Detailed analyses of psychopathic traits using dr. bob hare's pcl-r items- Traits scored on a scale of 0-2
- Glibness/superficial charm: 0 - A score of zero on the PCL-R indicates that the evaluator feels that the trait is definitely not present in the subject. Lee did not seem to exhibit any behaviors which indicated to me that she was glib or superficial. If nothing else, her explosive anger and low patience boiled to the surface pretty quickly in situations where she felt provoked, and it seemed to me that she had a very difficult time hiding her true emotions. This was demonstrated in the courtroom during her Mallory trial, where she burst into a string of profanities aimed at the jury as they exited the courtroom in response to their guilty verdict, and all throughout her relationship history, where she was unable to maintain close ties with anyone because of her emotional lability. She was unable to present herself in a way that generally garnered admiration, and could certainly not be described as charming. When engaged in conversation, she was almost always quite intense, often angry, and usually expressing a great deal of paranoia. There are probably few people that would describe Wuornos as likable or charming, based on the interpersonal conflict she often seemed to unintentionally create.
- Grandiose sense of self-worth: 1 - Due to her long history of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, Lee's self-esteem was very damaged. She didn't seem to hold herself in very high regards, and her hunger for love and affection seemed to dominate many of her actions. She turned to prostitution out of desperation, feeling that she had no other marketable skills. She drank and used drugs in excess in an attempt to escape a painful reality. None of these behaviors indicate that she had even a normal amount of self-esteem, let alone a grandiose sense of self-worth. Some might argue that her tough attitude and body language during interviews and press coverage would indicate a certain level of overconfidence, but I believe that this was a coping mechanism used to hide being hurt, and she seemed to really want to prove to the world that she could not be broken. Her defiance and anger were her ways of "fighting back," so to speak, rather than shows of grandiosity, which helped her to survive many instances of assault on her character and person over the course of her life. The reason I gave her a 1 rather than a 0 is because there are numerous accounts of Lee claiming that one day she would be famous, and she apparently made up unbelievable stories about her accomplishments. In addition to that, she seemed to think that the world owed her something, which therefore caused her to feel entitled to her selfish actions.
- Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom: 1 - A score of 1 indicates a certain amount of uncertainty about whether or not the trait is present. On one hand, Aileen's chaotic lifestyle and early drug abuse could indicate a need for stimulation, but on the contrary, these could also be symptoms of abuse and a desperation to acquire resources. Additionally, her lengthy criminal record could also suggest a need for stimulation, but it seemed to me that in most cases she was just acting impulsively, without thinking things through, and using a set of extremely maladaptive problem solving tools to navigate the world.
- Pathological lying: 2 - The issue of pathological lying is also a difficult trait to assess, as Aileen's stories frequently changed regarding events. For example, regarding who impregnated her as a 14 year old, Lee's stories ranged from claims of being gang-raped at knife point to being raped by an Elvis Presley look-alike. These bizarre stories indicate a certain level of compulsive or pathological lying. In addition, Lee's claims about what exactly happened during the course of the killings changed frequently. During interviews, she vacillated between claiming that the men had either raped and beaten or tried to rape her, and the assertion that she had killed them during the course of a robbery in order to eliminate witnesses. She also claimed to have visited her dying brother in the hospital (though there was no record of this), where she had a dramatic argument with his doctor about using him as a "human guinea pig" to experiment on. This is not only highly implausible, but Lee herself contradicted her statement of having visited him in a later letter to Dawn. Further complicating the process of assessing her lying is the fact that her character was so thoroughly attacked and misrepresented in the media, including the many books and movies that came out about her which, as Lee claimed, were filled with outright lies.
- Conning/manipulative: 2 - The various ways in which Lee tried to present herself as an innocent victim sometimes came off as manipulative attempts to get herself out of trouble. There is also some indication of manipulative behavior in her letters to Dawn, where she consistently instructed Dawn on who she was allowed to speak with, based on who had been cut out of her life at the present moment. These constantly rotating and shifting lists of "mortal enemies" and "saviors" were difficult to keep track of. Additionally, Lee repeatedly stole from anyone and everyone. She stole the identities of various women who let her stay with them, and once bragged of a time when she'd burglarized a preacher's home after he had given her a place to stay.
