Psychology Today
psychologytoday.com › us › blog › wicked-deeds › 201410 › serial-killers-and-the-essential-role-fantasy
Serial Killers and the Essential Role of Fantasy | Psychology Today
October 13, 2014 - They were going on for too long ... have revealed that the most common childhood traits among them, which extended into their adolescence and adulthood, are daydreaming and compulsive masturbation....
ScienceDirect
sciencedirect.com › science › article › abs › pii › S1359178914000846
A psychological and developmental profile of sexual murderers: A systematic review - ScienceDirect
August 14, 2014 - In Hill, Habermann, Berner, and Briken's (2006) study, 90.4% of sexual murderers diagnosed as sexual sadists reported “masturbation with sadistic fantasies”. Causal links between sadistic fantasies and sadistic behaviors (i.e., rape and ...
CBS News
cbsnews.com › crime › experts explain what causes someone to become a serial killer
What causes someone to become a serial killer and what are the signs | Experts explain
July 24, 2023 - It becomes like a fantasy loop that plays over and over in their minds throughout adolescence and into early adulthood. They frequently combine it with masturbation, so they fantasize about doing terrible things to people, bondage and raping ...
Reddit
reddit.com › r/serialkillers › question: what do you think triggers and connects the sexual arousal to violence?
r/serialkillers on Reddit: Question: what do you think triggers and connects the sexual arousal to violence?
October 27, 2022 -
Hello everyone, I know the question can seem vague so I’ll elaborate.
I’m not a big expert, I’m passionate about the psychology of the serial killer phenomenon and I read/watched documentaries about Bundy, Gacy, Zodiac, Dahmer and some other less famous.
My question is more about the psychology than the facts themselves, and it is:
What causes the association between sexual arousal and violence?
As far as I know , often serial killers decide to kill in order to live a fantasy they have had for a long time. Furthermore, in the 70s the so called detective magazines were pretty common and they depicted images of murder/corpses in a sexualised way.
As a neurotypical person I’m trying to understand how your mind begins to associate something that excites you (for example a naked body of a woman or a man) with the idea of destroying, making suffer, violate them. The “normal” process would be to avoid those thoughts, instead in these cases they are a trigger. So how do you think this connection is made in those minds? Thank you.
Top answer 1 of 5
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I’d imagine there isn’t one answer but many serial killers have talked about the sense of power that killing another gives them which is what arouses them.
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I listened to a podcast about Anthony Sowell years ago, and I can’t recall if it came from his police interviews or what but it talked about this specific thing. When he was a kid, he lived with a family member who raised him and a bunch of other kids, I think his grandmother. She was very abusive and the podcast talks about how she would make one of the girls strip naked, then tie her up and beat her and would make the other kids watch. Apparently it happened around the time he hit puberty and because of those two things happening around the same time, his brain associated sexual arousal with violence against women. It could all be BS to try to garner some kind of sympathy but it kind of makes sense psychologically. I’m sure it’s also not the only reason.
Cambridge Core
cambridge.org › core › books › abs › understanding-sexual-serial-killing › looking-for-a-thrill › EBAE4B2B934271A848029470EF12C419
Looking for a Thrill (Chapter 10) - Understanding Sexual Serial Killing
These can have sexual associations and are sometimes accompanied by masturbation. Dopamine activation is at the basis of elevations in arousal. Serial lust killers commonly have a history of committing non-sexual crimes and arson.
Reddit
reddit.com › r/serialkillers › serial killer sexuality
r/serialkillers on Reddit: Serial killer sexuality
December 21, 2022 -
Is there any explanation for most notorious serial killers to have so many sexual disorders? Pedophilia, necrophilia, desire for rape, etc.
Exposing The Truth
exposingtruth.com › psychopaths-serial-killers
What You Should Know About Psychopaths And Serial Killers
June 28, 2015 - This evolution of the signature, incorporating new fantasies and details from prior kills, explains why a John Jay University study found the vast majority (81%) of sexual homicides were admittedly linked with the killer’ masturbatory fantasies (although the real number is likely higher), and of 162 sexual homicides studied: 90.7% involved ritualistic acts.
Waldenu
scholarworks.waldenu.edu › cgi › viewcontent.cgi pdf
Factors That Influence Violence and Homicidal Ideation ...
serial killer find what he or she believes to be a vulnerable population and try to · accommodate their truest desires with the said population? Perhaps, it is the physical ... The child may engage in auto-vampirism in tasting his own blood and during puberty. These acts are eventually sexualized and reinforced through masturbation.
PubMed
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › 16882237
The motivation behind serial sexual homicide: is it sex, power, and control, or anger? - PubMed
Controversy exists in the literature and society regarding what motivates serial sexual killers to commit their crimes. Hypotheses range from the seeking of sexual gratification to the achievement of power and control to the expression of anger. The authors provide theoretical, empirical, evolutionary, and physiological support for the argument that serial sexual murderers above all commit their crimes in pursuit of sadistic pleasure.
Cambridge
assets.cambridge.org › 97810090 › 45681 › excerpt › 9781009045681_excerpt.pdf pdf
THE FACTORS THAT UNDERLIE LUST KILLING
Some serial killings are not motivated by sexual desire. For example, a · contract killer is presumably motivated mainly, if not only, by money and
Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
jaapl.org › content › jaapl › 25 › 3 › 335.full.pdf pdf
Natural Born Killers?: The Development of the Sexually Sadistic Serial Killer
serial killers prior to actualizing their fantasy.
