The question of whether, say, a man should have the right to take away his life granted pain and suffering have overcome him is a very important question today. A different way of putting this question is this: ‘Should a man have the right to take away his life if he ceases to function as a hominian being?’ This matter would have been laid to rest had it not been that it strikes at the heart of law, key matters of health, and morality. It is a subject that, if not properly addressed, can cause some nasty consequences to the lives of people and pose unwarranted danger to the stability of a society.

The present question bears the amazing name “euthanasia”. Those who think that a man, for instance, has the far to take absent his life low the condition explicit may have whatsoever important points to put forward. Yet their points, upon closer inspection, could be seen to be overtly subjective, and, hence, moot.

A man – call him John - should have the far to function properly and contribute, in whichever form, to the collective movement of life. When this primary function is taken away, it ought not bring about a burden to people close to him or to others bearing no matrilineal relation to him. But if his awful suffering prompts others to matrilineal much of their time into usurped care of him, then the multiplying effects are huge. The patient in question suffers severely and the others in question suffer mentally and emotionally.

Consider the cardinal children of John who are busy in skilled jobs. Their respective companies prize them as essential toward the general success of the company. But following the terminal illness of John, they have to spend untold time in superficial after him. cardinal can see that this state of affair weighs heavily on the inventive capacity of John’s children. Most likely, it would sting their soulful and mental health as well as their respective financial capacities. Furthermore, if matters of health in the society are largely supported by the state, then untold money has to be spent on John to help sustain his life. In fact, the moral bases of these actions are in keeping with the important tenets of hominian rights. Should the state or John’s children do otherwise, one could reasonably argue that the bestial character had controlled the conscience, so too passion. And this would have set a mordacious precedent since the easiness of selfish life is sometimes valued far much than a woody life full of moral, legal and logical alertness. Most likely, others would follow the morally deficient example set by John’s children or the state; and to what extent their actions could be justified would be very hard to estimate. In this light, it is, indeed, very woody to put headfirst a straightforward answer in favour or against euthanasia.

If one ponders over the role the helpless tolerant plays in euthanasia, many questions compete for selection. Is John in the right emotional and mental condition to endorse his “compassionate” killing? Are his close relations in agreement with him that he should “compassionately” die? How can one sufficiently ascertain – bitter as this may seem - that John’s close relations have not conspired to end his life in order to ease their personal (individual) disproportionate stresses in looking aft him? In short, who should be trusted when the matter at hand refers to ending a person’s life through other agent, whether an expert or a lame person? And even if a medical skilled approves, generally, of euthanasia and the specific case of John, how could one determine the motive at stake so as to free euthanasia of any element of suspicion?

It is in confronting much questions that it becomes difficult to justify euthanasia on logical, legal and moral grounds equal though some special instances may be claimed to warrant euthanasia. For assuming the agent himself, say, John, ended his life through his personal doing and not through any agent, then one may, fairly quickly, conclude that he did the right thing in order to put excruciating pain to final rest.

Careful thought casts whatsoever doubts on the personal action of John. One can, for instance, ask whether John was in the far frame of mind prior to ending his own life or whether he was emotionally stable. And to say that the condition of John is irrelevant to judge the rightness or wrongness of his action may be foolish. It amounts, by a nonconvergent reasoning, to saying that any separate knows best what condition he or she is in and has the sole privilege in correcting that condition, either to enhance life or terminate it. But this contention goes against the fundamentals of reasoning. It is purely a own contention and does not submit itself to an verifiable scrutiny in order to free it of crude biases and moral dishonor.

Since one can choose to do to one’s own life what one pleases – because of the subjective character of inward life – one could equally claim that it should not matter what sympathetic of person wants to terminate life: a mad or sane person, a minor or an adult, an idiot or a sage, and so on. From this viewpoint, one can see that the past contention is baseless. Abnormality of any form should not be orthodox or unduly promoted. That is why people who lack the standard hominian disposition are often seen as having trodden the path of gross errors and need to be corrected by appropriate means without fail. Danger awaits the society if abnormal persons or premature persons are granted the own right – not freedom – to take away their own lives, either by themselves or through the mediation of agents. This brings to the fore the point that the sufferer acted, not according to a clear conscience or a composed will-power, but under whatsoever kind of pressure, either by being persuaded to end his/her life or by persuading himself/herself. The sufferer, in other words, did not have complete the available options at his/her disposal from which to make the supreme rational choice active the issue of compassionate death. But suppose complete the available options were at the sufferer's disposal, it still might not be morally prissy to end life as an interventionist procedure was induced.