- Lack of remorse or guilt: 2 - Lee consistently maintained that she was not sorry for killing the 7 men. She frequently broke out into fits of anger over their perceived injustices against her, and claimed that they deserved every bullet they got. Lee also said that by killing these men she was sparing other girls the potential harm they could cause. In her letters to Dawn, Lee occasionally expressed regret for killing the men, but would usually follow any signs of remorse with statements about how the men were creeps and how they were abusive. It seemed as though her remorse was more around the fact that she was suffering the consequences for having killed them, and stated that if she had not been drunk or having any psychological disturbances, she would have waited longer to resort to killing the men, and only if they continued with their assaultive behavior. In some of her letters to Dawn, Lee recalls having ripped off various people on the road who had given her a place to stay or otherwise helped her out, and seemed to have no guilt about having done so. She claimed that all of these people had been creepy or perverted in some way, and she therefore felt justified in stealing from them, but these claims are hard to back up. It seemed that Lee nearly always felt as though she were under attack in some way, a lot of which can likely be attributed to her trauma history, and a fair amount of this may be true given her dangerous lifestyle, but at a certain point it becomes difficult to believe her stories when they all consist of people plotting against her.
- Shallow affect: 0 - Lee did not seem to have a shallow affect during the course of her trials, interviews, or expressed in her letters to Dawn. Rather, she seemed afflicted by a life of intense and chaotic mood swings which would frequently get in the way of her goals and would hurt her in the long and short term. This was a consistent characteristic throughout her lifetime, beginning in childhood, where her unpredictable and intense fits of anger alienated her from her peers. Her sometimes erratic and oversensitive reactions to perceptions of criticism from others were communicated by Moore, who stated that Lee often flew off the handle when she thought that people were judging her. Expressed in interviews and press coverage was Lee's roiling anger at the world, and especially towards men. Her love for Tyria was another indicator of the intensity of Lee's emotional life, as Lee claimed to deeply love Tyria even after the betrayals, and it seemed as though she were compelled to protect and take care of her throughout the course of their relationship. Video footage during the Mallory trial shows Lee crying while listening to audio recordings of the phone calls between herself and Tyria where she was being convinced to confess to the crimes. Her subsequent depression and refusal to speak with anyone after the trial are also indicative of an intense inner emotional reality. None of these emotional displays seemed to be play-acting or artificial in any way, as would be seen in a psychopath. The fact that Wuornos was diagnosed as having Borderline Personality Disorder also confuses this trait, because those with BPD often have short-lived and intense emotional displays, which can be similar to what would be seen coming from a psychopath, but are not the same at all. The borderline individual actually experiences these emotions, and intensely at that, and the constant shifting between emotional states is a trait of the disorder.
- Callous/lack of empathy: 1 - Lee never expressed empathy towards any of her victims. To her, they were just dangerous and perverted men who got what they had coming. She did not seem affected by the grief of the victim's families, and only was concerned about justice for herself. However, if Lee truly believed that these men were out to harm her, or if any of them actually had, I think it would be unrealistic for her to empathize with them. Regardless of whether real or falsely perceived assaults occurred, Lee had experienced so many cases of sexual assault and violence that it's possible she began to experience every triggering situation as being a great deal more dangerous than it actually was. This can be attributed to a PTSD "flashback" response, or any other of the other psychological manifestations of having experienced repeated trauma without any sort of therapeutic intervention. Another reason why I gave her a 1 rather than a 2 is because she expressed a moderate amount of empathy towards Dawn's struggles during written correspondence with her. Lee seemed genuinely worried about Dawn, and offered whatever advice she could come up with. Whether or not this was simply a manipulation tactic to keep Dawn in her life is another question entirely, but there is at least some indication that Lee was empathetic towards others, just not men. Especially middle-aged to upper middle-aged white men.
