come out...but maybe once it's done you could do a series overview?
From my understanding, the problem victims' families have with the show is not the show itself but rather the context of production, and I would be inclined to agree with them. What's in the show may be tasteful but the context of rich producers making hard cash from a story about real peoples' suffering without bothering to ask them about their blessings, opinions, or anything, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Not to mention that they essentially ape or impersonate some of those people. It also implies they didn't actually ask how the victims were in real life, how they lived their lives, how they could feel. So it looks like exploitation of suffering, even if the people involved had good intentions. And I don't know if they did because I frankly don't trust corporations.
What may be scarier than anything is nothing out of the ordinary happened to Dahmer, this was just the way he was. Yes, part came from his Dad with regard to the urges but beyond that Dahmer thought he was being kind by drugging his victims prior to strangling them. Once they were dead he saw them as meat at a butcher shop, he could do what he wanted to them and they would comply by never abandoning him. I think he took the abandonment fear to the next level by actively participating in necrophelia then by consuming and preparing the meat. He wanted to be so close to them as to fully integrate them into his being, by digesting them. Just an observation.
The thesis that they made was that his only connection to his father was the mutual interest in taxidermy and road kill. In order to feel he had a relationship and anything in common with his father, the only real time they spent together, was when they were busy with analyzing animal parts. I think the series makes the argument that his attachment needs were being met when he was showing an interest in the animals. And in turn his father just wanted him to have any interest at all and so supported and encouraged his which fed back into the feedback loop for him that the only way to get love and attention from his father was to do what he was doing and this became a sexual fetish only as a result of this transference,
LOVE LOVE LOVE this episode, I start my day by watching your videos and man this one was awesome! I love all the points you touched on and the back and fourth conversation.... I wish I can can you more than 1 thumbs up!❤️
My husband and I work in the funeral industry and our baby is most likely going to grow up seeing dead people pretty frequently, I don’t think being around death is necessarily a bad thing I think it’s how you address it. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with kids being around it. 😂 even though I can cut into human remains all day for work, I probably couldn’t cut into dead animals for funsies.
I agree how you address it is very important but, why does your baby need to grow up seeing dead people frequently? You can have a career and not have your kids involved in it.
@@jenn7753 it’s not like we go on removals with him or have him in a bouncer in the embalming room but it’s pretty unavoidable when he is at the office 🤷🏻♀️ it’s the largest facility of its type in North America, so there is always going to be one out getting prepped for a witness cremation or being brought in or set up for a viewing. It’s just how it is. I hope he will take our approach and learn to be caring to the dead just like we are because a lot of people won’t even give their dead loved one one last hug or even go in the room because society tells them death is bad and yucky.
@@Woodman-Spare-that-tree maybe search in yourself why you think that a little. Nothing about a dead body is scarring or bad, society just tells you that it they are. They are just people, and respect shouldn’t end after death. :)
At 46 min and oscopy tips: i am 32 and have crohns. I’ve had colonoscopies and endoscopies almost yearly since I was 12. The worst part is the prep. Definitely recommend taking a shot of the prep every half hour. Nowadays I just quickly chug it through a straw
Dahmers father was a sociopath but had different comorbidities ASPD+NPD+PPD and psychologically and emotionally abused and tormented Dahmer and corrupted Dahmers instincts showed hi how to use formaldehyde gave him alcohol, isolated Dahmer from his mother and Dahmers father enmeshed his shame his anger his sadistic fantasies into Dahmer and corrupted Dahmer giving him no outlets to integrate into society, and his mother was also emotionally abusive as well, but his father completely abused and controlled Dahmer and exploited his fears.
I so was waiting on your take on this. I didn't want to watch it because it's bases on real accounts but would have love a mental health documentary on him.
Interesting dialogue, very easy to listen and digest. Next you should both talk about the people commenting about having the hots for Dahmer after watching the Netflix series. I found it so infuriating.
Majority of them like Evan Peters. While it is controversial and I agree that it’s wrong, it’s not going to stop. You can’t stop someone from being attracted to someone’s physical appearance.
The young boy who was escorted back to Dahmer was gut wrenching to watch. The fact that his brother was molested by Dahmer of course made it even more tragic. I'm not victim blaming at all, but I'm so confused as to why this boy went along with Dahmer when he was aware that Dahmer had harmed his brother? The family pursued legal action against Dahmer when he molested the older brother, but I wonder whether internally, as in, in the family, they really discussed what happened, which would have served as a warning to the other siblings not to go anywhere with strangers for money, especially not with Dahmer. In many cultures, including Asian cultures like this Laotian family, sexual assault is seen as shameful and often swept under the rug. Perhaps that's what happened within this family? In the later episodes the older brother of the victim is seen experiencing extreme PTSD from what Dahmer did to him... I wonder if he didn't really discuss it with his siblings (I know they were just kids when it happened, but later on). Because Konerak was the only victim who actually knew of Dahmer and how he was a bad guy before going into his apartment...
They never saw him or knew how he looked like , at that time the young boy was even younger so he didn’t know who Jeffrey was , they added that to the show that he knew Jeff from what Jeff did to his brother but that was just for show. In real life they didn’t know how he looked.
Hi dear Kirk and Humberto. Just wanted to jump in and tell you guys I loved listening to this episodes! The only thing that is bothering me is that not everything in the series is true or may be exaggerated! For example the thing with the parole officer. He had one that regularly visited him while he was murdering people!
I appreciated this conversation and in being able to reflect about how our society possibly creates such horror ( a collective failure), but I think what was missing was the focus on race and how JD targeted a very specific group of people. It was mentioned briefly, but would have liked more of it over what seemed like an effort to, perhaps, create empathy for the killer.
So many things to say on this one but I'll just say that I saw the ads for this show and I don't even have Netflix. It was played several times a day leading up to it. I even saw an ad in the movie theater.
The reason Jeffrey Dahmer died in jail is a little known fact. There was an argument between Jeffrey and another inmate. It was reported Jeffrey said, "Hey pal, I used to eat guys like you for breakfast." This escalated the situation.
You guys made some good points that I was thinking while I watched the series. You mention how the cops were thinking 'oh yeah this is just weird gay stuff' and in my mind, I think that's how Dahmer managed to get away with it for so long. He played it off as oh yeah don't go in that drawer there's just a bunch of 'gay stuff' and most of the time the cops who had their own prejudices would be like 'nah I don't really want to look into that'. He did that till the bitter end with that last guy who was able to get away. Luckily the cops that time actually did what they were supposed to and they looked at what was in his room even though they should've done that a very long time ago.
I'm kinda disappointed that comment from your friend on what he thought about what the police officer was doing ...... was mostly classist and homophobia and he did not mention racism... I didn't hear that... I saddened and surprised that was overlooked. I'm just reminded about how many lived expeirence are just discounted by unrecognized biases. When there has been a lot of documented proof of racist incidents with police and Bipoc communities esspecally then. I think yes homophobia was a big factor , classim yes but i do think racist biases about Bipoc played a large factor too. Even looking at how the officers were treated after the court case speaks volumes.... I think it would have been great that you had someone from the community comment on their thoughts on this. Also I'm just baffled by how sexualized Dahmer has been on tik toks and other psychopaths....
Yes Humberto you are right and I agree, it’s not wise (and arguably not psychologically safe) to expose children to animal dissection. It’d be best to avoid it. I 💯 agree! Let’s not do it.
The film is somewhat glorifying him in a way because it shows a lot of outside forces that might have contributed to his killing, which creates empathy. They kept saying he was alone, that he wanted attention, and that it was a cry for help. In reality he’s an evil person and if you watch documentaries they are much better on focusing on the gruesome crimes. No matter how many outside forces may have influenced his actions, there’s no justification for those actions. Yeah the cops were at fault, yes the parents were dysfunctional, yes he had no friends, and yes he dissected animals in his free time. There are some people in this world who may go through similar experiences, but never end up being killers at all. That is the big problem I have with this film.