APA
apa.org › news › podcasts › speaking-of-psychology › serial-killer-mind
Understanding the mind of a serial killer
Is it a combination of those factors plus a head injury, plus trauma and poor parenting? And I think yes—I think the answer is yes. And that’s why it’s very, very small. The number of people that do it, it’s always been around and there’s no evidence that it’s increasing. Now you hear different estimates. How many serial killers are there roaming around the country?
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Lust_murder
Lust murder - Wikipedia
August 12, 2026 - The most critical component in the psychological development of a serial killer is violent fantasy, especially in the lust murderer. Fantasies accompany "intrusive thoughts about killing someone that are associated with other distressing psychopathological processes".
Reddit
reddit.com › r/serialkillers › why it becomes sexual need ?
[Mature Content] r/serialkillers on Reddit: Why it becomes sexual need ?
October 24, 2023 -
Most of the serial killers committed their crimes because of neglect or abuse in their childhood , I don't know much about phycology so i wanted to ask you why it turns to a sexual need to control people they're attracted to ? What does sex have to do with what happened to them in their childhood ?
Sorry if it's a stupid question but i really don't have any idea
Top answer 1 of 5
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some may feel sexually incompetent, and killing could be the only thing that provides them sexual gratification. simply just the achievement of power and control over their victim, through whatever means they feel they have it, may provide them with this feeling. some have bound their victims, some have tortured, etc. from an fbi behavioural analysis unit-2 booklet for investigators: "the majority of serial killers who are sexually motivated erotized violence during development. for them, violence and sexual gratification are inexplicably intertwined in their psyche" the "why" and the link to their upbringing ultimately brings us to nature vs nurture i suppose
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There are two ways to think about sex in terms of crime, especially in these cases. Sex is the goal. Sex is the tool. Some serial killers fall under the 1st category, but most fall under the 2nd. When John Douglas and Rob Ressler were doing their research study on extremely violent killers that led to modern day profiling, they found that the vast majority of these killers had the same goal: Manipulate, Dominate Control. Most serial killers perform whatever fantasy they have as a means of achieving these goals, and it often involves sex as brutal sex is a means of dehumanizing a person. Dominating a person. For these people, torture and sex destroys a person.
Violent Minds
violentminds.com › home › serial killers and sexual paraphilias
Serial Killers and Sexual Paraphilias - Violent Minds
November 20, 2025 - Escalation patterns are predictable: Like addiction, paraphilic arousal requires increasingly extreme stimulation. Tolerance develops, driving escalation from fantasy to violent reality. Arousal becomes conditioned to violence: Through classical conditioning, sexual gratification becomes neurologically paired with inflicting suffering, creating an unbreakable link. Multiple paraphilias co-occur: Serial killers rarely have single fetishes.
Forensicpsychiatryinstitute
forensicpsychiatryinstitute.com › home › sexually motivated homicide: descriptive characteristics and empirical evidence
Sexually Motivated Homicide: Descriptive Characteristics and Empirical Evidence < Forensic Psychiatry Institute
April 24, 2025 - Sexually motivated homicide is an extremely rare event. Empirical studies have provided evidence-based characteristics of those who commit sexual homicide and the nature of sexual homicide offences, particularly in the last 10 years. This has assisted in defining whether a sexually motivated homicide has occurred. It can also be incorporated into sexual behaviour evaluations when factors associated with a sexually motivated homicide may be recognized before the person acts out violently.
Wordpress
imperialbiosciencereview.wordpress.com › 2021 › 07 › 09 › inside-the-mind-of-serial-killers-are-they-born-to-kill
Inside the mind of serial killers – are they born to kill?
October 5, 2023 - While fantasies play a significant role in their motivations, they are just a part of a bigger picture which includes several other factors, among which the most relevant is the feeling of empowerment during the act. Their childhood of abuse and neglect makes them feel like misfits and powerless in society, which elicits in them feelings of both social and sexual inadequacy. The act of rape, in the words of the serial killer Ted Bundy, “gives you power over life and death” (Real Responders, 2020), a feeling of control they believe they lost in face of society.
CUNY
academicworks.cuny.edu › cgi › viewcontent.cgi pdf
City University of New York (CUNY) City University of New York (CUNY)
endorsed a history of masturbatory fantasies that were directly connected to the way in which the · crimes were carried out (Burgess et al., 1986). Scholars have suggested that the sexual killer’s · actions at the crime scene will typically portray some unique and personal aspect of ideas and · thoughts that have been repeated numerous times in his fantasy life, and thus the perpetrator may
HealthyPlace
healthyplace.com › personality-disorders › malignant-self-love › psychology-of-serial-and-mass-killers
The Psychology of Serial and Mass Killers | HealthyPlace
He is emotionally "lazy" because ... narcissist prefers fantasyland to reality, grandiose self-conception to realistic appraisal, masturbation and sexual fantasies to mature adult sex, and daydreaming to real life achievements....
ScienceDirect
sciencedirect.com › science › article › abs › pii › S0047235218304288
Sexual murderers in everyday life - ScienceDirect
December 21, 2018 - These individuals were generally dissatisfied with their lives (e.g. feelings of rejection, of being worthless), became socially isolated, and resorted to deviant sexuality (e.g. compulsive masturbation, paraphilias, deviant sexual fantasies) ...