- Parasitic lifestyle: 1 - Wuornos frequently stole from people in order to support her own financial situation, seemingly without any remorse or intentions of paying them back. Her marriage to Lewis Fell, who had a considerable amount of wealth, could have been seen as an attempt to gain access to his resources. However, Wuornos' commitment to providing for herself and Moore by prostituting, despite the dangers and trauma she often faced as a result, indicated that she had the desire to provide for herself and those she loved, but lacked the means to do so in a legitimate way.
- Poor behavioral controls: 2 - As expressed throughout the entirety of Lee's life, she seemed to experience significant difficulties controlling her behavior. As mentioned above, she was extremely emotionally reactive as a child and found to be quite volatile, and these traits persisted into adulthood. Her criminal record points to a number of impulsive crimes, and her record of assaults indicate a high level of reactive aggression. Throwing a cue ball at a bartender's head, becoming involved in disputes at local bars, and hitting Fell with his cane when he refused to give her more money are all examples. Her courtroom outbursts and rants about corruption and injustice marked much of the Lee Wuornos case coverage. Speaking of the murders, one can infer that Lee's poor behavioral controls also played a part in the killing of these 7 men, as even Lee herself claimed that if she had taken more time to consider her actions, she would not have murdered the men.
- Promiscuous sexual behavior: 2 - Beginning early in life, where Lee was trading sex for money, and also allegedly having sex with her brother Keith, a pattern of promiscuous behavior is definitely noted. Lee's long prostitution history also directly supports this notion.
- Early behavior problems: 2 - Early in her life, Wuornos was using drugs and alcohol, running away, stealing from family and friends, engaging in prostitution, shoplifting, hitchhiking, and setting fires.
- Lack of realistic, long-term goals: 2 - Wuornos did not seem to have many, if any long term goals. She often was just trying to survive in the moment. However, she allegedly applied for a job as a lawyer at one point, despite lacking the education to do so, and reportedly wanted to get into police work, despite her criminal record and emotional instability.
- Impulsivity: 2 - As noted above in the "poor behavioral controls" section, Lee exhibited high levels of impulsivity throughout her lifetime in the form of criminal behavior and emotional outbursts which were often disproportionate to the situation at hand. Additionally, she frequently fired members of her defense team, cut off contact from various individuals wanting to establish ties with her, and alternated between throwing certain people out of her life, such as Glazer and Pralle, and then desperately feeling as though she needed them back. This tendency to view people in terms of "all bad" or "all good," the push-pull of intensely vacillating opinions of people, is a strong indicator of Borderline Personality Disorder. One minute Arlene Pralle was a lying, deceitful con, and the next she was a wonderful Christian woman with only the best intentions. This sort of relational instability and impulsivity was expressed in nearly every relationship Wuornos had, and it comes as no surprise that she was diagnosed multiple times as having Borderline Personality Disorder.
- Irresponsibility: 2 - Wuornos did not finish school, nor did she hold down a legal job for any substantial length of time. She blew through the $10,000 life insurance money from Keith's death in a month, rather than investing in anything of value. She consistently failed to keep up with bills and rent, preferring to spend the money on alcohol. She admitted to treating her pets poorly and not keeping up with their needs. She rarely, if ever, took any serious steps to improve her quality of life. She failed to show up for court appearances and sometimes left rental units without paying what she owed.
- Failure to accept responsibility for own actions: 2 - Expressed in various forms throughout her trial, press coverage, interviews, and particularly in her letters to Dawn, Lee blamed society for her crimes. She claimed that the male-dominated society oppressed women and girls, and valued the well-being of men above all others. She stated that society and her parents were to blame for the horrific life she would endure. She claimed that she was framed by crooked cops, defamed by the media, and forced to commit murder because of assaultive men. She even went so far as to claim that the police had allowed her to continue killing after Mallory because they wanted her to become a serial killer so they could profit from her story. She also claimed that the charges of forging checks only came about because her lover at the time had stolen all of her money and left her with debts that she couldn't pay otherwise. While much of this may be true, Lee still had a tendency to try and shift the blame away from herself. Things always seemed to be someone else's fault, according to Lee.