The things that you think are problems are actually the strengths I find in the series. I always find this theme Nature vs Nature in psychology super fascinating. Of course there's no justification for his sins but what I believe is every human being definitely does not react the same way. How can we be sure every human "react" similarly to a similar problem? There will always be that 1 percent who will react 'differently'.
Very interesting listen. I am 52 and in uk now they suggest a blood test is more effective for the colon check. There are interviews with dahmer in prison discussing the problem between the parents ( i think with both parents) to their faces. Its chilling stuff.
I’m at the beginning of this podcast, but I’m so glad you’re reviewing this show. I personally found it hard to get through, but the reason why is because I think the writers did a great job of centering the humanity of those who were victimized by J.D. They really amplified the elements about this case that have been intentionally omitted for far too long. Re: Anne Hesch & Pain management I think it’s terrible the way we criminalize pain management in this country while propping up a system that works to keep so many from having access to holistic resources that can heal them. It is absolutely beneficial to pump people with meds (although they can be helpful when prescribed correctly) and to keep their environment in complete chaos. There’s so much to say there!
Are you sure about your comments here? If I'm reading you right, you believe that it's fine to pump people full of drugs while keeping their environment chaotic. How can this possibly be beneficial?
@@slister45 Yes, I am sure. I think my sarcasm didn’t come through here. It’s beneficial to the pharmaceutical companies and the entire medical industry.
This was very interesting! I always appreciate both of your insights into these cases. Dahmer is fascinating in a way because there doesn’t seem to be any huge red flags into his upbringing to help you better understand his horrible compulsions. I would be super interested for you to do a deep dive into the Parkland school shooter Nicholas Cruz. His trial is going on right now and there are many details emerging of his upbringing and the many ignored warning signs of his troubling behavior throughout his life.
Jeffrey was an alcoholic by the time he was about only 14 years old. The neglect in that house and constant screaming, fighting, did him in. He didn't feel love and didn't want his entire life to feel unloved. He was gay at a time where you'd be tossed out on the street for being gay. He had extemre self loathing. I wrote this elsewhere: everybody's experience is relative. Perfect storm, someone said. He is 1 of the only serial killers who never really actually wanted to kill, who actually had true remorse before his death, he just wanted love and to not be alone, not be abandoned. Watch his last words to the judge before sentencing. Watch his interviews with Lionel. He never wanted to become a monster and he's one of the only ones who recognizes what he did was abhorrently wrong. He told the judge he asked for no lenience in his sentencing, he did not want his parents blamed. He is probably the only huge serial killer who took full responsibility for his many many deranged crimes. It seemed he was ready to die. Ready to pay for his crimes. I'm of the belief that he tried to bait people into murdering him in prison. Well, it worked (my thoughts). Watch his speech on UA-cam. Lots of trial footage.
Bundy happened to be an aspiring law student & even worked w one of the political parties closely. As did John Wayne Gacy was very high up kn the tow w the JCs & the community. He even had aspirations to be governor
Regarding Dahmer's hernia surgery surgery as a child: I'm just a few years younger than him. I was hospitalized when I was 3 years old, I was in the hospital for 3 weeks. I was in the hospital alone. My family visited for maybe an hour or 2 on some days (not daily). I have memories of the giant crib, the room, the other kids, the smell, the feel of the wash cloths, the echo of the sounds. To this day have difficulty with fear of abandonment. I believe that hospital experience is responsible for that. Dahmer seemed to have a number of other stressors in his childhood. He didn't catch a single break in life, which doesn't excuse his crimes but it sure didn't help.
He has ASPD as well
@@kariann3198 No. People suspect he may have had ASPD but there was no official diagnosis.
May I ask you.. have you ever had the need to "keep" someone? Your fear of abandonment.. were you awkward with opposite sex? I mean, we all are to an extent but please tell me .. did you ever feel an abnormal need to keep someone you loved closer than close to you? And to try to make you feel comfortable enough to answer that I will share slightly.. I was an only child and also share a fear of a andonment. I had a hard time connecting to others and learned to mimick .. I struggle with substance abuse and chose to enter into therapy but it never goes away.. may I ask what you were hospitalized for and at what age and how that has played out for you? may I add that I was a 70's baby and my mom lost three before me and she was heavily medicated so to not loose me ..hence. . I am the real bi-polar with schizophrenic tendencies.. I heard the whispers as a child but grew out of it... Let's talk .
@@kariann3198 ASPD doesn't make someone a monster. I deal with psychopathy (don't meet diagnostic criteria for ASPD mainly because my symptoms at the time more closely aligned with psychopathy 1 vs psychopathy 2.)
How do we know you don't eat people either
I'm 44 and I remember clearly as a child hearing adults say things like "animals don't feel pain they same way we do" or babies don't remember pain/trauma. Adults did not feel like they needed to be particularly nice to children. People cursed at kids, smoked around them. There was a lot of emphasis on not "being a baby" about feelings, physical pain. Children were often left to their own devices outside all day. Back then it wasn't uncommon for parents to split and the dad just left and never comes back "A clean break". Things were very. very different but still no excuse
People get it wrong. Their perceptions skewed. Animals are more Stoic than us because they dont necessarily feel as deeply as we do, and dont sit over thinking and doubting themselves, or sit with regret and shame like humans. They live truly in accordance with nature and their own, and go with the flow and take life as it comes, and they get on with it. Animals with a nervous system and a brain feel pain to warn of possible damage to themselves, like we do. Animals dont feel anger and spite as deeply as us humans. We can be the cruelest of animals because of that. Animals show a semblance of anger and hate, but not like man. Aggression isnt same as Anger or hate/rage we see in humans. Animals are more Stoic than us. They can just drop things and get on with their life, even after nearly getting eaten, or having a brutal fight over a mate. They can go fall asleep or start to graze after showing extreme fear or aggression. Animals dont turn mole hills into mountains, like us humans with our over active imagination. We all feel, but we all feel differently, we all perceive and judge things differently. We are animals too, but we all have different components and that determines our ability. Different beings perceive things differently, we all do. How a bear perceives and judges reality and the stimulus of life and the events/situations that happens to it. Will be different to your own. We can feel sorry for things, that dont feel sorry for its self, it will take life as it happens and get on with it, despite how you think it looks, licking its wounds etc. Dont think for a minute a bear or lion feels sorry for its self like a human does. We are our own worse enemies when it comes to that type of pain and torment humans can cause themselves. In that sence some animals dont feel pain like we do. They feel pain as in the stimulus caused by harm. But the type of self inflicted mental and inner pain humans cause themselves isnt the same in some animals. Theyre more Stoic than us 😎👍
Lol people split more now...waaaaay more
Dahmer should have received help his first grade teacher said that he was neglected
@@Woodman-Spare-that-tree Me, too. Or, furthermore, that you owed a huge bill at age eighteen for necessities accrued during childhood. I'm surprised we're not ALL serial killers !! What an awful time.
I remember adults believing that kids just can't remember things until about age 5.
What makes the case with the 14 year old boy even more tragic is that Jeffrey had gone to court for molesting his older brother (who was still a child) and got away but Jeffrey got released and pretty much suffered no consequence. And those officers actually didn’t even get fired, they were suspended for a short amount of time and got their jobs back. Truly so disgusting how not only Jeffrey was so twisted but the system just let him get away with it. So sad
Yep! And he was on parole w that crime when he went on his giant killing spree
Still happening today all the time too. So sad.
The piss poor cops got back pay when they were reinstated by a judge. They must be so proud.
One of the officers; John Balcerzak became the president of the Milwaukee Police Association in 2005.
And those cops got back pay too.
One example of exposing them to healthy sexuality would be healthy physical affection between parents. Seeing your parents hug and kiss and cuddle is innocent but gives a love map to lock into.
Thank you, people really need to understand that this detail actually can affect some kids.