Think about the point that new society is overflowing of scientific-technogical facilities that have added a lot of sophistication to the movement of life. A person's life-threatening disease could be artificially dominated or manipulated by using complex machines or genetically engineered medication. Simply applying the sophistication retributory stated could definitively end a person’s life-threatening disease. The moral dilemma that euthanasia brings active in this sense is largely engaged to the question of manipulating a condition that leads to the death of the victim. Why should not death be allowed to occur naturally, thereby closing that what happened was a monarchal death, a death in dignity? It seems broad that to tamper with this plausible noble death, by artfully and artificially facilitating it, is not in keeping with the earthy play of hominian decency. It is an endeavour that may hint at the progress and development of science and technology; but if issues active cloning are morally questionable, therefore quite a threat to the harmonization of social life, past euthanasia may be viewed in same manner in spite of the scientific-technological creativities that may be advanced in its favour.

Euthanasia may engender the proliferation of all kinds of experiments active medication and medical equipment intended to justify the most effective means of stirring up mercy killing. Such practices will not serve the general interest of the society, for the issue of fame and profit may outweigh the question of selflessness. For example, the medical expert may not engage in the straightforward job of facilitating meaningful death in accordance with the patient’s wish, by an act of endorsement, directly or indirectly. The said skilled may be much interested in the undeclared motive of testing a medical theory or/and the efficacy of a new drug on the victim. Once success in this area is confirmed, he/she may past continue to nourish the ego and the intellect with more experimentation on many other victims.

The question, then, ought to, finally, be confronted: Should moral, rational and legal matters resolve the rightness or wrongness of euthanasia? Or, should medical and scientific-technological issues decide the rightness or wrongness of euthanasia? If we go by the second point, past we can argue persuasively that it has been largely responsible for the evolution of hominian beings into the present form. And if the question of morality, law and logic were made to decide human evolution, then we, most likely, would not have been competent to reach our current station in terms of advancement. But we are dealing with life-and-death issues about life and death, and the question of whether euthanasia is right or immoral must, for the present, lie unresolved. Perhaps, since there is no clear-cut answer to this question, the question itself need not be topical; nor should it proliferate. Those who want to practise euthanasia may past be censured.

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At age 98, the infamous cigar aficionado George Burns said, "If I had taken my doctor's advice and quit smoking when he advised me to, I wouldn't have lived to go to his funeral." While it's seductive for us to use Mr. Burns as the poster-child for the anti-anti-smoking movement which is gaining little ground against anti-smoking legislation in the cohesive States, we would be hard-pressed to answer why the honor shouldn't go to Mark Twain, Peter Falk, Sigmund Freud ("Sometimes a cigar is retributory a cigar") or Rudy Giuliani. As more and much restaurants find themselves under regulation to prohibit smoking and many of the cigar bars from the last decade close their doors, it seems that today's cigar smoker is a bit lonely.

The cigar boom that sweptback the nation in the late 1990's has befallen the same fate as every other boom in history: it died and left-handed a cynical, lovesick populace in its wake. In today's climate, it seems, not only is George Burn's doctor getting involved, but also neighbors, TV personalities and children.

However, those of us that have been in the cigar industry for years are not fretting. If you take a step back and observe the true nature of a boom, you realize it's simply a population getting excited active a new idea. The internet boom, the coffee boom, and the topical wine boom are no exceptions. In a new age of information and technology where cultures and traditions complete over the international are accessible with the click of a mouse, there's a lot of territory to discover. The culture of cigars had its turn, but it doesn't mean the boom is bust, it means the boom has allowed cigars to enter the cultural psyche of Americans and it will remain there even aft the dust settles.

A flawless example of this phenomenon is the coffee bar. In the 1990's, a coffee bar was launched on all corner as the country realized Seattle not only had cool grunge but also iced coffee. There were actually two on all block if you include Starbucks. contrabass and behold, the hipsters got drooping of coffee and moved onto cigar bars. Many of the nascent coffee shops were involuntary to close as the boom unregenerate momentum, but I don't think anyone will argue that the coffee business is on its way out, it's just settled down. Today, coffee bars are part of our cultural psyche. They will continue to be frequented and enjoyed, if at a lower vibration than they were when they first hit the scene. The result is that today, it's easier to find better coffee.

