• The Macdonald triad (also
Macdonald Triad:
known as the triad of
sociopathy or the homicidal
triad) is a set of three
behavioral characteristics that
has been suggested, if all three
or any combination of two, are
present together, to be
predictive of or associated with
later violent tendencies,
particularly with relation to
serial offenses.
• The triad was first proposed by
psychiatrist J.M. Macdonald in
"The Threat to Kill", a 1963
paper in the American Jouranl
of Psychiatry.
Macdonald Triad: • Small-scale studies conducted
by psychiatrists Daniel Hellman
and Nathan Blackman, and then
FBI agents along with Dr. Ann
Burgess, claimed substantial
evidence for the association of
these childhood patterns with
later predator behavior.
• Although it remains an
influential and widely taught
theory, subsequent research has
generally not validated this line
of thinking.
Macdonald Triad: • The triad links cruelty to
animals, obsession with fire
setting, and persistent
bedwetting past a certain age,
to violent behaviors, particularly
homicidal behavior and sexually
predatory behavior.
Macdonald Triad: • Further studies have suggested
that these behaviors are
actually more linked to
childhood experience of
parental neglect, brutality or
abuse. Some argue this in turn
results in "homicidal
proneness."
Firesetting:
• In Singer and Hensley (2004),
firesetting is theorized to be a
less severe or first shot at
releasing aggression. Extensive
periods of humiliation have
been found to be present in the
childhoods of several adult
serial killers. These repetitive
episodes of humiliation can lead
to feelings of frustration and
anger, which need to somehow
be released in order to return to
a normal state of self-worth.[5]
Cruel to Animals:
• FBI Special Agent Alan Brantly
believed that some offenders
kill animals as a rehearsal for
killing human victims.[9] Cruelty
to animals is mainly used to
vent frustration and anger the
same way firesetting is.
Cruel to Animals:
• Extensive amounts of
humiliation were also found in
the childhoods of children who
engaged in acts of cruelty to
animals. During childhood,
serial killers could not retaliate
towards those who caused
them humiliation, so they chose
animals because they [animals]
were viewed as weak and
vulnerable.
Cruel to Animals:
• Future victim selection is
already in the process at a
young age. Studies have found
that those who engaged in
childhood acts of cruelty to
animals used the same method
of killing on their human victims
as they did on their animal
victims.[10]
• Wright and Hensley (2003) named three recurring
themes in their study of five cases of serial
murderers:
• As children, they vented their frustrations because
the person causing them anger or humiliation was
too powerful to take down;
• they felt as if they regained some control and power
over their lives through the torture and killing of the
animals;
• they gained the power and control they needed to
cause pain and suffering of a weaker, more
vulnerable animal – escalating to humans in the
future.
Enuresis:
• Enuresis is the "unintentional bedwetting during sleep, persistent
after the age of five".[15] The bedwetting must continue twice a
week for at least three consecutive
months. The idea that bedwetting
has anything to do with
psychological maladjustment, and
certainly with later antisocial or
violent tendencies, or plays some
part in a triad of predictors, has
been described as a destructive
myth and entirely discredited.
Enuresis:
• However, some authors continue to
speculate that enuresis may be
related to fire setting and animal
cruelty in some way. One argument
is that because persistent bedwetting beyond the age of five can
be humiliating for a child,
especially if he or she is belittled by
a parental figure or other adult as a
result, this could cause the child to
use firesetting or cruelty to animals
as an outlet for his or her
frustration.[5]
The Dark Triad:
• The dark triad is a group of
three personality traits:
narcissism, Machiavellianism
and psychopathy. Use of the
term "dark" implies that
these traits have malevolent
qualities:
The Dark Triad:
• Narcissism is characterized by
grandiosity, pride, egotism, and
a lack of empathy.
• Machiavellianism is
characterized by manipulation
and exploitation of others; a
cynical disregard for morality,
and a focus on self-interest and
deception.
• Psychopathy is characterized by
enduring antisocial behavior,
impulsivity, selfishness,
callousness, and
remorselessness.
The Dark Triad:
• A factor analysis carried out at
the Glasgow Caledonian
University found that among the
big five personality traits, the
trait of agreeableness is strongly
absent in regards to the dark
triad, while other traits such as
neuroticism and a lack of
conscientiousness were
associated with some.
• The five factors are openness,
conscientiousness, extraversion,
agreeableness, and neuroticism.
Subclinical
dimensions vs.
disorders:
• Two of the dark triad traits,
narcissism and psychopathy,
were traditionally framed as
personality disorders.
Narcissism was discussed in the
writings of Sigmund Freud, and
psychopathy as a clinical
diagnosis was addressed in the
early writings of Hervey Cleckley
in 1941 with the publication of
The Mask of Sanity.