- Many short-term marital relationships: 1 - Wuornos had a number of short-term, unstable relationships, most of which were with men (she claims that she "turned lesbian" at 28). Her extremely short marriage with Lewis Fell and her desperate attempts to get attention from another boyfriend when she robbed a convenience store are two examples of this type of relationship. However, the amount of her relationships that could be considered "marital" is less than the many short-term intimate meetings she had, and thus I gave her a score of 1.
- Juvenile delinquency: 1 - Lee was arrested for shoplifting as a youth, and also detained in juvenile detention after her grandfather refused to come pick her up once after she ran away. After her grandmother died, the police found Lee living in the woods and sent her to a training school for girls. However, the amount of times she actually came into contact with the juvenile justice system is small, and I feel that her score of "2" in the early behavior problems section is more accurate than giving her a score of 2 for juvenile delinquency.
- Revocation of conditional release: 0 - As far as records show, Lee never violated any conditions of release or escaped from any institutions.
- Criminal versatility: 2 - Wuornos was involved in a number of criminal activities, including theft and robbery, assault, forging checks, illegal possession of firearms, driving under the influence, disorderly conduct, obstruction of justice, possession of narcotics, failure to appear, reckless endangerment, and of course murder.
Total pcl-r score: 28- indicating secondary psychopathy
Hare psychopathy checklist-revised (Pcl-R). (2003). In E. Hickey (Ed.), Encyclopedia of murder and violent crime. (p. 214). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. Retrieved from http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/violentcrime/SAGE.xml
further discussion on lee's psychological profile
I do not think it is accurate to attempt to explain Lee's behavior by using the Psychopathy Checklist, because there are so many fundamental ways that she does NOT fit the criteria for primary psychopathy. However, she definitely has the traits of secondary psychopathy, as this allows room for the presence of her intense emotional reality, which appeared to be the driving force behind much of her behavior. For example, Hicks & Patrick (2006) found that secondary psychopaths exhibit notably high aspects of negative emotionality related to anxiety, difficulties with self-control, alienation, social withdrawal, hostility, and aggression, all of which are strongly present in Wuornos' case history. A label of secondary psychopathy rather than primary would also account for the impression I had that she did not lack the ability to form intimate attachments to other people, she just lacked the ability to do so in a sustainable and healthy way.
Yet rather than focusing on psychopathy as an explanation for Wuornos' crimes, I think it's important to consider other explanations for her criminal and antisocial behavior. The presence of attachment figures in Lee's life was notably absent, particularly in her early years of development, where it would have been most crucial. Because of the repeated instances of abandonment and abuse she endured, Lee did not have the opportunity to safely bond with any caretakers, which therefore disrupted her ability to form healthy bonds later in life. Bowlby's (1951) early work on links between childhood attachment and later criminal involvement set the stage for later work on attachment theories that would draw a connection between broken homes and delinquency. Bowlby asserted that mother love in infancy and childhood was just as crucial to development as were vitamins and adequate nutrition, and if there was a deficiency or absence in this area during the first 5 years of life, the child would experience long-term negative effects to the character, involving a lack of affect and subsequent criminal behavior. In "The Female Homicide Offender," Arrigo and Shipley go into an in-depth analysis of Lee's childhood attachment patterns and their subsequent effects on her later in life (2004). They posited that Lee's primary attachment pattern, avoidant/dismissive, was marked by 'detachment, hostility, social withdrawal, impulsive behavior, and poor interpersonal sensitivity and awareness,' (p. 110). All of these traits are also markedly persistent in Lee's adult life. In the Handbook of Psychopathy, Farrington's literature review of family background factors predicting psychopathy examined a number of factors related to antisocial behavior that are reflected in Wuornos' history, including coldness and rejection during child rearing, abuse and neglect, disrupted families and/or inter-familial conflict, substance abuse and/or young age of the parent (2006).
Her ability early in life to mentally detach from her physical self in order to sell her body for money could be an indicator of sexual abuse, as well as of internalizing messages of viewing herself as worthless and unlovable; an object of abuse, rather than a whole person deserving of love. The rejection by her peers, her grandparents, and her own mother resulted in an entire network of failed connections, and thus the need for complex coping skills emerged. In response to being treated poorly and not being cared about, Lee externalized these feelings of herself in the way that she began to treat other people. When it was realized that nobody would take care of her, Lee's primary concern became taking care of herself. This could explain aspects of her selfishness and lack of remorse for stealing from others. Lee prioritized her own well-being above all others, and viewed the world as a hostile and dangerous place, because that was what her earliest experiences of it had been.