Most parents now days aren’t even together
@@juliettezea9507 exactly, so what op is saying is moot
As someone born and raised in Milwaukee, I couldn't watch this Netflix series. I tried, but it was just too much. I remember being 9 months pregnant and watching the news in August of 1991. I remember the huge vats being wheeled out of his apartment building. It still makes me physically ill and so sad for victims' families.
I was 4 months pregnant in August of 1991 and gave birth to a boy in January of '92. I was in grad school getting a masters in counseling, so Dahmer was often the topic of conversation with my classmates and professors.
I lived on 25 th street as a 3 year old on Wisconsin ave and 25th street and my father had a carpet cleaning business and he contacted my father to clean his carpet I don't think any of this is funny that area of downtown milwaukee was really dangerous during that time and how racist it was at that time with the police and the milwaukee county city government I remember at that time the northside certain parts of all white and certain parts was all black
@@Traveljetsetter954 It's not funny at all. It's heartbreaking & horrific.
From what I've read about Dahmer, he wasn't a sadist, but he was a necrophile. He wanted a completely passive partner who couldn't reject him and wouldn't require anything of him, basically a human object. And his fantasies only grew darker and more deviant as time went on.
I wonder if he also had partialism - a sexual attraction to a specific part of the body - but instead of fixating on external features, he got aroused from internal things like bones and organs.
He definitely was a sadists he ate people and killed people
he was attracted to inner organs sexually.
EWWW but also very interesting
The show revealed how Dahmer constantly felt alone, unlovable, and desperate for closeness. But he also seemed afraid of closeness at the same time... afraid that he'd be rejected and they'd leave, etc. I empathize with these emotions, which aren't uncommon. SO, why did he deal with those emotions through murder? Tons of people feel that way and had early traumas, but would never do what he did. It makes me think that there must be some genetic or medical component involved here...neurological impairment to impulse control or empathy? I dont want to believe trauma and desperation alone led to this. But it's puzzling.
I think for him it was a ‘perfect’ storm. People are wonderfully individual and each layer of him add up to equal something unique and horrific.
Wow that's well put. My train of thoughts exactly after watching the series.
Edit: on second thought, he had the chance to have healthy/consensual relationships but that didn't not satisfy him and maybe that's where most people can't relate/ emapathize with him
I thought about this too. Feeling lonely, empty, and having a hard time with people leaving makes total sense. I feel bad catagorizing his childhood trauma as "not that severe", as everything affects everyone differently, but what he went through as a child feels almost minute in comparison to what he went on to do to others. But watching the documentary it's clear that he was a necrophiliac with severe abandonment issues. Knowing this, his actions make more sense. He was not only a gay man desperate for closeness, he was sexually disturbed and the only thing that could satisfy his needs was a completely submissive man that would not leave him and that he could do whatever he wanted with.
Lot of people in that exact same scenario wouldn't have turned out like him. We want a reason to understand someone like that. It comes from a place of empathy. So that itself wouldn't allow us to ever understand that behavior. The lack of 3mpathy is what brings about that behavior. And many people wouldn't comprehend it.
He talks a lot in interviews how he wanted closeness, but also wanted to have complete control over their actions. He literally says in the show "I just want a guy who wants to see the same movie *I* wanna see". He basically wanted a person who would never leave them, and who would do anything they want. So to him, the concept of them having free will was viscerally terrifying because, in his mind, nobody with freedom of choice would ever want to stay with him.
That is SAD. That is so, so so sad. And it really messed with my head because seeing scenes like that, I almost felt bad for the guy! And I'd have to remind myself that he still brutally raped and murdered almost 20 people. I don't need that kind of cognitive dissonance in my life.
This is my own theory about Dahmer after watching many interviews and documentaries on him. I always found his need for understanding his compulsions and acknowledgment that everything he did was horrific and wrong was unique in a way that you rarely witnessed from other serial killers.
I want to first make clear I am not a "fan" of his, I do think he was incredibly sick and emotionally and socially crippled but I am a fan of the psychological side that makes a human go from fantasising terrible things to actually doing them.
Thr first thing is when it came to Jeffrey and the roadkill, he was already fascinated by it as their house was on a large woodland property that, in the early stages of this "hobby", Jeffrey would explore and started to find these things on his own, often they were in the advanced stages of decay.
His father, being a chemist, was - for lack of a better word - desperate for Jeffrey to show an interest in SOMETHING, ANY THING. So when the boy started being fascinated with dead animals, roadkill and their individual inner parts, his father Lionel decided to give Jeffrey a hand finding it as a way to bond and spend time with his son because his mother was often too busy with her own life/suffering to put any effort nurturing their eldest son.
Lionel thought Jeffrey was interested in preserving the skeleton so he showed him how to properly strip the decaying meat and flesh off the bones and preserve the skeleton, like they display in museums of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Plenty of humans take part in this hobby, as morbid as it might seem to others but they do.
I honestly believe that Jeffrey had a fear of people leaving him, ever since he was a child, starting with his mother suddenly abandoning him, which turned from fear to absolute frustration. The killing of people was his minds very immature and irrational way of working out how to make them stay.
He never wanted to hurt anyone, he knew it was hurting them but that is why he drugged them, so that they wouldn't be conscious while he killed them. He is different from a sadist as they enjoy the moments of fear and suffering before their victims die. They want to draw it out for their own amusement. Again, I am not romanticising or condoning anything he did as it was obviously cruel and wrong but that was his irrational way of getting them to stay.
He didn't know how to form a relationship and get someone to stay because they genuinely *liked* things about him, Jeffrey didn't even really like anything about himself so how would a stranger see those things if he didnt? He didn't know how to put forth his good traits because he didn't believe he had any but he craved someone that would stay.
To me, it's very much like a small child throwing a violent tantrum, smacking and pulling their parents hair, when their parent needs to go out, the behaviour is the last thing that would make the parent want to be close to the child but in that scenario, the parent knows its the childs desperate attempt to show their fear and insecurity and try to get them to stay.
But it's one thing seeing this with a 4-6 year old child. It's another to see it out of an 18 year old young man. Plus you add puberty, self hate and repression due to being gay and being raised in a very conservative family during a conservative time, and his addiction to drinking starting around middle school, I think are all things that contributed and snowballed into the man that he became unfortunately.
I agree. And I also think there is a very strong possibility that he was on the Autistic Spectrum, and that certainly didn't help the situation either. I think it's also insightful to see this quote by Dr.Frederick Fosdal, who interviewed Dahmer for a total of 20 hours; ″They were not brutal, sadistic acts. He said he killed them in the most painless way he knew. It all boils down to the question of control.″
I just think it's a very tragic story for everyone involved. I think the best we can do is to learn as much as we can from it and try to prevent it from ever happening again.
No Facebook for 60 DAYS??
😱😱😱
I’d send them a Thank You note. 🎁
It sounds like you have compassion for him, that makes me not wanna kill myself so much.
This makes a LOT of sense actually
Wrong. His father was a sociopath like Dahmer and abused and corrupted Dahmer
I agree that parents that argue constantly have a massive negative impact. My mom and her sister turned to drugs and alcohol starting as teenagers and never stopped both died at 44
I keep going back to the issue of his diagnosis of schizoid personality disorder (a severe attachment disorder) and him stating, that he wanted his victims to "stay within him"...
he seemed to have absolutely no ability to connect to other humans in any way or form.
This then becoming a terrible problem when he hit puberty during which humans are driven to connect, physically, mentally and emotionally, to others.
The missing "software" to build human connections combined with sexual desires might have turned into a recipe for disaster in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer.
True, I finished Grilling Dahmer by Patrick Kennedy, the detective who interrogated him and Jeff had said he wanted to become one with his victims. In a very disturbing fashion, let's just say he became the real Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre at a point during his crimes and more. Needless to say I needed to take a small pause, there are some moments in the book where they do and don't hold back any details
He was diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder, a schizophrenia spectrum disorder which doesn't cause hallucinations and delusions like schizophrenia but does cause the person to have a magical/very odd/borderline delusional way of perceiving the world around them.
