Psychology Behind Murderers

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A murderer is defined as someone who has committed the crime of taking the life of an individua.l Murderers are usually triggered by an event and are harder to profile, as murders aren’t likely to commit the crime more than once. A serial killer; however, is someone who kills more than three times within a relatively short interval of time and are more easily identified through their similar characteristics. Although, murderers may not have committed the crime more than once does not mean that they don’t have a similar general characteristics. In Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoyevsky, Raskolnikov shares similar psychological characteristics including isolation, narcissism, and higher IQ’s with a general profile of murderers, which ultimately was what led them to murder.

There are many different forms of isolation; emotional, physical, social, etc. Regardless of the type of isolation, it signifies the cutting off of an individual from society and human interaction. Raskolnikov physically isolated himself by staying in his room and cutting his personal interactive relationships from those around him by refusing to leave his couch, “[he] didn’t go out for days together, and [he] wouldn’t work" (Dostoyevsky 339). His “big, clumsy sofa [which] occupied almost the whole of the one wall and half the floor space of the room,”(Dostoyevsky 22). became symbolic of deeper thinking, so therefore one of the reasons Raskolnikov would isolate himself is because his deep philosophies were forms of higher thinking that other individuals could not understand. “He was so immersed in himself and had isolated himself so much from everyone that he was afraid not only of meeting his landlady but of meeting anyone at all” (Dostoyevsky 3). Isolation...

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"The Psychological Aspect of Murder." ThinkQuest. Oracle Foundation, n.d. Web. 10 Jan. 2014. .

"Top 10 Unusual Traits That Potential Serial Killers Share - Part 2." Top 10 Unusual Traits That Potential Serial Killers Share - Part 2. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Jan. 2014. .

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