According to the DSM-IV (2000) definition of Antisocial Personality Disorder, a person has to exhibit at least three out of the seven identified characteristics in order to be diagnosed, and when I evaluated Lee's case, it seemed as though she exhibited behavior from all seven categories. Even though Lee was not evaluated at 18, as the diagnostic manual includes in its criterion, she definitely did show indicators of conduct disorders before age 15. This would account for her high score on the PCL-R, as many of the indicators are the same. Her failure to conform to social norms, a persistent pattern of disregarding the rights of others, lack of remorse or guilt around causing harm to others, consistent displays of irresponsibility, manipulative behaviors, and impulsivity are all traits of an Antisocial Personality.
The development of this personality disorder was obviously spurred by Lee's traumatic early life, and she potentially had a biological predisposition to developing it because of her father. Leo Pittman was an incredibly violent and volatile man who exhibited many of the same traits as Lee Wuornos later would. In fact, scientific studies examining the heritability of psychopathic traits have found that they are moderately to highly heritable, and that psychopathy factors such as callous-unemotional and impulsive-antisocial were significantly genetically correlated (Glenn and Raine, 2014). Glenn and Raine also mentioned the need for future studies that might examine the hypothesis that primary psychopathy is more strongly linked to genetics, while the development of secondary psychopathy might be more based in environmental influences. One could argue that in Lee's case, there were both biological and environmental factors that could be linked to the development of her antisocial behavior and possible secondary psychopathy. Clearly, Dr. Adrian Raine's theory about the complex interplay between biological and environmental factors to produce individuals such as this is well validated in the Wuornos case (University of Pennsylvania's 2013 interview with Dr. Raine).
The final aspect of Wuornos' personality that I want to address is her diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. This disorder is clearly indicated in much of Wuornos' behavior, from her frantic efforts to avoid abandonment (shooting herself in the abdomen when distressed over a lover, robbery of a convenience store to try and get attention and clarification of relational commitment from her boyfriend at the time), to her stress-related paranoia and dissociative symptoms (she frequently exhibited severe paranoia, claiming that Pralle was connected to the mob, that members of her defense team were working secretly with the police to frame her, that prison guards were poisoning her food and sending sonic waves into her cell to torture her, and also showed severe dissociative symptoms when engaging in sexual behavior for money). According to the DSM-IV-TR (2000), a person has to exhibit five or more of a series of symptoms in order to qualify as having the disorder, and in my analysis, Wuornos was exhibiting symptoms from all categories. She had significant difficulties controlling her anger, recurrent suicidal actions (as noted in the background information section), impulsivity in a wide number of areas (including substance abuse, spending, sexual behavior, criminal actions), severe relational instability marked by intense periods of excessive admiration for the person (all good- Pralle and Glazer were the only ones who could save her) to sudden devaluation and attacks on the person's character (all bad- everyone was deceiving to her and using her, and had to be fired or cut from her life completely), and affective instability marked by rapidly changing moods (Wuornos' short lived but intense emotional displays that changed quickly and frequently). The other two categories included identity disturbance and feelings of chronic emptiness, and I believe that Wuornos had these traits as well, though they are harder to determine.
I think that, for Wuornos, although her genetic predisposition to developing psychopathic and antisocial traits did play a role in the downward spiral of her life trajectory, it's clear that environmental factors were much stronger indicators. After all, her brother Keith had the same genetic background, but did not participate in the same kinds of behavior that Lee did. I think that Lee's sexual trauma history was significant in her eventual murderous behavior, as it seemed to be a catalyst in her life that damaged her enough psychologically to the point where all her other behavioral difficulties began to worsen. Further, while Keith had opportunities to bond positively with his peers, Wuornos was repeatedly and consistently alienated from caregivers, peers, and society at large. She had nobody to support her, and constantly felt as though she were under attack.