Subclinical
dimensions vs.
disorders:
• Given the dimensional model of
narcissism and psychopathy,
complemented by self-report
assessments that are
appropriate for the general
population, these traits can now
be studied at the subclinical
level.
• Hare notes in his book, Without
Subclinical
Conscience, that asking
dimensions vs.
psychopaths to self-report on
disorders:
psychologically important matters
does not necessarily provide
accurate or unbiased data.
However, recent efforts have been
made to study psychopathy in the
dimensional realm using selfreported instruments, as with the
Levenson Primary and Secondary
Psychopathy Scales, The
Psychopathic Personality Inventory,
and the Self-Report Psychopathy
Scale.
• Machiavellianism has never been
Subclinical
referenced in any version of the
dimensions vs.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
disorders:
(DSM) for psychological disorders.
It has been treated as strictly a
personality construct.
Subclinical
dimensions vs.
disorders:
• A personality development
disorder is an inflexible and
pervasive pattern of inner
experience and behavior in
children and adolescents,
that markedly deviates from
the expectations of the
individual's culture.
Subclinical
dimensions vs.
disorders:
• DSM-IV allows the diagnosis of
personality disorders in children
and adolescents only as an
exception. This diagnosis is
currently proposed by a few
authors in Germany. The term
personality development
disorder is used to emphasize
the changes in personality
development which might still
take place and the open
outcome during development.
• Adults usually show personality
Subclinical
patterns over a long duration of
dimensions vs.
time. Children and adolescents
disorders:
however still show marked changes
in personality development.
• Some of these children and
adolescents have a hard time
developing their personalities in an
ordinary way.
• An early diagnosis might help to get
the right treatment at an early stage
and thus might help to prevent a
personality disorder outcome in
adulthood.
Description:
• Similar to the adult diagnosis of
personality disorder these children
display enduring patterns of inner
experience and behavior deviating
markedly from the expectations of
the individual's culture. These
patterns are inflexible and pervasive
across a broad range of personal
and social situations, lead to
clinically significant distress or
impairment in social, occupational
or other important areas of
functioning and they are stable and
of long duration (more than a year).
Definition:
• According to Adam und BreithauptPeters personality development
disorders are defined as complex
disorders:
–which show similarity to a certain type of
personality disorder in adulthood
–which persist over a long period of time
(more than a year) and show a tendency
towards being chronic
–which have a severe negative impact on
more than one important area of
functioning or social life
–which show resistance to traditional
educational and therapeutic treatment
methods
Definition:
• According to Adam und BreithauptPeters personality development
disorders are defined as complex
disorders
–which result in a reduced insight into or
ignorance of the own problem behavior.
The family usually suffers more than the
child or adolescent and has a hard time
dealing with the diminished introspection.
–which make positive interactions
between the children/adolescents and
other people merely impossible. Instead
social collisions are part of every day life.
–which threaten the social integration of
the young person into a social life and
might result into an emotional disability.
Etiology and
Diagnosis:
• Similar to adult personality disorders
there are multiple causes and causal
interactions for personality
development disorders. In clinical
practice it is important to view the
disorder with a multi-perspective
angle than from an individual
perspective.
• Biological and neurological causes
need to be observed just as much as
psychosocial factors. Looking at the
disorder from only one perspective
(he had a bad childhood) often
results in ignorance of important
other factors or causal interactions.
Etiology and
Diagnosis:
• Parents should be questioned
separately and together with the
child or adolescent to evaluate the
severity and duration of the
problems. In addition standardized
personality tests might be helpful. It
is also useful to ask the family what
treatment approaches they have
already tried so far without success.
Treatment:
• Personality development disorders
usually need a complex and multidimensional treatment approach
(Adam & Breithaupt-Peters, 2010).
Since the problems are complex,
treatment needs to affect the
conditions in all impaired functional
and social areas.
• Parents need to be included as well
as the school environment.
Treatment methods need to be
flexible and adjustable to the
individual situation.
Treatment:
• Even elements of social work can be
helpful when supporting the families
and in some cases medication might
be necessary. When suicidal behaviors
or self-injuries are prominent
treatment might best be done in a
hospital.
• For some personality development
disorders (borderline personality
disorder) treatment methods from
adults can be adapted (dialectical
behavior therapy, focused on
enhancing clients' capabilities by
teaching them behavioral skills).
Sexually
Motivated
Serial Killers:
• Humiliate and degrade their victims,
are manipulative, above average in
intelligence, take trophies, do not
often harm wives or girlfriends, have a
history of cruelty to animals, enjoy the
torture and pain of the victim,
normally kill prostitutes, sometimes
revisit the crime scene, tend to
escalate their levels of violence over
time, leave a signature at the crime
scene or behave idiosyncratically,
show no overt signs of abnormality,
and often plan the kill.
