Journal of Trauma & Treatment

Dissociative Identity Disorder Theory Explaining Serial Murder and Murderers

Abstract

Arnon Edelstein

Serial murder is globally prevalent but mainly in the United States. The 1980s saw many explanations to this phenomenon. The fact that 80% of all serial murderers are psychologically and legally sane raised many theories in biology, psychology, and even sociology to explain this phenomenon. Take, for example, Freudian theory on the weakness of the superego, anti-social personality disorder, ctheory, and so on. The problems with these theories were twofold: They suffer from the inability to test empirically, or they did not fit the common definition of serial murder. This article presents the current theory explaining serial murder and murderers. Opposing former theories, this theory tested in laboratory conditions (magnetic resonance imaging, handwriting analysis, and eyesight test). In addition, this theory could explain each component of serial murder definition. But despite the dissociative identity disorder theory’s force in explaining serial murderer, it also suffers some shortfalls.