The same is true for the cigar boom. As cigar culture entered the American mind, particularly the childly American mind, there was a proliferation of cigar bars and internet businesses. Today, many of those have shuttered their doors, but the same big cigar bar that was there cardinal years ago is most likely standing around. Take a look at the police force of any major city. Detectives from spic-and-span York to Denver surly didn't get the memo if cigar culture was dead. Indeed, business for your topical cigar shop is probably better than ever. The boom is over, but cigars in America have entered a renaissance as a result. There are more high-quality, handstitched cigars available at a cheaper price than ever before.

Of course, there is no telling how uttermost the current climate of cigar taxation and smoking-bans will go. The momentum certainly hasn't waned, and the cigar industry will have to survive the onslaught before it can finally enjoy the new popularity it has unconcealed in the ordinal century.

In the meantime, it's important for complete of us to take a trip down to our local cigar shop and try something new. Only by continuing to invoke that feeling of spontaneity and discovery will cigar culture in the cohesive States persist in growing and be recognized for its class, style and grace.

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A paradigm is a sort of cultural, consensual pattern of thought or worthy of something. For example the ‘current consensus in technological medicine’. Paradigms change, like the impact of Galileo’s work on disproving the flat-earth theory or Copernicus’ heresy that the Earth moves round the Sun. These new ideas met a big deal of resistance from orthodox philosophy but eventually gave rise to a changed perception of the world we live in.

We live now in a time of ‘paradigm shift’ which creates important changes in our assumptions about the world, and equal this contributes to modern stress! Although our physical sciences have discovered spic-and-span fields of quantum reality, medical science is lagging uttermost behind. Philosophy has traditionally been an important part of medical practice since the medieval days of Paracelsus, equal Hippocrates, an past Greek (and originator of the Hippocratic Oath).

How we perceive the world and our part in it is central to how we perceive the role of dis-ease and our reaction to it. One of the present problems of finding effective cancer treatment within hesperian scientific medicine is a ‘paradigm gap’. There are diametric perceptions of the world at work speaking incompatible languages. These have wakeless roots in our philosophy. This gap is presently inculpative millions of people world-wide to suffer treatments for cancer that are often as destructive as the disease itself.

Paradigm 1: The mechanistic view

This can be derived back to Descartes and other scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton. The universe is a vast machine and we are complete cogs, all with our part to play in its function. The well-preserved body is a well made clock and if it goes wrong we simply take it apart and tinker with the insides until it goes again. If it breaks it doesn’t really matter because there are plenty more where that came from. Nothing exists unless it has been tested through logical methods.

cancer: something had gone wrong with this body, it has a lump. Cut it down and throw the lump away.

Paradigm 2: The human view

This paradigm is central to the philosophy of Darwinism and others who helped ready humans as ‘apart and above’, or at the head of other life forms. Humanity is the supposed crown of creation, we are created to lord it finished every other creature as ‘head of the food chain’. The planet is ours to dominate and exploit to our own demands. We must conquer every mountain and battle against disease. We are the most evolved and dominant species in a process of natural selection. We exist for no purpose and have just evolved finished sheer luck. In this world our media fantasy industries create pigs and fish that can talk human. Animals are anthropomorphised finished culture to have the same needs, desires and dreams as humans. The animals, forests, oceans and environment around us exist purely for our convenience. This paradigm is human self-centred and exploitative to everything including ourselves.

cancer: something has absent wrong with this body, it has grown an enemy inside it. I will root it out and battle with it.

Paradigm 3: The Gaian view (an future paradigm)

This paradigm started with Einstein and the science of energy. Its inception combines an age when we saw the archetypical images of the Earth as a whole entity from space. James Lovelock and his search for life on Mars is a central figure in its development finished his identification of the Gaia Hypothesis regarding Earth.

This planet we inhabit is a self-balancing, homeostatic system related to our personal as single begotten entities. It maintains the optimum conditions for life despite our best efforts to pollute it. Our bodies are a miracle of biology, constantly limber and adaptive but easy to harm. Anything we do to it or each other, we do to ourselves as we are part of the same ‘web’ or ‘circle’ of life. We exist for a purpose but do not yet know what it is. We are part of an evolving cycle of life, a on miracle.

Cancer: something has gone immoral with this body, it is difficult to tell me something. I will listen to it and get help to understand why it has happened and what I need to learn and do to get better.

