Ed Gein For my Psychology portfolio I chose to present the movie Ed Gein.

This movie is a psychological thriller based on the life of Americas first famous serial killer. Ed Gein, a reclusive farmer who was convicted for necrophilia, cannibalism, and murder is a unique story. The fact that Ed Geins below average childhood evolved a deranged murderer declared criminally insane was very interesting. After watching Ed Gein I was propelled to understand the psychosis behind this man and his true story. Born at the turn of the century into the small farming community of Plainfield, Wisconsin, Gein lived a repressive and solitary life on the family homestead with a weak, ineffectual older brother and domineering mother who taught him from an early age that sex, women, and anything impure was a sinful thing abominable to God. One time when Augusta, his mother, viciously beat him with a belt because he was caught masturbating. Despite tongue-lashings and the overt physical abuse, Gein adored his mother. He called her a devout Christian woman and a saint. He had little adoration for his father who was unattached, verbally abusive man to the entire family. Shortly after the death of his father, Gein killed his brother out of rage and utter disgust when he called their mother a brute hag. His mother died unknowing of this fact one year later. She left her son a thirty-nine-year-old bachelor, still emotionally enslaved to the tyranny his parents contributed to his life. Ed ran the family's 160-acre farm by himself. He was alone for the first time. Physically speaking, Gein was an average man with a regular build, brown hair and light eyes. He was simply seen as a shy, harmless and eccentric farmer. Some residents considered him safe enough to baby-sit their kids. However, he still missed his family and in his solitude, Gein began to withdraw from reality. Cognition was adequate and working in this man. He had the ability to acquire, store, and retrieve any knowledge and use it. He started reading medical dictionaries and female anatomical texts that lead to a first time interest in women since as a child Geins mother insisted he remain unmarried, and forced in him the belief that women betray and leads families to separation. His newfound interest and acquired anatomy data lead to many sexually explicit necrophilia activities. Gein had a difficult time in making self-reliant decisions. His mother Augusta was very intrusive and domineering with an authoritarian parenting style. She expected the utmost respect and obedience from her children. Augusta refused any questioning which discouraged open communication and esteem development. This typical authoritarian-like parenting usually yields easily upset, moody children with poor communication skills. Geins father was equally ineffective in creating an independent, stable child. His father was permissive and indifferent to him similar to permissive-indifferent style parenting. Geins father set minimal limits and provided little attention, interest and emotional support. In addition to the other

developmental defects, poor social skills were added to Geins personality as a result of his fathers aloofness. According to Erik Eriksons psychosocial stages of life theory, individuals have to pass through eight developmental stages successively to function adequately as an adult. There are four stages that occur in childhood. Geins disruption may suggest that his conflicts began in the second stage, early childhood. This stage experienced by children within the ages of 1-3 years is also called the autonomy versus shame and doubt stage. In this particular phase the child learn to exercise will, make choices, and utilize self-control. If these techniques not learned children usually become uncertain and doubt that they can do things by themselves. Ed Geins indecisiveness and dependence followed him throughout his life and played a key role in the onset of his madness and deranged behavior. Several times Gein attempted to move away from the place wherein he spent his entire life but he was afraid to make any real steps toward the change. Gein had no connecting thoughts to independent feelings or effective problem-solving skills. He simply stayed put and did minimal measures to avoid his grief and oncoming delirium. Such measures were boarding up and sealing off every room in his 2-story farmhouse with the exception of his bedroom and the kitchen downstairs. He made it a point to keep his mothers room untouched just as the way it was before her death. These two instances were destructive examples of both emotion-focused and problem-focused forms of coping. Emotionally, Gein was so stressed by the absence of his mother that he often cried. He blamed himself for not loving her more than he already did and if he had the chance her life may have been prolonged. This reasoning was a fabricated excuse that demonstrated an unconscious effort to distort the reality of his loss to relieve anxiety. Yet, anxiety remained and guilt became its component. His faulty reasonings closely relied on a defense mechanism common in coping with stress. This tactic surfaces to protect the ego by easing selfreprehension and distress. In efforts of problem focusing, Gein identified physical reminders of Augusta as problematic stressors. As a way of eliminating grief, he ignored, hid from, and even boarded away anything physically reminding him of his mother. However, the solutions he chose were both inadequate and inappropriate for ideal results of relief. In other words, Geins efforts of coping were futile because the memoirs of Augusta refused to cease and his anxiety continued to grow. Ed Gein started to become obsessed with his mother when she was alive. However, these signs were slightly developing at the time. He would follow her, and be over extensively concerned of her daily physical and emotional status regardless of the harsh verbal and physical abuse he received. Any foul mentionings of Augusta greatly upset him and the happiness of his mother was the only thing that mattered. When at the funeral of his brother, Gein hugged Augusta for comfort and would not let her go. She yelled and hit to be released. But he still loved her and made sure she was comforted according to her standards.