Being a female, her aggressive and overtly sexual behavior were so against the "ideal" female character constructed by society that she was much more severely punished for exhibiting these traits than a male in the same position would have been. Her status as a prostitute later in life also served as an excuse for the media and courts to devalue her as a person, attack her character, and to punish her more severely. This societal bias is particularly noted where, in her letters to Dawn, Lee talks about a male serial killer who was caught after murdering multiple prostitutes and given life in prison, as opposed to the six death sentences that Wuornos received as female prostitute who murdered johns.
In conclusion, I think it is both unfair and inaccurate to label Lee Wuornos a primary psychopath, and identify that as the "master status" label that could be used to explain her behavior. I think this kind of labeling is the result of societal bias which perpetuates a reality in which women are devalued and their behavior more critically graded and punished than their male counterparts. As a society, we are much more forgiving of the male serial killer, looking more thoroughly at his upbringing and trauma history when trying to analyze his behavior, and giving him more excuses for having become who he is. The male serial killer is often glorified in the media and made into a sort of anti-hero. Female serial killers, unless they are physically attractive and can be sexualized, are not allowed these same assessments, and are portrayed not only as violent and monstrous, but also as having violated their roles as female beings in the worst of ways. It is important to begin to recognize and address these gender- based biases in serial killer psychological analyses so that miscarriages of justice do not occur, and the pursuit of scientific knowledge can proceed in a more legitimate way.
Yet rather than focusing on psychopathy as an explanation for Wuornos' crimes, I think it's important to consider other explanations for her criminal and antisocial behavior. The presence of attachment figures in Lee's life was notably absent, particularly in her early years of development, where it would have been most crucial. Because of the repeated instances of abandonment and abuse she endured, Lee did not have the opportunity to safely bond with any caretakers, which therefore disrupted her ability to form healthy bonds later in life. Bowlby's (1951) early work on links between childhood attachment and later criminal involvement set the stage for later work on attachment theories that would draw a connection between broken homes and delinquency. Bowlby asserted that mother love in infancy and childhood was just as crucial to development as were vitamins and adequate nutrition, and if there was a deficiency or absence in this area during the first 5 years of life, the child would experience long-term negative effects to the character, involving a lack of affect and subsequent criminal behavior. In "The Female Homicide Offender," Arrigo and Shipley go into an in-depth analysis of Lee's childhood attachment patterns and their subsequent effects on her later in life (2004). They posited that Lee's primary attachment pattern, avoidant/dismissive, was marked by 'detachment, hostility, social withdrawal, impulsive behavior, and poor interpersonal sensitivity and awareness,' (p. 110). All of these traits are also markedly persistent in Lee's adult life. In the Handbook of Psychopathy, Farrington's literature review of family background factors predicting psychopathy examined a number of factors related to antisocial behavior that are reflected in Wuornos' history, including coldness and rejection during child rearing, abuse and neglect, disrupted families and/or inter-familial conflict, substance abuse and/or young age of the parent (2006).
Her ability early in life to mentally detach from her physical self in order to sell her body for money could be an indicator of sexual abuse, as well as of internalizing messages of viewing herself as worthless and unlovable; an object of abuse, rather than a whole person deserving of love. The rejection by her peers, her grandparents, and her own mother resulted in an entire network of failed connections, and thus the need for complex coping skills emerged. In response to being treated poorly and not being cared about, Lee externalized these feelings of herself in the way that she began to treat other people. When it was realized that nobody would take care of her, Lee's primary concern became taking care of herself. This could explain aspects of her selfishness and lack of remorse for stealing from others. Lee prioritized her own well-being above all others, and viewed the world as a hostile and dangerous place, because that was what her earliest experiences of it had been.
According to the DSM-IV (2000) definition of Antisocial Personality Disorder, a person has to exhibit at least three out of the seven identified characteristics in order to be diagnosed, and when I evaluated Lee's case, it seemed as though she exhibited behavior from all seven categories. Even though Lee was not evaluated at 18, as the diagnostic manual includes in its criterion, she definitely did show indicators of conduct disorders before age 15. This would account for her high score on the PCL-R, as many of the indicators are the same. Her failure to conform to social norms, a persistent pattern of disregarding the rights of others, lack of remorse or guilt around causing harm to others, consistent displays of irresponsibility, manipulative behaviors, and impulsivity are all traits of an Antisocial Personality.