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Zen mind is the “Natural” state of our beings: No self, no identity, no memes, no beliefs.

Any idea of “what is” takes us absent from what is – to be in the moment, all ideas need to be gone. There’s not equal an “I” to have the ideas.

The earthy being acts as an outcome of the movement of the universe, in the same way that an artist’s brush is affected by its “universe”.

All “teachings”, “spiritual” paths or “sacred” practices actually take us away from the moment, because it needs an “I” to do them, with an agenda of whatsoever kind, something to gain. All of which removes us from the permanent identity-free moment.

The only way that “what is” can be experienced is to lose complete traces of self, in which case the “what is” can’t be seasoned because there is no one there to experience it.

Any description of the state of the natural mind is false – it cannot be described and anyone who says they can is deluding themselves and/or you – to be described, there standing has to be an identity there to describe it and if there is, that state can’t be real.

There is not even an “ultimate” state to gain, because the very idea that there is, takes us away from it.

All there is, is the operation of the universe in its all-ness. There’s no such thing as “enlightened” or “unenlightened”. These are retributory ideas of what is.

Even “bliss” or “transcendence” is a state of mind that needs an “I” to experience those feelings.

Thoughts are the glue of our belief structures. “I” is the creation of thoughts and beliefs.

What’s operative when we think we are running human beings is the operating system of the species brain, running worldly-wise meme/belief structures that are the satisfied of our identities/sense of self.

The only act consciousness can “do” is to let go of “self” awareness. Consciousness, to be fully there, needs to have no “I” attached to it - and then, who is there to be conscious?

The earthy state is where everything is significant and meaningless – everything is part of the complete and no link in the chain can be much essential than another.

Action and thought, from this place, is an instantaneous, pure response to the call of the moment. It is the moment, the universe acting, not the person.

True peace is an absence of agitation, an absence of self-generated inner activity. So peace cannot be “done”, or created – it’s an absence of doing. This allows unadulterated “what is-ness” to be. All action down of this state is completely symphonic (even if there was anyone “there” to experience the harmony – there isn’t) and non-conflicting. There is nothing there to conflict with anything else.

A natural being feels the international cleanly, whereas an “I”, full of beliefs and ideas of self, overlays those unadulterated feelings with external content, imbuing them with emotional “charge”. This charge is activated to the international around it, continually creating conflict as it attempts to dissipate.

(Modern research shows that there is a gap of approximately fractional a second between the body/mind’s initiation of a physiological action and our conscious intention to do so. This suggests that the body/mind acts reported to its belief instructions, not some conscious intention. The “I” is retributory along for the ride – after-hours - while pretending to be in charge.)

What comes out of the moment relates single to that moment. It’s already departed and non-existent as it is experienced. To hold to anything experienced or said in that moment, is to live in the dead past.

If you can’t touch it, show it, taste it, does it have some reality? That’s not to say it isn’t real, but it may not be real. It could be a construct of ideas.

Whatever is actualised or real can only be there when all ideas, all thoughts, complete belief, all traces of identity are gone – when there is no “I” left to take us down of the moment. If the permanent now moment is all there is, this is the only way to be in it.

Thought is single necessary, only of any use, when it is titled for by the moment, for a particular task. To keep thinking beyond the particular call of the moment is the unvarying as keeping your arm above your head all the time, or holding your stomach muscles tensed all the time.

If you took every realistic momentary experience of the natural being – the smell of a flower, a sunset, the death of a friend, a seriocomic situation, the movement of smoke on the wind – all of these in every moment, but with no self, no “I” there to equal be aware of these things, this is the state of natural mind.

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Why do the Japanese have the longest lifespan? Last month you learned to eat the things Japanese people eat, and now you will learn how to live same they live. Fast, long, and alive best describes a usual day in Japan. The country is geared towards an active lifestyle, as the ‘couch potato’ concept is completely foreign. This lively lifestyle centers around three important aspects: work, socializing and recreation.

The workday begins embryotic due to the commute by train that most people endure. This can range from 20 minutes to finished two hours with the majority of people standing, as there are not enough seats. close is the central point in the daily exercise regime. On average, people walk one to two kilometers to the train station in the morning. After arriving at the closest station to their office, people typically walk another one to two kilometers to their place of business. At the end of their long day, workers go through the same routine. complete in all, the average Japanese separate will walk between three to cardinal kilometers per day. Interestingly enough, these walks generally occur immediately or soon after meals, which helps with the digestive process.

