Below is my relatively brief contribution to a Reddit topic. This blog will keep the original poster's identity anonymous unless he or she requests eponymous credit. The posted question was:
Why was [Ted Bundy] such a sadistic person[?] There's nothing in his childhood that would make him a sociopath. I don't think Bundy had any mental problems[,] he was just sinister. But there must be a reason as to why someone is like this[;] be [it] genetics[,] experience[,] or whatever[,] there's gotta be a reason here.
My thoughts (which echo a few points made in a previous post on this blog, "The Abuse Excuse" In Ted Bundy's Childhood: A Brief Dismissal):
I'm glad you have noted the "nothing in childhood" and "no mental disorders" when posing the question of "Why?" as it pertains to Bundy. Though wildly unpopular stances, they are opinions I more or less agree with. People want definitive answers, something conclusive to point to that reconciles the atrocities committed by an outwardly "normal" individual. But, unsatisfactorily, those reasons don't exist.
Frankly, I think Bundy was the perfect storm of multiple factors, as no single cause is sufficient to account for such aberrant behavior. Deprived of maternal bonding during the first three months of his life when Louise temporarily put him up for adoption probably didn't benefit Bundy's neurological development. Bundy may have inherited a predisposition toward violence and/or mental illness from his mother's parents, too. But there is no evidence that young Ted was either subjected to or witnessed the abuse or rage his grandfather purportedly demonstrated. And please, everybody, let's drop the myth that there was ever any confusion for Ted about the parental identity in his lineage (check out my blog article Debunking the Myth of Parental Identity Deception in Ted Bundy's Formative Years for further illumination). If anything in his childhood negatively impacted him, it was the separation from his beloved grandfather and temporary instability of his home life when he moved cross-country with Louise, and she subsequently married Ted's stepfather within a year's time.
These events aside, something was clearly already fractured in Bundy's psychiatry or personality [per Bundy author Kevin M. Sullivan] that elicited such an extreme reaction to discovering his illegitimacy during adolescence and which manifested as social stuntedness during high school. Perhaps growing up with a tenuous relationship between himself and his stepfather affected him, as did his unwitting role as default babysitter to his four much younger half-siblings.
Again, any one of these individual circumstances alone would not produce a monstrous human being. The cumulative effect may have. But far more critical to Bundy's later deviance was his sexual development. Fairly socially isolated in his teens, Bundy escaped into fantasizing, fueled by the violent pornographic images of detective magazines that he was particularly attracted to. Though not unusual behavior for a male adolescent, autoerotic activity influenced by such imagery nonetheless fostered the intersection of violence and sex in Bundy's still-developing brain. [The book featured in the thumbnail/cover photo of this blog article delves more in-depth into how the factor of Bundy's fantasizing contributed to his perversion.]
The clinical depression Bundy experienced subsequent to his traumatic first breakup with Diane during a critical period in his psychosocial development with the opposite sex likely scarred him. Characteristics such as insecurity, an inferiority complex, and his obsession with societal status were also components of Bundy's criminal psychology. It's a complex mixture that we can talk about at length, a pathology rife with so many ingredients that no two mental health professionals have ever agreed on a singular diagnosis for. Psychopathology, malignant narcissism, bipolar, and D.I.D. have all been posited by various examiners. Undoubtedly, with Bundy's criminal versatility (presenting as a range of behaviors from thievery to necrophilia), antisocial personality disorder cannot be overlooked; yet, I don't recall that diagnosis was even included in the DSM at the time of Bundy's evaluations by professionals (??). Modern day diagnostics are invalid because proper clinical criteria are devoid the patient's [Bundy's] presence. So, we're left with just speculation.
Antisocial personality disorder combined with a severe addiction to sexual violence may best define the construct of Bundy's mental malignance. But the origins of such abnormalities remain debatable and ambiguous. The answers eluded even Bundy himself, who proffered more insight than anyone . . . and it took him an entire book (Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer) to do so. However, the most outstanding of Bundy's statements - and the key to unlocking the mystery of "Why?" - is perhaps this explanation, as given to Detectives Chapman, Patchen, and Bodiford after his 1978 arrest:
See, I made myself the way I was. . . . bit-by-bit and step-by-step and day-by-day. . . . You see, I, there was a time, way back, when I felt deep, deep guilt about even the very thought of, of harming someone else. And yet for some reason I had desire to, to condition that out of me. . . . Conditioned out on an abstract level and then when it got down to actual cases, it was guilt. I conditioned that out of myself too.
To paraphrase the movie "No Man of God," Bundy did what he did: because he wanted to.
This topic may be further developed on this blog at a later date.
Copyright © (2023) Cynthia Walker. All Rights Reserved.