The development of this personality disorder was obviously spurred by Lee's traumatic early life, and she potentially had a biological predisposition to developing it because of her father. Leo Pittman was an incredibly violent and volatile man who exhibited many of the same traits as Lee Wuornos later would. In fact, scientific studies examining the heritability of psychopathic traits have found that they are moderately to highly heritable, and that psychopathy factors such as callous-unemotional and impulsive-antisocial were significantly genetically correlated (Glenn and Raine, 2014). Glenn and Raine also mentioned the need for future studies that might examine the hypothesis that primary psychopathy is more strongly linked to genetics, while the development of secondary psychopathy might be more based in environmental influences. One could argue that in Lee's case, there were both biological and environmental factors that could be linked to the development of her antisocial behavior and possible secondary psychopathy. Clearly, Dr. Adrian Raine's theory about the complex interplay between biological and environmental factors to produce individuals such as this is well validated in the Wuornos case (University of Pennsylvania's 2013 interview with Dr. Raine).
The final aspect of Wuornos' personality that I want to address is her diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. This disorder is clearly indicated in much of Wuornos' behavior, from her frantic efforts to avoid abandonment (shooting herself in the abdomen when distressed over a lover, robbery of a convenience store to try and get attention and clarification of relational commitment from her boyfriend at the time), to her stress-related paranoia and dissociative symptoms (she frequently exhibited severe paranoia, claiming that Pralle was connected to the mob, that members of her defense team were working secretly with the police to frame her, that prison guards were poisoning her food and sending sonic waves into her cell to torture her, and also showed severe dissociative symptoms when engaging in sexual behavior for money). According to the DSM-IV-TR (2000), a person has to exhibit five or more of a series of symptoms in order to qualify as having the disorder, and in my analysis, Wuornos was exhibiting symptoms from all categories. She had significant difficulties controlling her anger, recurrent suicidal actions (as noted in the background information section), impulsivity in a wide number of areas (including substance abuse, spending, sexual behavior, criminal actions), severe relational instability marked by intense periods of excessive admiration for the person (all good- Pralle and Glazer were the only ones who could save her) to sudden devaluation and attacks on the person's character (all bad- everyone was deceiving to her and using her, and had to be fired or cut from her life completely), and affective instability marked by rapidly changing moods (Wuornos' short lived but intense emotional displays that changed quickly and frequently). The other two categories included identity disturbance and feelings of chronic emptiness, and I believe that Wuornos had these traits as well, though they are harder to determine.
I think that, for Wuornos, although her genetic predisposition to developing psychopathic and antisocial traits did play a role in the downward spiral of her life trajectory, it's clear that environmental factors were much stronger indicators. After all, her brother Keith had the same genetic background, but did not participate in the same kinds of behavior that Lee did. I think that Lee's sexual trauma history was significant in her eventual murderous behavior, as it seemed to be a catalyst in her life that damaged her enough psychologically to the point where all her other behavioral difficulties began to worsen. Further, while Keith had opportunities to bond positively with his peers, Wuornos was repeatedly and consistently alienated from caregivers, peers, and society at large. She had nobody to support her, and constantly felt as though she were under attack.
Being a female, her aggressive and overtly sexual behavior were so against the "ideal" female character constructed by society that she was much more severely punished for exhibiting these traits than a male in the same position would have been. Her status as a prostitute later in life also served as an excuse for the media and courts to devalue her as a person, attack her character, and to punish her more severely. This societal bias is particularly noted where, in her letters to Dawn, Lee talks about a male serial killer who was caught after murdering multiple prostitutes and given life in prison, as opposed to the six death sentences that Wuornos received as female prostitute who murdered johns.