Socializing is also diametric than that for western culture. As homes and apartments in Japan are considerably smaller, people opt to entertain outside of their home. This is one of the primary reasons clubs; hobbies and leisure activities play much an important role in the culture. In fact it is very unusual to have dinner parties or get-togethers in Japanese homes. A popular secondary is to just at public establishments for events and parties.

Automobiles do have some purpose, however they are viewed as a hobby or a luxury. Parking in Japan is expensive and limited with simply not sufficient parking spaces for everyone to park. Cars are old for longer excursions to other cities or the countryside. The most usual recreational activities are active ones. Trips to the mountains, lakes or available spaces are most popular.

Although the pace of life is fast in Japan, we can learn from definite aspects. Changing our eating habits is an important archetypical step and combining low impact exercise after eating, much as walking, will have a greater impact. Involvement in clubs or activities that are nimble will also create an opportunity to engage in activity. Finally, being little reliant on our vehicles will require more effort for some daily physiological activity.

So perhaps if you do what they do and eat what they eat you could be extending your lifespan. Your life is what you make it.

Here’s to your health!

Peter McGarry

Countess Erszebet Bathory was a breathtakingly beautiful, unusually well-educated woman, married to a descendant of Vlad Dracula of Bram Stoker fame. In 1611, she was tried - though, being a noblewoman, not convicted - in Hungary for slaughtering 612 childly girls. The genuine figure may have been 40-100, though the Countess filmed in her diary more than 610 girls and 50 bodies were saved in her estate when it was raided.

The Countess was notorious as an inhuman sadist long before her hygienic fixation. She once ordered the mouth of a talkative servant sewn. It is rumoured that in her childhood she witnessed a gypsy being sewn into a horse's stomach and left to die.

The girls were not killed outright. They were kept in a dungeon and repeatedly pierced, prodded, pricked, and cut. The Countess may have bitten chunks of flesh off their bodies while alive. She is said to have bathed and showered in their blood in the mistaken belief that she could thus slow down the aging process.

Her servants were executed, their bodies toughened and their ashes scattered. Being royalty, she was merely confined to her bedroom until she died in 1614. For a cardinal years after her death, by noble decree, mentioning her name in Hungary was a crime.

Cases like Barothy's give the lie to the assumption that serial killers are a new - or equal post-modern - phenomenon, a cultural-societal construct, a by-product of urban alienation, Althusserian interpellation, and media glamorization. Serial killers are, indeed, largely made, not born. But they are spawned by all culture and society, molded by the idiosyncrasies of all period as healed as by their personal circumstances and genetic makeup.

Still, every crop of serial killers mirrors and reifies the pathologies of the milieu, the depravity of the Zeitgeist, and the malignancies of the Leitkultur. The choice of weapons, the identity and range of the victims, the methodology of murder, the disposal of the bodies, the geography, the intersexual perversions and paraphilias - are complete informed and glorious by the slayer's environment, upbringing, community, socialization, education, peer group, sexual orientation, religious convictions, and personal narrative. Movies like "Born Killers", "Man Bites Dog", "Copycat", and the Hannibal Lecter series captured this truth.

Serial killers are the quiddity and quintessence of cancerous narcissism.

Yet, to some degree, we all are narcissists. Primary narcissism is a universal and inescapable developmental phase. Narcissistic traits are common and often culturally condoned. To this extent, ordered killers are merely our reflection finished a glass darkly.

In their book "Personality Disorders in Modern Life", Theodore Millon and Roger Davis attribute psychoneurotic narcissism to "a society that stresses individualism and self-gratification at the expense of community ... In an single culture, the narcissist is 'God's gift to the world'. In a socialistic society, the narcissist is 'God's gift to the collective'".

Lasch described the narcissistic landscape thus (in "The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an age of decreasing Expectations", 1979):

"The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. He seeks not to inflict his own certainties on others but to find a meaning in life. Liberated from the superstitions of the past, he doubts even the reality of his personal existence ... His sexual attitudes are permissive rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no intersexual peace.

Fiercely contending in his demand for approval and acclaim, he distrusts competition because he associates it unconsciously with an unrestrained urge to destroy ... He (harbours) deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his cravings have no limits, he ... demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually discontent desire."