I don't remember him being diagnosed as schizoid, but he also was diagnosed with bpd, which similarly severely affected his attachment to others. Except, in the opposite way, instead of being super detached from others he actually was extremely clingy even if he tried to hide those emotions from others. But his stpd (schizotypal) and bpd made it hard for him to connect to people in the first place, as he always appeared odd. Personally I think he had autism since asd and stpd can look so similar (you can also have both), and my main reason for that is because he was always considered a loner and had weird, specific interests, even by his own dad, meanwhile you can't technically diagnose a child with a personality disorder.
It's hard because as someone who had an upbringing very similar to Dahmer's, from the medical trauma, to relational trauma and neglect/abuse from parents, to substance abuse in my teens, and even having interests like Dahmer's (biology, taxidermy, anatomy etc), I didn't end up killing people or even fantasizing about doing that. What made him go down that road but made me not?
@Sonna Not to defend Dahmer but in his interviews he said that he didn't like the killing part. He had to drink heavily and watch the Exorcist III to get into the mood. As for torture in the form of dismemberment and rape, I don't think he intended to torture them. He just wanted to have total control over them and make them stay with him forever.
But then again he could have been full of it and lacked empathy and didn't care about anyone else.
@@dalee72 Not buying that.
@Sonna Yes, to us it's torture. But in his sick mind he didn't think of it as torture.
@Sonna Yes, he was a sick and twisted person. Thank God God he's no longer on this earth. It's tragic and sad that he had to take 17 or more people with him.
@@dalee72 Alcohol should be illegal to consume lol. In my opinion it's the main reason why this guys feelings were so potent to commit thise crimes. If he didn't drink and become drunk I think he would've committed those sick crimes. I mean come in...eating human flesh. He definitely was wasted 100%
This may seem ‘simple’ of me because it has nothing to do with Jeffery’s psychopathy, but I’ve read a few books and I’ve seen all the shows that profile him, but I’ll never understand how someone working at Club 219 never put 2 + 2 together with Jeff and the last guy that went missing. A large number of his victims were known to leave the club with him and they were never seen again. Nobody thought there might be a problem there? Nobody connected the dots after 3, 4, 5 guys went missing from the club after meeting Jeffery?
I know it was 1990, but I went to clubs all over Boston at that time, and I just don’t see how someone didn’t make any connection between Jeff and the string of guys that were never seen again after leaving the club with him. 🤷🏻♂️
That's the thing though, even if they did connect the dots, think about his neighbour who was calling the police CONSTANTLY to report strange things going on in his apartment and she was disregarded and dismissed.
Even if someone at the club did suspect Jeffrey, considering the clubs he went to were in the African American community, his victims were mostly coloured as well, and the majority of cops were white and homophobic, it was unlikely that they would have been taken seriously.
It is a very sad and unfortunate set of circumstances that allowed Jeffrey Dahmer to get away with his crimes for as long as he did.
A missing adult man, especially one the police homophobicly dismiss as living a certain lifestyle, is not going to be investigated very thoroughly.
Even if a bartender had a gut feeling,the police would say "what is your relationship to the missing person? How do you know Dahmer doesn't just talk these guys into catching the next bus out to San Francisco? Adults can go missing even if it upsets their friends and family"
Ask me how I know. I worked in gay bars in LA during the 90s. It's hard to get investigations into missing adults. You might as a concerned stranger or acquaintance get them to do a wellness check if you had enough information. But even then.
Without the body or more signs of foul play to indicate and abduction, they don't do much.
@@jabberjaws94 hate to break it to you, but that neighbor you're talking about, and I assume you mean the one you know from the Netflix drama, never lived in the same building as him. The only times when his actual neighbors complained was about the smell, and never about suspicion of murders and such. In fact, his real neighbors took a liking to him
He lived in a complex completely ran by crack..nobody was calling the cops no matter what they probably didn't even notice anything besides their addictions tbh
I'm pretty sure that Club 219 wasn't the only gay bar he went to, plus he also encountered his victims on the streets and malls.
I listened to the guy who played dahmer and he said they purposefully shot it from one of the victims point of view every episode and not glorifying dahmer...I think people are just fascinated by the psychology of how somebody could end up doing such depraved acts
You're right about the reasons for people being so fascinated by Dahmer. His crimes are, arguably, the most depraved ever encountered in modern history. The manner of death and dismemberment of his victims is bad enough. The necrophelia and consumption of the remains are beyond anything we, as a society, have ever had to deal with. It's all so unimaginable that it is fascinating, the same way that any disaster that befalls humanity is fascinating. It's unbelievable, but it's true!
I watched two episodes and had to stop. So dark and traumatic to think about what his victims went through and see it portrayed so vividly.
How retraumatizing and painful for the victims and their families.
I disagree with Humberto! There are so many people with a healthy interest in horror, taxedermy, anatomy etc and like Kirk said those people go on to become Biologists, Anatomists, Surgeons, Morticians etc totally healthy expression of the interest, it's not fair to project a once in a lifetime crazy person onto every else!!
I'm very interested in hearing more about the effects of medical trauma in childhood.
I love listening to you explain why people do what they do I wish you do a video on why people steal things over and over
I feel like there would be multiple reasons. Depends.
I would think: desperation (if stealing necessary items like food, hygiene).
Immaturity and/or entitlement/lack of empathy.
To get a rush/dopamine seeking
My family on my dad's side would always steal. Interested to know why.
On the poverty side you feel like you deserve things others feel entitled to and you feel like the other people can recuperate faster than you. Also if it's from an institution like say Wal mart you might feel like the institution is itself stealing from their workers.
On the upperclass side it can be a very for help. There's a lot of fun movies about rich girls going crazy and acting out more and more to see who will stop them because they go unnoticed by society and want more direct attention. People act out for love. Also- general entitlement, sometimes a God complex- feeling advice consequence.
The whole deal of stealing, the leading up to it, the thrill of getting caught etc is so intense that it blocks out any unwanted thoughts or other feelings. It occupies the mind. Then the ultimate rewarding feelings of getting away with it make it desirable and wanting that again and again. Dr. Kirk has explained it a bit with Winona Ryder if I remember correctly. Stuff like gambling and losing lots of money, anything compulsive could be on the OCD spectrum and stem for example from childhood trauma. (If that helps from not a Doc or therapist haha)
He's done a few kleptomania episodes I'm pretty sure.
By the time he ran into Steven Hicks he already had been consistently fantasizing about taking advantage of a hitchhiker & was intensely attracted to the male chest/torso and Steven having his chest out hitch hiking felt like the perfect opportunity to him
IKR!? If only his grandmother hadn't thrown his mannequin away! It might have saved lives. The mannequin also got him used to having a sexual partner that was still, quiet, and compliant so he could create his fantasy and do whatever he wanted. He didn't like partners who had their own ideas about sexual activities. He needed to be in control.
@@slister45 BS he would've got tired if the mannequin and still killed. I'm not buying him saying that he didn't like killing. That's BS to me
@@8luvbug Okay
@@slister45 In real life, his grandmother DID not throw his mannequin away. And yes, I do not believe that would have saved lives.
@@Qwerty-db1js Okay. It was just a thought I had and expressed. I don't mind being wrong, and appreciate polite corrections.
I really feel his parents did a number on him psychologically
It’s sad that so many who need mental health help are failed
He clearly needed assistance
He was failed as was society
My heart breaks for all his victims that the cops didn’t care enough about
Sadly not surprised
They miss so much that’s right in front of their eyes
That is not an excuse to kill people... If you were right then a lot of people would be entitled to kill. Please be sensible
@@nirvanaselic
Empathy much?
Don’t think so
@@heatherhensley9183 Empathy has its limit. He had necrophiliac fantasies that likely never would have gone away even with a good childhood and support.