In conclusion, I think it is both unfair and inaccurate to label Lee Wuornos a primary psychopath, and identify that as the "master status" label that could be used to explain her behavior. I think this kind of labeling is the result of societal bias which perpetuates a reality in which women are devalued and their behavior more critically graded and punished than their male counterparts. As a society, we are much more forgiving of the male serial killer, looking more thoroughly at his upbringing and trauma history when trying to analyze his behavior, and giving him more excuses for having become who he is. The male serial killer is often glorified in the media and made into a sort of anti-hero. Female serial killers, unless they are physically attractive and can be sexualized, are not allowed these same assessments, and are portrayed not only as violent and monstrous, but also as having violated their roles as female beings in the worst of ways. It is important to begin to recognize and address these gender- based biases in serial killer psychological analyses so that miscarriages of justice do not occur, and the pursuit of scientific knowledge can proceed in a more legitimate way.
weaknesses of analysis
The Wuornos case was a very difficult one to analyze based on a number of factors. The incredible amount of corruption and misconduct present in the investigation, trial, and sentencing phases of the case made it difficult to determine truth from lies. There were so many people trying to cover up their misconduct, and so many manifestations of these cover-ups displayed as facts of the case that I had a hard time sifting through the information to determine what had actually happened; what Lee had actually done, how she had behaved, etc.
To further complicate matters, Lee was incredibly paranoid, and often thought that people were out to get her, that they were involved in shifty dealings with shady law enforcement officers or movie producers, that the prison guards were out to torture her, that Pralle was involved with the mob, or the police, or both. While there was some fact to many of Lee's claims, there were many more that either seemed too crazy to be true, or were hard to prove because they had been determined false by the very people who were said to be committing the miscarriages of justice. I read the entire book of Lee's letters to Dawn just to try and get a better picture of Lee's side of story, but came out of it feeling even more confused because of the sheer number of accusations Lee made against everyone she had ever been involved with. The paranoid manifestations of her personality disorders only muddied the picture more thoroughly.
I also noticed that there was a lot of implicit and explicit media bias in coverage of the case, as well as present in the court room. The issues here indicated a larger societal problem which was being displayed in the nationwide response to Lee's case, and the language used, the pictures circulated, and the stories told about who Lee was as a person and what she had done were all tainted with this bias. Particularly sex-role bias, and the inability of the media to sexualize Lee (as has been done with other female killers), resulting in the portrayal of her as a monster incapable of human experience. As stated above in the psychological discussion section, Lee's history as a sex worker, and the fact that she had killed members of the most privileged population in our country- middle to upper middle-aged white men, were used as ammunition against her character because they threatened the male-dominated social structure and the associated expectations of how females were allowed to behave. So really, there were three layers of lies to work through when trying to get to the truth of the case, and it made for a very difficult analysis.
To further complicate matters, Lee was incredibly paranoid, and often thought that people were out to get her, that they were involved in shifty dealings with shady law enforcement officers or movie producers, that the prison guards were out to torture her, that Pralle was involved with the mob, or the police, or both. While there was some fact to many of Lee's claims, there were many more that either seemed too crazy to be true, or were hard to prove because they had been determined false by the very people who were said to be committing the miscarriages of justice. I read the entire book of Lee's letters to Dawn just to try and get a better picture of Lee's side of story, but came out of it feeling even more confused because of the sheer number of accusations Lee made against everyone she had ever been involved with. The paranoid manifestations of her personality disorders only muddied the picture more thoroughly.
I also noticed that there was a lot of implicit and explicit media bias in coverage of the case, as well as present in the court room. The issues here indicated a larger societal problem which was being displayed in the nationwide response to Lee's case, and the language used, the pictures circulated, and the stories told about who Lee was as a person and what she had done were all tainted with this bias. Particularly sex-role bias, and the inability of the media to sexualize Lee (as has been done with other female killers), resulting in the portrayal of her as a monster incapable of human experience. As stated above in the psychological discussion section, Lee's history as a sex worker, and the fact that she had killed members of the most privileged population in our country- middle to upper middle-aged white men, were used as ammunition against her character because they threatened the male-dominated social structure and the associated expectations of how females were allowed to behave. So really, there were three layers of lies to work through when trying to get to the truth of the case, and it made for a very difficult analysis.