Serial killers, to start with, as far as what we know about serial killers because serial killers are a very new phenomenon. We didn’t have serial killers in the middle ages or at least not modern serial killers.

Serial killers is a new phenomenon because serial killers have again, two dimensions. They have a mental health dimension, but they definitely have a pronounced social dimension.

For example, there is no serial killer without media involvement.

The media creates the serial killer. So we have a movie like Born Killers. You see how the media interacts with the serial killer and actually creates the serial killer.

So serial killer without media, without police, without social institutions and structures, without the social outcry, without reaction is not a serial killer. The audience, absolutely. It’s a narcissistic drama. It’s a narcissistic performance, a narcissistic theater.

Serial killers are theater. They use, of course, as raw material bodies, but they are absolutely about theater and they stage productions and they do it knowingly and consciously and they involve social institutions actively. They pursue social institutions. Jack the Ripper sent letters to the media of his time to newspapers.

The first, arguably the first modern serial killer. Yes.

So you can’t say that it’s restricted to mental health.

And when it comes to mental health, most serial killers have malignant narcissism, as Kernberg called it. Malignant narcissism is a gentle name for psychopathic narcissists. Narcissists who are also psychopathic. So most of them are malignant narcissists or psychopathic narcissists to be more precise clinically.

But they are also, many of them are also sexual sadists or sexual aberrant deviance in some, in some way, shape or form.

So there is a confluence here.

The first book about the topic was written well over 140 years ago by a guy called Krafft Ebbing. And we didn’t make much progress since we simply don’t know. We know that all sexual acts, including consensual, totally conventional sexual acts involve objectification. And this is especially true with men, not with women, by the way.

Extremely few women objectify their partner, but men do objectify. For example, we know in studies that we have conducted and so on. And I recommend to you to read the book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts.

So we know for example, that men react extremely powerfully to the point of orgasm if they are exposed to disjointed body parts of women. Not the totality of the woman, a body part, even if the photo implies that the body part is cut off, they still react orgasmically to a photo of a body part or a video of a body part. Even if there is a kind of a hint that some crime took place and the body part is, you know, cut off. We’re talking well over 50% of men.

So that‘s definitely a male phenomenon because the male brain reacts to visuals almost exclusively. Men don’t react to any other cue, which explains why men consume pornography overwhelmingly and not women.

So men react to objectification of the female body and to visuals. From here, it’s a very small step to actually doing it, actually objectifying the female body and actually enjoying the visuals.

But of course, cutting, the blood, this involves a different set of mental issues. I mean, there is a subculture of BDSM, a subculture of sadomasochistic sex, which goes to extremes and, for example, involves choking or involves even cutting and drinking the blood that’s called the vampire subculture.

So we do have this, but none of them would cut anyone’s throat and none of them would enjoy snuff, snuff films, you know? And of course, snuff films are fake. We didn’t come across a single snuff film, which was written. It’s all fake.

There are of course perpetrators who document sexual killings. I mean, actually in the modern day and age, in the last 40 years, the vast majority of perpetrators documented their exploits on film starting in the seventies. So that part is true, but of course they don’t share it online. Everything that is available online for download, etc., that’s nonsense. That’s absolute fake.

But yes, of course there are perpetrators who did record their doings and their sexual killings and so on. Such movies do exist, but they never go and get into the public domain. Whatever is available in the public domain is fake, but it’s very realistically made. So it doesn’t matter if it’s fake or not fake. It gives the absolute impression that it’s real.

And that is as distinct from child pornography, which is overwhelmingly real. Let’s say child pornography, you don’t have anything fake. There, almost everything is real, including horrible things like rapes of three years old. That’s all real.

But coming back to the issue of sexual sadism, sexual sadism involves the objectification of the woman, as I’ve mentioned, which is very important to understand an integral part of male psychology, psychosexuality. It’s common. It’s normal. It’s typical. Visualization and objectification of female body parts. That’s utterly common.

Taking it a step further and converting the fantasy into reality via a blood splattered scene, that requires a different set of mental issues.

And we have spotted some correlation with psychopathy. Some, not as big as the media portrays it and not as big as show business would have us believe, but some correlation with psychopathy.

But actually it’s much more correlated with sexual sadism and with a distorted need for intimacy, because most of the perpetrators we have studied, for example, Ed Gein and Ed Gein was the prototype for Hannibal Lecter. Most of the perpetrators we have studied actually enjoyed intimacy with the body parts. So Ed Gein would skin the victims and wear the skins. And this was a form of intimacy.