Possibly really no way to know since he never had consistent therapy
Dr Honda discusses human behavior on his most recent comments episode how u can’t predict human behavior
@@heatherhensley9183 This is the same man who molested a minor and brutally murdered a 14 year old boy. Once you harm kids you get no empathy from me . Sorry not sorry. I don't care how shitty your upbringing is, that doesn't give you the right to go out and do what he did.
When I was little I spent many nights imagining killing my abuser. When I was older I lashed out at anyone who threatened me and nearly killed an ex boyfriend who threatened me. I'm old now and have learned that the abuse I encountered was running my life. It no longer does.
I did that also .. I planned out the murder for long time .. down to how I would have to cut them up in the bathtub an then how would I get rid of the evidence .. after much thought an planning I realized I would not be able to pull this off an I gave up on the plan thank goodness
also THANK YOU for suggesting we PREVENT the neglect of kids instead of turning their misery into entertainment. honestly we dont do enough to make all parents aware of what they need to do to protect their kids rights
If you wanna do a psychology discussion about a scripted, fictional TV show: HBO's 'House of the Dragon' has a lot of complicated family dynamics and enmeshment. I personally find the characters of Alicent and Viserys really compelling: They are torn up - in conflict with themselves and the external interests of their family.
He probably will. He has done Game of Thrones already.
I have had a difficult Childhood with mentally absent parents. At 15 I went to a mental health doctor for help. One week later I had an accident and couldn’t visit the doctor. He called my telephone number and my mum was on the phone. so she got to know my plan. She rushed to the hospital, made me looking ridiculous and had forbidden to go there again, because „i shouldn’t make things up“. That was 1983. I was depressed then and I am depressed since then, for 40 years now. Imagine that! No therapy later could have helped me any more.
I wish you well. Emotionally absent you mean (now that i m thinking of it mentally is valid too lol but for most ppl sadly). I visited a psychiatrist at 22yo & he diagnosed me w depression/prescribed meds after literally 1 phrase:"ppl are bad" (i eent for migraines, i wasn t sad, i didn t mean all ppl but he didn t bother to ask. With a condescending look he told me:"you should had come earlier" (like i was some lost case). I m 40yo & i think ppl are dumb (the normal ones who re able of living unconsciously & gave up their humanity. I wouldn t like such parents either & there isn t much difference. It isn t a matter of time imo bcs an empathetic, attuned mother just wouldn t do what you describe.
I could not bring myself to watch the show after reading the details of the crimes. I can’t imagine how much pain must have been felt by those families. Idk, if I’m just in my feelings or because I have a brother in that age group but the thought of anyone doing that to him is horrific. I would think it would be incredibly hard to see them be reduced to their last moments and have it be immortalized and used for entertainment.
I think part of why this hits close to home for me is having had family members be kidnapped/disappeared in Mexico. A lot of the relatives of missing people in Mexico talk about how it’s a fate worse than death because you just don’t know what happened you don’t know if they are being tortured or have been dumped in a mass grave. There isn’t a body you can at least mourn or a grave where you can drop off flowers
While I agree that it can’t be expected that this type of media won’t be made, I do think that by the nature of cinematography and story telling it does sensationalize these issues. Regardless of how careful the people in these productions are, we all may have to sit with the discomfort that no one ever wins in these stories even if some depictions are better than others.
I think it’s heinous to be profiting off of the dramatization of this horrific story. I refuse to watch it out of respect for the families. This isn’t a very distance thing. Many of those effected by this are very much alive and some have spoken out about having to relive this tragedy. I can’t get behind this.
I really love how you guys show empathy for the show creators and the victims and show the nuance. I will say, especially the "silenced" episode did put the focus on the victims more than most true crime. Like, I cried so much during this show.
I will say one thing that I really don't like about how they handled the little boy's story is that Dahmer actually asked to take his picture while he was at a mall. Dahmer's whole thing there would be to walk up to people and say "wow you look like a model" and offer to do photography. I'm not saying that if Dahmer had been offering the boy beer that the victim would have been "asking for it", but you shouldn't imply that he was into underage drinking if there isn't evidence of that.
This show exposed a lot of the problems our society has, consumption of alcohol being one of them. It's not the reason why he killed them, but it was a part of the problem. And this series + the LIB episode about Jared's drinking just made me realize it even more.
I also felt the father grasped at different “reasons” for how Jeffry turned out (blaming the mom/hernia surgery) because he may have been trying to avoid the guilt he felt for having the same fantasies believing he may have passed that down to Jeffry.
He passed it down with calculation he trained Dahmer on how to be a killer he had ASPD like Dahmer but different comorbidities
@@kariann3198 I believe you're absolutely correct.
And the hernia op at such a young age in basic terms was he went to hospital and the adults/doctors made him go to sleep/unconscious and when he awoke he had a hole in his body where had been operated on, this is what he did to his victims kinda.
He also asked his mom if his penis had been cut off after surgery. I think he had anesthesia awareness.
@@8luvbug I never thought of that, you could be right as it makes sense, bravo
@@patriciaburns1033 what did they say?
@@v.xien. who?
The more I hear about this story I can that no one can claim that no one had a childhood or life like Jeff. So the statement “other people had shitty childhoods but it didn’t make them monsters” just isn’t accurate because these people did not have his dna, his parents, his surgeries, his home environment and so on. I am sure the combination of all that shot that happened with him is the reason it’s not one thing. I don’t think anyone can excuse his actions but there are definately reasons.
Can’t wait to listen to this later! Ever since I became a mom, I’ve been so intrigued by serial killers and how their childhoods effected them, probably just to help calm my irrational fear that my kids will grow up and turn out to be like that 😅 Thats definitely one of the top 5 calls you don’t want to get as a parent 😭
what the other top 4?
Wow it never occurred to me that a parent would consume this content to educate themselves on parenting (well done!)
@@areebah2528
-Top 5: We've discovered that your son is a serial killer...
-Top 4: We've discovered that your son is a serial child rapist...
Top 3: We've discovered your son is a Mafia Boss responsible for thousands of deaths, kidnappings, tortures...
Top 2: Your son is the new leader of a terrorist organization, and has killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, and is planning to bring a nuclear apocalypse...
Top 1: Ma'am, haven't you heard? Your son is the new Adolf Hitler!!!
@@areebah2528 haha I don’t actually have a list but I would say things like getting a call your child has been killed, getting a call from your child telling you they killed somebody, your kid is missing, etc. 😅
@@Madeinargentina92 thank you! You’re probably giving a bit more credit than deserved because a lot of it has to do with me having irrational fears 😂 I do try hard to make sure I’m not messing them up, hopefully it pays off 😅💓
If you're interested in how trauma is the cause of virtually every addiction, check out Dr. Gabor Mate and, in particular, his book in the realm of hungry ghosts
Putting Dahmer at the center of attention in the show is understandable since he caused the whole thing and he will draw views but after all the show was not solely about exploiting the gruesomeness of the crimes but the show also shines light on the social problems and police incompetence.
Maybe they should’ve chosen a different sub title, and a bit less of Dahmers past and more of the victims lives and made the show around that angle completely. But then again, the title and first part of the show seem to be like a clickbait to then really show the center of the problem that’s bigger than Dahmer.
I haven't seen it yet, snippets of other docs, but I would like for some of these movies/documentaries to zone in a bit more on who the victim is, as to make the audience realise that 1. This is real. 2. And its really happening to people like us. 3. Help other victims realise they're not alone in falling for/seeing the good in- a person that is a monster behind closed doors. 4. Always believe someone asking for help.
Cause these crazy things unfortunately happen, it would be cool to see a little on how to spot a sociopath or a psychopath (maybe specific to the case) and how people that knew them might have known if they had listened to their gut feeling.
I'm typing a way too long comment 😅 sorry.
I was waiting for you to do an episode on this! I watched your podcast episode from a few years back but im glad youre doing a version on the tv show!
