Psycho-Biographical Perspective on the Life of Ted Bundy

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This psycho-biographical perspective on the life of Ted Bundy will attempt to elucidate a range of psychoanalytical theories pertaining to the development of his psyche. These will centre around early rejection, abandonment and emotional abuse issues resulting in an arrested development at the phallic stage, a superego that was severely malnourished and a dissociative state in the paranoid-schizoid position resulting in the use of primary defense mechanisms. These theories will be supported by real events. Theodore (Ted) Bundy was one of the most prolific, cold hearted serial killers of the 20th century. Born into the lower socio economic working class of America he was contemptuous of and humiliated by his standing, spending a lifetime engendering a persona of grandiose ideal and false entitlement. He was abused, rejected, betrayed and abandoned in his early years, which resulted in his developmental growth being stunted in the phallic phase and the compulsive internal motivations of his carefully constructed adult persona, versus his shadow side, became the predominant mode of organizing himself and relating to his environment (Lachmann & Lachmann, 1995). Born in an unwed home for mothers and abandoned there for the first three or so months of his life, Bundy was then taken home to his grand-parents house. Here his grand-parents became known as his parents and his mother, Louise, as his sister. The grandmother had a severely depressed personality and had received electric shock treatment for this on several occasions. She was also reputed to be an agoraphobic. The grandfather was reported to be abusive and violent, with a particular interest in pornography that Bundy had access to in his very early years – age three. These were the objects of Ted’s early developmental relations. According to Bowlby’s theory of attachment and Fairbairn’s major work, the

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