Sexually
Motivated
Serial Killers:
• Their play as children can be described
as aggressive and many come from
dysfunctional families where there is
neglect and abuse (Hickey, 1997;
• Many fathers are absent (literally
or symbolically) or are controlling and
authoritative during the formative
years, while the mothers may be
rejecting, punitive, hated, or
smothering, controlling and
infantilizing (Hickey, 1997; Miller,
2000)
Sexually
• Most are aggressive and have an
Motivated
insatiable preoccupation with death,
blood and violence (Norris, 1992).
Serial Killers:
These individuals cannot empathize or
feel guilt and are largely indifferent to
others, while their relationships may
be described as shallow.
Sexually
• Refined Definition:
Motivated
• Sexually motivated serial murder is the
Serial Killers:
killing of three or more victims over a
period of more than 30 days, with a
significant cooling-off period.
• The sexual nature of the crime, which
may – or may not – be explicit, is
perverse and sadistic and reflects an
aggression that is particularly
destructive, pathological and rooted in
violent fantasies that are acted out
on the victim.
Narcissistic
Serial
Killers:
• Narcissism has its own preoedipal
• development based on the nature of the
responses of the infant’s caretakers.
• This means that the infant’s narcissism
may develop fundamentally in two ways.
The first is, by being acknowledged by
significant others (usually the mother) or
by an experience of reflection of
admiration in the mother’s eyes. The
infant thus learns that she or he is worthy
and valued. This mirroring experience is
internalized and forms a sense of healthy
self-esteem and can be described as “I
am perfect.”
Narcissistic
Serial Killers:
• The second way is by being
able to admire another,
usually the father, in such a
way that the father is idealized
as good, perfect and powerful,
thus the infant learns that she
or he is also a part of that
which is idealized and perfect.
Narcissistic
Serial Killers:
• The second way is by being able to
admire another, usually the father, in
such a way that the father is idealized
as good, perfect and powerful, thus the
infant learns that she or he is also a
part of that which is idealized and
perfect. In this way, the role of the
other is to assist in the development
of the infant’s sense of self-esteem and
self-worth.
• The parents are used as self-objects,
meaning that their function is to
support the development of the infant
until the infant is capable of providing
his or her own sense of self-esteem.
Narcissistic
Serial Killers:
• If there are deficient self-objects
experiences of mirroring either
the infant’s grandiosity or
idealization, a developmental
arrest occurs and this results in
damage to the self-structure
• When children grow up without
acknowledgement by significant
others they come to believe that
what they may have to share is of
little interest to others. This
results in a sense of inadequacy
and shame.
Narcissistic
Serial Killers:
• Lacking this internalized selffunction, the adult narcissist
depends on others to provide
narcissistic supplies of grandiose
mirroring and idealization – which
means that object relations are
there to protect a fragile sense of
self-esteem.
• Innate oral aggression plays a
central role in the development
of pathological narcissism and has
qualities of both pathological selflove and pathological object-love.
Narcissistic
Serial Killers:
• Pathological object-love may be
acted out in extreme envy and
exploitation as external object
relationships are viewed as
extensions of the narcissistic self.
• Rosenfeld (1971) was the first to
introduce the term destructive
narcissism and referred to it in
relation to the so-called death
instinct by arguing that all states
of narcissism are destructive in
nature.
Narcissistic
Serial Killers:
• In subsequent elaborations on this
concept Freud (1929) also
speculated that the death instinct
was manifest in narcissism and
that in the “blindest fury of
destructiveness, we cannot fail to
recognize that the satisfaction of
the instinct is accompanied by an
extraordinarily high degree of
narcissistic enjoyment, owing to
its presenting the
ego with a fulfilment of the
latter’s old wish for omnipotence.”
Conclusion:
• There is evidence for a
predisposition to violence as well
as an interplay between
environment, biological factors
and personality traits as the basis
for criminal behavior. Serial killers,
as pathological and destructive
narcissists, vent their rage at and
envy of a hateful and rejecting
world by attacking and brutalizing
others.
Conclusion:
• In terms of object relations
theories, the implication is that
serial killers are made as it is
predominantly the quality and
nature of early object
relationships which are
dysfunctional and foster feelings
of pathological low self-esteem,
shame and inadequacy.
• These feelings, narcissistically
defended against by
compensatory grandiosity, are the
seeds for revenge and violence.
Conclusion:
• These feelings are directed at
those who symbolically represent
the early tormentors. Together
with the workings of the death
instinct, expressed in destructive
narcissism, these individuals
become serial killers, using sadism
as a source of sexual gratification
and power.
Conclusion:
• Many individuals are abused
as children and do not
become serial killers. The
difference is that there are
also inadequate pre-oedipal
experiences which strongly
contribute to serial killers’
narcissistic pathology.