Funny thing, when I heard Kirk and Umberto speaking about Dhamer compassionately creating boundaries to stop him from harming others yet getting his needs met… I actually gave into compassion for myself fit the first time. It occurred to me, I’m nothing close to a Dhamer and if he deserves love and attachment as a human right, then we all do. Creating a system to protect victims and heal criminals might be a better path to end crime. Maybe people commit crimes because they can’t identify with the humanity in themselves and others. It’s the same reason we punish criminals in the way we do, we can’t identify with them.
There are some criminals you just can’t heal. Do you honestly think someone like Dahmer could be fixed?
When dogs are rabid and pose a threat to society, we put them down. Serial killing child rapists should be no exception. Sometimes people are just irreversibly defective.
@@ShesMongolianASMR I don’t know… I just feel hopeful. I wouldn’t free him to test it. The risk is too great for any benefit we could get.
I just think there are ways we can humanly treat criminals that might decrease the recidivism rate in inmates who could be freed.
but criminals aren't human beings. Human beings don't do that sort of thing. I don't believe in humanising bad people. I think they should all be dehumanised.
@@SuperMichelleDJ I'm glad you're not the one making the decisions about how we mete out criminal justice in this, or any, country. I'm a little worried about you and your connection to your own humanity, given your willingness to deny the humanity of anyone convicted of a crime. There's a very good reason why we shouldn't judge one another. It's because we can't. Try not to be so hard on yourself.
There was a recording of the officers after they dropped off the boy to dahmer, the officers were joking how they need to “delouse” after interacting with gay guys
That was so disgusting. At first I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they were too afraid to misstep, I thought. Still not a good reason to basically enable everything that ensued after, but it would have made it understandable to a certain extent. However, after hearing that recording, all I felt was rage towards those individuals. They obviously couldn't have cared less as long as they got away with it, which they did.
Yeah. SO much homophobia at that time, and it was so common. When I heard about Dahmer at the time it happened, there was a lot of whisperings about the gay element of it, almost as if it should be expected that the victims were gay? It was pretty bad in the 80's and into the 90's.
I thought the delouse thing was a racial slur as the boy was Laotian, the country of origin being Laos.
@@edenferriss768 a louse is a parasitic bug
Oh boy. Watching the series in a binge fashion over a two day period resulted in me not being able to get the whole thing out of my head. I am having dreams about the crimes. It brings back the whole story and I am so angry that the victims and families experienced these traumas. Dahmer was so manipulative and his dad and grandmother enabled him!
I'm 32, and the worst part of a colonoscopy is the taste of the prep. The actual procedure is just you falling asleep and waking up not feeling a thing.
Totally! The prep is disgusting 😒
Where can I get one of Humbertos' rulers?
I have been waiting for your take on this...
For "true" psychopaths, is there some measurable, scientific "neurological impairment" or identifiable genetic component that sets them apart from the rest of us? Because many people experience even worse trauma than Dahmer, but would never ever do what he did. What allows some people to turn violent thoughts into action and cross that line, that most people would never cross?
Isn't lack of empathy the key to identifying psychopaths?
There is...& science is slowly getting there. Their brains are literally different in certain areas than others'.
The episode where they showed his relationship develop with Tony and then for Dahmer to eventually still kill him, that episode was difficult to watch. Cause there you could really see the depravity in Dahmer.
Alcohol abuse or subtance usage played the biggest role in the damage of mostly a lot of people
I’m so grateful that the is at least another human sees the reason why JD ended up like this . Or at least explain the other side as I have been analysing him like this .
Speaking of medical procedures, I had lead poisoning as a toddler and was traumatized by Dr. taking my blood. To the point that I always look away when I get blood drawn or a shot. Getting an epidural during labor was a struggle because the thought of that needle was stressing me out.
His motive was NOT killing people. He actually said that the murders were a means to an end. He wanted sexual gratification & he wanted them to not leave him
Watch the other episodes - it shifts focus from dahmer to victims, witnesses and family stories.
Ya,
I felt bad for his Gramma.
Especially at the end when she had dementia & they had to search her home.
Well & just the way he treated his Gramma, but she wasn't gonna deal with his shit & she even saved the 1 guy by staying up all nite with him.
Also I just love Peter Evans, the actor. I didn't recognize him at first!
He said it was very hard for him to do this part, I was wondering how he sleeps at night -does he have a lot of nightmares after American horror story and then this?
Evan Peters.
Per Dr. Amen a lot of post surgery issues comes from the use of anesthesia and the impact on brain.
There’s one thing I keep seeing when it comes to these analyses and it seems they tend to make Dahmer out to be racist or racially-motivated. I want to make it very clear to anyone reading this. He was NOT motivated by race. He was motivated by the attractive male physique. Anyone he found attractive in the chest and upper arms he would target. It was NOT just black people as he targeted people of other races as well. His first two kills were white, others asian, others latino. The only reason the majority of his victims were black toward the end was a result of where he had situated himself. He was located pretty close to his job. His apartment was incredibly cheap. And yes, it could be argued that due to the times, this was the perfect hunting ground due to the fact that police didn’t much care about crimes or disappearances of black and/or gay people and that could be why he chose to live in such an area but let’s not misconstrue motivation for what he used to his advantage. Correlation≠causation in this scenario. And let this be clear that I am in no way minimizing the horror and tragedy that took place, especially as a person of the LGBTQ+ community, simply setting straight some misconceptions that are certainly understandable considering the amount of poc he killed.
They punished those two cops the best they could. Losing their jobs and pensions is serious. If being stupid and incompetent were a crime they would have went to jail.
Really liked the podcast. Very insightful. Just wanted to say one thing. Psychopaths are irreparable. They like playing games. Therapy or help or any understanding of their behavior coming from any kind of empathy does not help. I've seen this first hand. They are devious. That's the truth. And our empathy cannot save them. Laws might, repercussions might, but empathy or help doesn't. Not on them.
I like and respect that closing argument. I like the idea of treating every human being with empathy and try to provide treatment for them not just for the world's sake but for their own. I belive it's our duty as a society to help damaged people but most importantly trying to prevent their damages in the first place. That is the only way to stop these horrible things from happening. So no one has to go through unnecessary traumas, not the kids, not the offender, not the victims, not their families or anyone affected by the ripple effect. Question is how?
According to a journal entitled "Serial Killer Connections Through Cold Cases" which was published on the National Institute of Justice website in 2020 by Martin, Schwarting, and Chase, one of the signs of a serial violent individual is that they have MORE EMPLOYMENT, interpersonal, and substance abuse problems.
So if someone here is working as an HR, though job hopping is now a trend, it might be a red flag too. Dig deeper and make sure to do thorough background checking.
at 1:51:00 - that platform could be prison abolition! many prison abolitionists argue for something very similar, often also advocating for transformative or restorative justice. i’d be interested in your reaction to some abolitionist perspectives. the Medium article “what about the rapists and murderers?” by Angel Parker might be relevant here
Idi Amin (the tyrannical president of Uganda in the 1970's) also had body parts in his refrigerator. I remember how his evil deeds shocked the world. He and Dahmer had very different lives, but they shared the same sadistic behaviors. People wondered if Amin was a cannibal. He denied it and said human flesh was "too salty".
I'm having a really hard time getting through this series as well. I think I'm part way through the 4th episode, but it just feels like I have too long a road to travel given the nature of this material. I would say that what I've seen so far has been pretty well done and Evan Peters is putting forth a surprisingly sensitive performance of someone who did some absolutely monstrous things. Which can be a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you don't want to depict someone like this as too sympathetic, but on the other hand, that kind of storytelling may be needed to begin to understand how his mind ended up the way it did. Part of me almost agrees with his mother that his brain should've been studied. I'm thinking that his psychopathy may have been a combination of nature and nurture. But honestly, how will we ever know.