The only way they can obtain intimacy is by merging with the victim. And the only way to merge with the victim is to consume the victim’s life.

This is not as crazy as it sounds. Actually it underlies most civilized, most cultures in the world. In most cultures in the world, primitive cultures, I mean, not today’s cultures, but in most primitive cultures and until the 16th century, by the way, not that far away. In most primitive cultures, consuming someone’s life was the ultimate form of intimacy.

So we had human sacrifice. We had cannibalism. For example, in many Native American cultures, if you wanted to show respect for a warrior, you would eat his heart or liver. In other cultures, slaughtering someone was an act of union, becoming one.

So it underlies a lot of religious practices and a lot of shamanistic practices, killing someone, dismembering someone, cannibalistically consuming someone, was an act of intimacy.

And of course, for example, we had the cannibalistic act in Germany a few years ago, where the two men, one was butchering the other, slowly and gradually, not immediately, butchering him part by part and they were eating the parts together. Imagine.

So they perceived it as lovemaking. They constantly described it as lovemaking.

And indeed, psychologically speaking, when we make love, and I’m not talking about the sexual, but also about the sexual act, definitely. When we make love, even in a one night stand, you know, there is a moment, a split moment where we cease to exist. Death is intimately connected with sex, extremely intimately connected with sex. The French have an expression, la petite mort, a little death. Death is the flip side of sex. Sex, of course, brings life to the world, but you bring life to the world by dying momentarily, which is orgasm.

Indeed, we discovered, for example, in studies that when people have orgasm, most cognitive functions shut off completely, utterly, and the autonomous nervous system takes over.

So it was well known in the underworld of Paris in the 19th century, there were collaborations between prostitutes and thieves. The prostitute would take a client and when the client orgasm, the thief would come into the room and steal his wallet and the client would not notice it at all because he was orgasming and he had no cognitive functions.

It was so well known that there were coalitions between prostitutes and thieves. It was known that the minute of orgasm, the person is clinically dead. Nothing works.

So the affinity, the affinity between sex and death is enormous. And of course, if you look at rituals throughout the world and throughout history and in numerous cultures and civilizations and religions, you see this extremely close affinity between sex.

Actually there were many religions where sex led to ritual slaughter, to sacrifice, sex led to sacrifice. So the women were having sex before they were, for example, being sacrificed.

So this affinity is embedded in our brains and with some people it seems social inhibitions which tell us don’t take it any further, don’t translate this primitive affinity between sex and death to reality. These inhibitions are somehow absent.

We can simulate this situation by, for example, consuming alcohol or drugs, but especially alcohol. When we consume alcohol, we have a state of total disinhibition, depending on the level of alcohol, but above zero, 18, we have a state of total disinhibition.

Many people, when they have consumed alcohol to that level, which is level that usually leads a bit later to blackout, when they’ve consumed alcohol to this level, their social inhibitions are gone. Their cognitive functions are gone and they are unable to form long-term memories.

At that stage, many people become extremely aggressive. Even people who are totally docile and tranquil and pleasant and kind become utterly life-threateningly aggressive.

So if you look at statistics, you will see that an inordinate amount of murders happens with intoxicated or inebriated people, by some accounts, 40%.

And so when we remove inhibitions, we immediately revive or resuscitate the link between sex and death.

And in the male brain, sex is connected to body parts and visuals. So if I remove the inhibition and sex leads to death, then sex itself must involve body parts and visuals. So it’s one step forward and I cut the woman. So I have my body parts, I have my sex, and of course I have my death.

And the only thing standing between us and this is our socialization process. The process by which we interject, internalize, our parents‘ voices, peers, teachers, role models, media, etc., which keeps telling us, you don’t do these things.

And still, despite all this, after alcohol consumption, in 20 to 30% of the cases, there is rape. Despite all the social inhibitions, and we are not talking about 2%, in 20 to 30% of cases, men rape women after they got intoxicated.

Aggression, death, body parts, visuals, sex, they’re all interrelated in the male brain. It is, of course, no accident that the vast majority of serial killers are men, not women. It’s a dysfunction of the male brain. It’s something, sorry for the expression, fucked up with a male brain.

Well, I think men who were able to transition smoothly from sex to violence, not necessarily to death, but from sex to violence, did have an evolutionary advantage.

