Serial Killers: Concept Of Nature Vs. Nurture

Some of the greatest debates on human development have revolved around the concept of nature versus nurture. However, several researchers have failed to take into account the fact that nature and nurture are interconnected, meaning that they have a degree of reliance on each other. If one takes into context everything that has happened in one's life, they will realize that human biology has a habit of impacting one's upbringing, just as one's upbringing tends to impact one's biological makeup. For example, having a birth defect may make one's childhood difficult, and a difficult childhood may make one prone to depression and anxiety. Neither nature nor nurture are solely responsible for the development of a serial killer; instead, nature and

Some examples of this are antisocial personality disorder and dissociative disorder, two mental conditions that serial killers tend to suffer from. Dr. Michelle Martel, a psychologist and chairwoman of clinical psychology at the University of Kentucky, found that conditions such as antisocial personality disorder tend to originate from an ontogenic process, where “longitudinal transactions between interdependent individual-level vulnerabilities... and equally interdependent contextual risk factors” interact with each other and result in one developing a behavioral or conduct disorder (Martel 56). The ontogenic process explains how neither nature nor nurture are solely responsible for the development of a serial killer, and instead tend to interact with each other to influence it. Furthermore, another analysis of convicted inmates performed by Matt DeLisi, a criminologist with Iowa State University, found that “antisocial personality disorder is a severe disorder with robust associations with crime and violence,” and uncovered that “greater adverse childhood experiences were associated with ASPD diagnosis,” (DeLisi et al.). This demonstrates how nurture, or how one is reared and treated during their childhood, tends to interact with predisposed patients to form ASPD. Another condition that has been linked to serial killer development is dissociation. In an alternative study, Dr. Paul Dell, a psychotherapist and the president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, explained how over the years, “contemporary theories have integrated early [Janetian and Freudian] notions to suggest that the combined influence of experience and biological reorganization...contribute to pathological dissociation,” (Dell and O’Neil 40).