On the people worried about exploitation, it's completely understandable, especially the family and friends of the victims. When I first saw the series advertised on Netflix, I was pretty turned off. I also knew that it was from the same creator as American Horror Story, and that show can be pretty damned campy. But I heard some good things and decided to give it a try. It was not an easy watch in the least, and I didn't feel like they were glamorizing him at all. Dahmer was a nice looking man in real life, so casting an attractive person didn't feel inappropriate. I have yet to finish the whole series, like I said, but it seems they are taking an angle that tries to explain how he became the monster while not forgetting the sinister level of corruption, racism and homophobia that allowed him to get away with it so long. But for my own mental health, I can't binge this thing. Can't get it out of my head that it's not fiction and this really happened to real people.
I would say it gets easier to watch after episode 6. The last 4 episodes focus a lot more on the societal issues and less on Dahmer.
So many people on social media were blaming his mom for everything saying that she was irrational and addicted to pills but I thought the show did a pretty good job of showing how a lot of her issues were the result of women back then having so few outlets for expression and self realization.
Thanks for this, was hoping you'd do a new Dahmer podcast. He always strikes me as a bit of an outlier compared to most famous killers. People like Ramirez and the BTK killer truly sadistically enjoyed torturing and killing people, Dahmer said the killing part was the least important to him and that he didn't enjoy it and tried to make it as painless as possible. The killing was basically a means to an end because he couldn't let the people get away or he would go to jail. It's also interesting that he expressed genuine remorse and he immediately confessed to all the killings, whereas people like Bundy continually tried to deny it until the very end. He took full responsibility and refused to blame his parents, violence in the media, social isolation or anything else.
I haven’t watched the show but I did see a documentary. And I don’t know how truthful this is but it said, after moving in with his religious grandmother he found a chance to renew himself. He was happy to go to church and really wanted to change his killer lifestyle. Eventually his sexual needs came back but he chose to drug them, have his way, then drop them off and not kill them. It wasn’t until he accidentally drugged himself after having a sip of the victims drink on accident that he blacked out and beat the victim to death. He said it wasn’t intentional but after that he felt like well I killed again so might as well keep going.
I don’t think he showed genuine remorse because he said himself he would’ve kept it going if he didn’t get caught. He couldn’t even remember the names of some of the people he killed. You can’t get much lower than that. Confessing was the least he could do and I’m glad he did but I just don’t think someone like him can ever feel genuine remorse for anything unfortunately.
I would actually consider Ramirez an outlier by himself. His methodology is so weird. No preferred ages, or races. Hoping between murder, SA and beatings. Randomly letting some victims go. Even the fact that he essentially went on a year-long spree with little organization or care.
I would be interested in his analysis because he just seemed so... Utterly unstable it's a bit bizarre.
because at the end of the day, deep down he liked killing people. He just took full responsibility because he was smart enough to know that nobody else did it for him. He is a fucking horrible person.
@@alexisweakley8918 He might have been in an alcoholic blackout for some of his victims and that's why he couldn't remember their names. I think alcoholism played a big role in his depravity, giving him the liquid courage to lure and capture his victims.
He was alone way too much during his childhood.
Dahmer always said the killing never gave him pleasure and he had to get drunk to do it, but while in prison and sober he would regularly joke with inmates about his past activities.
One of my mother in law's chores as a kid who came from a family of farmers, was to feed the chickens.
she had to witness her own mother behead those chickens and ever since then she cannot stomach the idea of eating chicken. beef? lamb? fish? sure, but chicken? no chance. she's in her 50's now btw.
Great episode. One bit of feedback is it is slightly difficult to stay focused when Berto often interrupts Kirk. Just something to be aware of for the podcast space.
I don't think that he was interrupting that much. Besides this is a dialogue, a conversation with 2 people.
That's how Berto always is, unfortunately. Don't want to hurt any feelings but it is hard to not be annoyed sometimes with Berto.
@@hummiebubs6967 Agree...more Honda less Berto
Dr. Honda would you consider watching/going over the tv show The Patient? I think there is still one more episode to come out...but maybe once it's done you could do a series overview?
I second this!!
From my understanding, the problem victims' families have with the show is not the show itself but rather the context of production, and I would be inclined to agree with them.
What's in the show may be tasteful but the context of rich producers making hard cash from a story about real peoples' suffering without bothering to ask them about their blessings, opinions, or anything, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Not to mention that they essentially ape or impersonate some of those people. It also implies they didn't actually ask how the victims were in real life, how they lived their lives, how they could feel. So it looks like exploitation of suffering, even if the people involved had good intentions. And I don't know if they did because I frankly don't trust corporations.
I've had 2 colonoscopies. The worst part is the disgusting crap you have to drink before the procedure in order to clean you out.
What may be scarier than anything is nothing out of the ordinary happened to Dahmer, this was just the way he was. Yes, part came from his Dad with regard to the urges but beyond that Dahmer thought he was being kind by drugging his victims prior to strangling them. Once they were dead he saw them as meat at a butcher shop, he could do what he wanted to them and they would comply by never abandoning him. I think he took the abandonment fear to the next level by actively participating in necrophelia then by consuming and preparing the meat. He wanted to be so close to them as to fully integrate them into his being, by digesting them. Just an observation.
The thesis that they made was that his only connection to his father was the mutual interest in taxidermy and road kill. In order to feel he had a relationship and anything in common with his father, the only real time they spent together, was when they were busy with analyzing animal parts. I think the series makes the argument that his attachment needs were being met when he was showing an interest in the animals. And in turn his father just wanted him to have any interest at all and so supported and encouraged his which fed back into the feedback loop for him that the only way to get love and attention from his father was to do what he was doing and this became a sexual fetish only as a result of this transference,
LOVE LOVE LOVE this episode, I start my day by watching your videos and man this one was awesome! I love all the points you touched on and the back and fourth conversation.... I wish I can can you more than 1 thumbs up!❤️
My husband and I work in the funeral industry and our baby is most likely going to grow up seeing dead people pretty frequently, I don’t think being around death is necessarily a bad thing I think it’s how you address it. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with kids being around it. 😂 even though I can cut into human remains all day for work, I probably couldn’t cut into dead animals for funsies.
I agree how you address it is very important but, why does your baby need to grow up seeing dead people frequently? You can have a career and not have your kids involved in it.
@@jenn7753 it’s not like we go on removals with him or have him in a bouncer in the embalming room but it’s pretty unavoidable when he is at the office 🤷🏻♀️ it’s the largest facility of its type in North America, so there is always going to be one out getting prepped for a witness cremation or being brought in or set up for a viewing. It’s just how it is. I hope he will take our approach and learn to be caring to the dead just like we are because a lot of people won’t even give their dead loved one one last hug or even go in the room because society tells them death is bad and yucky.
@@Woodman-Spare-that-tree maybe search in yourself why you think that a little. Nothing about a dead body is scarring or bad, society just tells you that it they are. They are just people, and respect shouldn’t end after death. :)
Ok I’ve been waiting for this!
At 46 min and oscopy tips: i am 32 and have crohns. I’ve had colonoscopies and endoscopies almost yearly since I was 12. The worst part is the prep. Definitely recommend taking a shot of the prep every half hour. Nowadays I just quickly chug it through a straw
Dahmers father was a sociopath but had different comorbidities ASPD+NPD+PPD and psychologically and emotionally abused and tormented Dahmer and corrupted Dahmers instincts showed hi how to use formaldehyde gave him alcohol, isolated Dahmer from his mother and Dahmers father enmeshed his shame his anger his sadistic fantasies into Dahmer and corrupted Dahmer giving him no outlets to integrate into society, and his mother was also emotionally abusive as well, but his father completely abused and controlled Dahmer and exploited his fears.
May I ask how you know this?
@@BlueBelle-711 through studying and education
Me and my mother were having this conversation just last night😂 I love both your outlooks thank you now we are listening to this😊
Immediately yes! Thank you for doing this :)
Born in 1992, Dahmer jokes have always been a part of the culture
this is intriguing. honestly, it's so much to just stop and think _why_ jeffrey dahmer went wrong.
I so was waiting on your take on this. I didn't want to watch it because it's bases on real accounts but would have love a mental health documentary on him.
Interesting dialogue, very easy to listen and digest.