Gein could not understand how and why a saintly womans life could be taken so soon. His thoughts became so intrusive that life became frustrating and cloudy doubts of tomorrow began to creep. In other words, Gein was obsessing over the past because the thoughts of his former life consisted over lengthy spells of time. His obsession was so deep rooted that he decided to reincarnate his mother. Gein made a cognitive decision to read both fiction and non-fiction books on reincarnation, similar rituals, and anatomical texts to be knowledgeable of the proper way to raise his mother from the dead. His obsession acquired a compulsive side when urges to exhume female bodies of the deceased surfaced. He wanted to surgically practice his newly acquired knowledge of anatomy. He then exhumed his mothers remains and attempted bring her back to life. Frustrated at his unsuccessfulness, he flayed the body and preserved her skin eventually making a skin suit that he would wear in his house and in the moonlight to pretend he was his own mother. This is in clear connection with an Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Intrusive thoughts and urges to perform repetitive, ritualistic behaviors characterize this disorder and were both hypothetically present in the case of Ed Gein. Gein also started having audio-visual hallucinations. These were sensory (one, all, or a combinations thereof) perceptions that occurred without an external stimulus. In Geins case, he was able to see, hear and talk to his mother. In the perceptions, Gein was given appreciation from his mother for learning how to reincarnate and bring her back to life. He was able to enjoy the embrace of his mother for which he so much longed for. It is interesting to note that Augusta was much nicer, warmer, and extremely loving to him when she appeared. This special type of hallucination that Ed Gein was experiencing is most common in psychological disorder, schizophrenia. As several theories explaining the cause schizophrenia exist, the only match relating to the available information on Ed Gein was the psychosocial approach. This conjecture contends that stressful experiences and disturbed family interactions are contributing factors to psychological interferences relating to this disorder. Ed Geins past closely relates to the research founded by evaluations on expressed emotion (EE). Expressed emotion is a definition for certain levels of criticism, hostility, and emotional overinvolvment in an afflicted individuals life by the individuals family. In sum, Geins poor stress coping, anxiety, and obsessivecompulsion lead to delusional realities that lead to an exaggeration of normal thought processes and abnormal behaviors. In Geins hallucinations, Augusta required for him to kill certain people in order to fulfill the lords work and to make her happy. In the morning of one instance, Augusta yelled at him for oversleeping past early morning light and expressed her discontent for his tardiness in carrying out the ghastly deed of murdering a local resident. Gein jumped out of bed and complied with the murderous request in order to please the voice of his mother. He quickly learned that any hesitation in killing at the request of his mother would summon the consequence of her contempt. Ed Gein

continued to kill and even explained the reason for his demise to his victims before he took their lives. The deaths of the victims increasingly bought visual and tactile presences of Augusta. Being able to see, touch, and talk to his mother were Geins positive reinforcement for his demented actions. Geins learning and behavior reinforcement is similar to occurrences in Operant conditioning. In Operant Conditioning also know as Skinnerian conditioning, learning is based on effects and behavior is increased when followed by rewards. When looking at Geins unique motivation for his murders one might wonder if the hallucination had not existed, would Ed Gein still have killed? A hypothetical guess is no. I have came to this conclusion because all in all Gein was a cognitive, morally developed individual, before the death of Augusta. He knew differences of right versus wrong and gave respect where it was due. After all, the values of obedience were instilled into him as a child. His breaking point came from loneliness, stress, anxiety, and depression that lead to an inevitable need to feel at ease. The desire for peace amounted coping strategies that were offstage and destructive thus distorting reality for this individual and causing further severe psychological disturbances. These disturbances issued false sensory perceptions that made Gein slay innocent people to acquire illusional happiness, mistaken love, and obsolete acceptance that he so greatly longed for. Theses rewards or satisfying inferences encouraged the repetitious act of his murdering. The equation of Ed Geins motivations for his macabre acts is in direct correlation of Edward Thorndikes theory, law of effect. According to the law of effect, voluntary behaviors are influenced by their consequences. The law of effect and operant conditioning theory suggests that if Gein had not felt pleasantly recompensed for his murders, these offenses were likely to not have occurred. In sum, Gein needed serious help. The event of his sanity required psychological therapy. Unfortunately, 45 years ago such treatment was not readily disposable and the wealth of psychoanalytic information was not as abundant as it is now. If it was, psychotherapy could have been a considerable option for stabilizing this mans sanity by improving his psychological functioning, and enhanced his life adjustment. Psychotherapy amends five specific areas and is applicable to the case of Ed Gein. He would have experienced positive alterations in his disturbed thoughts, emotions, behaviors, interpersonal/ life conflicts as well as any possible biological disruptions like chemical imbalances. Ed Gein is one example of what a person could become when afflicted with inner conflicts, poor reasoning, and isolation without seeking professional help.

Bibliography: Tia Loper is a young psychology student. This paper was given a B+.