Ted Bundy: notorious of all!

Parvinder Udayan

Of all the notorious serial killers known to the world, he is the most spoken of. Theodore (Ted) Bundy was a heinous murderer who was found guilty of raping, kidnapping and fatally assaulting more than 100 women. While attempting to study his behavior, psychologists came to the conclusion that Bundy could be classified as a High Factor 1 Psychopath. He was described as an intelligent, young man and characterized by his deceptive persona, manipulative behavior, lack of remorse or regret, and the inability to empathize. In 1975, Dr. Al Carlisle attempted to evaluate Bundy (before the world knew of his hideous crimes). It was difficult to determine him from a single personality disorder as his symptoms suggested that he suffered from a multiple of them. One of them is Oedipus complex, a psycho sexual disorder that is described as a child’s feelings of desire for his or her opposite-sex parent. Failure of its venturesome prompted him to develop severe aggression towards women.

A chronological analysis of Bundy’s behavior showcased a number of factors leading to his psychopathic nature. His ill-behavior could be traced back to the painful memories of abuse, humiliation, and depression from his childhood. Bundy was highly addicted to pornography in the earlier stages of his life. Eventually his addiction transformed into his fantasy, which finally led to his gradual ability to repeatedly kill people in order to please himself.

As Carlisle puts it, Bundy portrayed an admirable public behavior and simultaneously foster a sense of evility which made him a competent psychopath. He abides on fantasies to compensate the mundanity of his life. In a way, he strives to turn his fantasies into realities, a habit that lead to most of his killings. Even after killing his victims, he revisited the crime scenes to indulge in sexual acts with the decomposing corpses. He also kept some of the severed heads of the victims as mementos in his apartment. Biographer Ann Rule described Bundy as "a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even after."

When his crimes came to light, it was indeed surprising how Bundy managed to have good and evil coexist in his singular mind. Like other psychopaths, he suffered from Antisocial Personality Disorder, a psychological disorder where the person believes and behaves indifferent to the social regulations. Even as a murderer, he was devoid of any regret for his crimes making him a high functioning sociopath. He inflicted violence without even the slightest hesitation and continue to lead life as any ordinary person.

Dr. Carlisle called him ‘the author of his own creation’. Even for the best of psychologists Bundy was proved to be unpredictable. His immense drive to kill made him a sociopath, a result of the psychological disorders he suffered since the childhood.