Next you should both talk about the people commenting about having the hots for Dahmer after watching the Netflix series. I found it so infuriating.
Majority of them like Evan Peters. While it is controversial and I agree that it’s wrong, it’s not going to stop. You can’t stop someone from being attracted to someone’s physical appearance.
They are attracted to Evan not Jeffrey
The young boy who was escorted back to Dahmer was gut wrenching to watch. The fact that his brother was molested by Dahmer of course made it even more tragic. I'm not victim blaming at all, but I'm so confused as to why this boy went along with Dahmer when he was aware that Dahmer had harmed his brother? The family pursued legal action against Dahmer when he molested the older brother, but I wonder whether internally, as in, in the family, they really discussed what happened, which would have served as a warning to the other siblings not to go anywhere with strangers for money, especially not with Dahmer. In many cultures, including Asian cultures like this Laotian family, sexual assault is seen as shameful and often swept under the rug. Perhaps that's what happened within this family? In the later episodes the older brother of the victim is seen experiencing extreme PTSD from what Dahmer did to him... I wonder if he didn't really discuss it with his siblings (I know they were just kids when it happened, but later on). Because Konerak was the only victim who actually knew of Dahmer and how he was a bad guy before going into his apartment...
Actually the family said that the siblings didn't know what Jeffrey looked like or his name.
They never saw him or knew how he looked like , at that time the young boy was even younger so he didn’t know who Jeffrey was , they added that to the show that he knew Jeff from what Jeff did to his brother but that was just for show. In real life they didn’t know how he looked.
STAY ON TOPIC
Hi dear Kirk and Humberto. Just wanted to jump in and tell you guys I loved listening to this episodes! The only thing that is bothering me is that not everything in the series is true or may be exaggerated! For example the thing with the parole officer. He had one that regularly visited him while he was murdering people!
thank you for this!
I definitely didn't see this series as a glorification.
I appreciated this conversation and in being able to reflect about how our society possibly creates such horror ( a collective failure), but I think what was missing was the focus on race and how JD targeted a very specific group of people. It was mentioned briefly, but would have liked more of it over what seemed like an effort to, perhaps, create empathy for the killer.
Obviously these serial killers have some screws loose. Its not normal to kill fellow humans and eat them
So many things to say on this one but I'll just say that I saw the ads for this show and I don't even have Netflix. It was played several times a day leading up to it. I even saw an ad in the movie theater.
I'm no shrink, but my pedestrian diagnosis would include Asberger's.
The reason Jeffrey Dahmer died in jail is a little known fact. There was an argument between Jeffrey and another inmate. It was reported Jeffrey said, "Hey pal, I used to eat guys like you for breakfast." This escalated the situation.
You guys made some good points that I was thinking while I watched the series. You mention how the cops were thinking 'oh yeah this is just weird gay stuff' and in my mind, I think that's how Dahmer managed to get away with it for so long. He played it off as oh yeah don't go in that drawer there's just a bunch of 'gay stuff' and most of the time the cops who had their own prejudices would be like 'nah I don't really want to look into that'. He did that till the bitter end with that last guy who was able to get away. Luckily the cops that time actually did what they were supposed to and they looked at what was in his room even though they should've done that a very long time ago.
I'm kinda disappointed that comment from your friend on what he thought about what the police officer was doing ...... was mostly classist and homophobia and he did not mention racism... I didn't hear that... I saddened and surprised that was overlooked.
I'm just reminded about how many lived expeirence are just discounted by unrecognized biases. When there has been a lot of documented proof of racist incidents with police and Bipoc communities esspecally then. I think yes homophobia was a big factor , classim yes but i do think racist biases about Bipoc played a large factor too.
Even looking at how the officers were treated after the court case speaks volumes.... I think it would have been great that you had someone from the community comment on their thoughts on this.
Also I'm just baffled by how sexualized Dahmer has been on tik toks and other psychopaths....
Yes Humberto you are right and I agree, it’s not wise (and arguably not psychologically safe) to expose children to animal dissection. It’d be best to avoid it. I 💯 agree! Let’s not do it.
The film is somewhat glorifying him in a way because it shows a lot of outside forces that might have contributed to his killing, which creates empathy. They kept saying he was alone, that he wanted attention, and that it was a cry for help. In reality he’s an evil person and if you watch documentaries they are much better on focusing on the gruesome crimes. No matter how many outside forces may have influenced his actions, there’s no justification for those actions. Yeah the cops were at fault, yes the parents were dysfunctional, yes he had no friends, and yes he dissected animals in his free time. There are some people in this world who may go through similar experiences, but never end up being killers at all. That is the big problem I have with this film.
my other problem is they are trying to humanise a Demon. They can't in any way, be part of the human society no matter how much they look like people.
The things that you think are problems are actually the strengths I find in the series. I always find this theme Nature vs Nature in psychology super fascinating. Of course there's no justification for his sins but what I believe is every human being definitely does not react the same way. How can we be sure every human "react" similarly to a similar problem? There will always be that 1 percent who will react 'differently'.
He hit Steven Hicks w a barbell knocking him out & he then strangled him to avoid him waking & being upset
Very interesting listen. I am 52 and in uk now they suggest a blood test is more effective for the colon check. There are interviews with dahmer in prison discussing the problem between the parents ( i think with both parents) to their faces. Its chilling stuff.
I only remember one Dahmer related joke from anywhere around that time. Suffice to say that it makes that Facebook joke look tame by comparison.
I’m at the beginning of this podcast, but I’m so glad you’re reviewing this show. I personally found it hard to get through, but the reason why is because I think the writers did a great job of centering the humanity of those who were victimized by J.D. They really amplified the elements about this case that have been intentionally omitted for far too long.
Re: Anne Hesch & Pain management
I think it’s terrible the way we criminalize pain management in this country while propping up a system that works to keep so many from having access to holistic resources that can heal them. It is absolutely beneficial to pump people with meds (although they can be helpful when prescribed correctly) and to keep their environment in complete chaos. There’s so much to say there!
Are you sure about your comments here? If I'm reading you right, you believe that it's fine to pump people full of drugs while keeping their environment chaotic. How can this possibly be beneficial?
@@slister45 Yes, I am sure. I think my sarcasm didn’t come through here. It’s beneficial to the pharmaceutical companies and the entire medical industry.
Love this!!
They say the smell was said that it was NOT a smell of rotting flesh. It was more feom the acid & fumes from his supplies on hand.
This was very interesting! I always appreciate both of your insights into these cases. Dahmer is fascinating in a way because there doesn’t seem to be any huge red flags into his upbringing to help you better understand his horrible compulsions. I would be super interested for you to do a deep dive into the Parkland school shooter Nicholas Cruz. His trial is going on right now and there are many details emerging of his upbringing and the many ignored warning signs of his troubling behavior throughout his life.
Jeffrey was an alcoholic by the time he was about only 14 years old. The neglect in that house and constant screaming, fighting, did him in. He didn't feel love and didn't want his entire life to feel unloved. He was gay at a time where you'd be tossed out on the street for being gay. He had extemre self loathing.
I wrote this elsewhere: everybody's experience is relative. Perfect storm, someone said. He is 1 of the only serial killers who never really actually wanted to kill, who actually had true remorse before his death, he just wanted love and to not be alone, not be abandoned. Watch his last words to the judge before sentencing. Watch his interviews with Lionel. He never wanted to become a monster and he's one of the only ones who recognizes what he did was abhorrently wrong. He told the judge he asked for no lenience in his sentencing, he did not want his parents blamed. He is probably the only huge serial killer who took full responsibility for his many many deranged crimes.
It seemed he was ready to die. Ready to pay for his crimes. I'm of the belief that he tried to bait people into murdering him in prison. Well, it worked (my thoughts). Watch his speech on UA-cam. Lots of trial footage.
Bundy happened to be an aspiring law student & even worked w one of the political parties closely. As did John Wayne Gacy was very high up kn the tow w the JCs & the community. He even had aspirations to be governor