First of all, they were able to direct this aggression and violence to eliminate competitors. And they were able to direct this aggression and violence to the woman, and subdue her and subjugate her or kidnap her.

And we have many stories in antiquity of men simply coming and kidnapping women, including married women, the story of the Sabines and so on.

The story of the Sabines, you said?

Yeah, it’s a story about how one Ionian Greek, males of one Ionian Greek tribe kidnapped married women.

But that’s only one example. There are numerous stories about men coming and kidnapping women and killing the men or killing some of the women if they refuse.

I mean, it’s very common in antiquity and in most mythology. In most mythology, it’s common. So I think, yes, it did have an evolutionary advantage.

If you were able to transition smoothly from sex to death or from sex to aggression or from sex to violence, you propagated your genes more. You were more successful with propagating your genes.

And today is the same.

Listen, what happens in modern society is that we ritualized and we converted to symbols, all these ancient primitive underlying processes, but they have not changed.

We are still aggressive with each other as males when we compete over females. This aggression wears many forms and is, as I said, highly ritualized and symbolized. But it’s there on every table where men and women sit together, the males aggressively compete for the females.

It can wear many, many guises, for example, humor, sense of humor. So one man would humiliate the other pretending to be humorous. Or brutal honesty, one man would say honest things about another. He’s just being honest. You can’t say anything. It’s not bad.

So there are many forms of aggression, but this game continues.

If you don’t have social inhibitions and of course, narcissists don’t have social inhibitions, they’re disinhibited. In other words, the process of socialization is incomplete or incomplete.

Because they are gods, they are godlike. Society, its rules, mores, edicts, conventions and instructions should, has nothing to do with them, can have nothing to do with them because they’re above society. They’re god, not godlike. They’re gods. They’re figureheads. They’re godheads.

And this is common also to psychopaths. By definition, grandiosity negates inhibition.

We even discovered a phenomenon called alcohol myopia. Alcohol myopia is when you drink alcohol above a certain level, you become narcissistically grandiose.

All people, by the way, anyone who drinks and alcohol blood concentration level reaches a certain point becomes narcissistically grandiose. And this is called myopia. Alcohol myopia.

And so alcohol leads to grandiosity. Grandiosity leads to disinhibition. Disinhibition leads to unbridled action, not constrained by any rules or conventions or whatever. And extremely often leads to aggression and murder.

So alcohol simulates for us the narcissistic state of mind. Simply by drinking alcohol, we all become narcissists. And of course it feels wonderful to be a narcissist because you’re godlike. So people who drink for a while are godlike.

Imagine the narcissist is constantly inebriated, constantly intoxicated. He is constantly grandiose and he says to himself, the inner monologue is, I’m above all this. I’m not bound by these rules. They are for mere mortals. I’m a god.

And if you look at Greek mythology, the gods allow themselves many things. They eat their own children. They copulate with mortal females. They have half sons like Hercules, who is half god, half mortal, half human. And they kill others. I mean, they are allowed to do things that humans are definitely not allowed to do.

And we even have many situations in Greek and Roman mythology where humans try to behave like the gods and they’re punished.

The minute a human tries to emulate the gods and do something that gods do regularly, the gods punish him because it’s hubris. It’s pretty, it’s unthinkable that men would be allowed to behave as a god is totally allowed to behave.

And narcissists are all gods. That’s how I started this conversation.

And of course they are allowed to cut a woman to pieces and drink her blood or I don’t know what else to do with her. They’re allowed, they’re gods.

Grandiosity leads to social disinhibition and social inhibition is the only thing standing between us and the very deeply embedded ancient rituals of sex and death, which were very intimately connected and interchangeable and transmutable.

And of course I will mention one last thing.

Transubstantiation in the Catholic church. We drink the blood of Jesus. We eat his flesh. The Catholic church doesn’t tell you that the wine is like the blood of Jesus. It tells you that it is the blood of Jesus by a miracle called transubstantiation.

Whenever you drink the wine, you are drinking the blood of Jesus and you are eating his flesh with a wafer. That’s his flesh. You’re engaging in an act of institutionalized cannibalism.

How is that different to cutting the body of a woman and cooking some of her flesh and then eating it? How exactly is it different?

If you are God, Jesus was the son of God. You as a narcissist, you are God.

All these are connections in our mind, even if we are not aware of it.