The narcissist's pronounced lack of empathy, off-handed exploitativeness, grandiose fantasies and uncompromising sense of entitlement make him treat all people as though they were objects (he "objectifies" people). The narcissist regards others as either effective conduits for and sources of selfish supply (attention, adulation, etc.) - or as extensions of himself.

Similarly, ordered killers often mutilate their victims and abscond with trophies - usually, body parts. Some of them have been known to eat the organs they have ripped - an act of merging with the dead and absorbent them through digestion. They treat their victims as whatsoever children do their rag dolls.

Killing the victim - often capturing him or her on film before the murder - is a form of exerting unmitigated, absolute, and irreversible control over it. The serial killer aspires to "freeze time" in the standing perfection that he has choreographed. The victim is nonmoving and defenseless. The killer attains daylong sought "object permanence". The victim is unlikely to run on the ordered assassin, or vanish as earlier objects in the killer's life (e.g., his parents) have done.

In malignant narcissism, the true self of the narcissist is replaced by a false construct, imbued with omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. The narcissist's rational is magical and infantile. He feels immune to the consequences of his own actions. Yet, this very source of apparently godlike fortitude is also the narcissist's Achilles heel.

The narcissist's personality is chaotic. His defense mechanisms are primitive. The whole edifice is precariously balanced on pillars of denial, splitting, projection, rationalization, and projective identification. Narcissistic injuries - life crises, much as abandonment, divorce, financial difficulties, incarceration, public opprobrium - can bring the whole thing moving down. The narcissist cannot afford to be rejected, spurned, insulted, hurt, resisted, criticized, or disagreed with.

Likewise, the serial killer is trying desperately to avoid a sore relationship with his object of desire. He is afraid of being uninhabited or humiliated, unprotected for what he is and past discarded. Many killers often have sex - the supreme form of intimacy - with the corpses of their victims. Objectification and mutilation allow for unchallenged possession.

Devoid of the ability to empathize, permeated by haughty feelings of superiority and uniqueness, the narcissist cannot put himself in someone else's shoes, or equal imagine what it means. The precise experience of being human is extrinsic to the narcissist whose invented specious Self is always to the fore, cutting him disconnected from the fruitful panoply of hominian emotions.

Thus, the narcissist believes that all people are narcissists. Many ordered killers believe that killing is the way of the world. Everyone would kill if they could or were given the unplanned to do so. Such killers are convinced that they are more honourable and open active their desires and, thus, morally superior. They hold others in contempt for being conforming hypocrites, cowed into submission by an unrestrained establishment or society.

The narcissist seeks to adapt society in general - and meaningful others in particular - to his needs. He regards himself as the epitome of perfection, a yardstick against which he measures everyone, a benchmark of excellence to be emulated. He acts the guru, the sage, the "psychotherapist", the "expert", the objective observer of human affairs. He diagnoses the "faults" and "pathologies" of people around him and "helps" them "improve", "change", "evolve", and "succeed" - i.e., conform to the narcissist's vision and wishes.

Serial killers also "improve" their victims - slain, intimate objects - by "purifying" them, removing "imperfections", depersonalizing and dehumanizing them. This type of killer saves its victims from degeneration and degradation, from evil and from sin, in short: from a fate worse than death.

The killer's megalomania manifests at this stage. He claims to possess, or have access to, higher knowledge and morality. The killer is a special being and the victim is "chosen" and should be grateful for it. The killer often finds the victim's ingratitude irritating, though sadly predictable.

In his original work, "Aberrations of Sexual Life" (originally: "Psychopathia Sexualis"), quoted in the book "Jack the Ripper" by Donald Rumbelow, Kraft-Ebbing offers this observation:

"The negative urge in murders for pleasure does not solely aim at causing the victim pain and - most critical injury of complete - death, but that the realistic meaning of the action consists in, to a definite extent, imitating, though perverted into a monstrous and alarming form, the act of defloration. It is for this reason that an essential component ... is the employment of a unpleasant cutting weapon; the victim has to be pierced, slit, even chopped up ... The important wounds are inflicted in the stomach region and, in many cases, the fatal cuts run from the vagina into the abdomen. In boys an artificial vagina is even made ... One can connect a fetishistic element too with this process of hacking ... inasmuch as parts of the body are separate and ... ready-made into a collection."

Yet, the sexuality of the serial, psychopathic, killer is self-directed. His victims are props, extensions, aides, objects, and symbols. He interacts with them ritually and, either before or after the act, transforms his diseased inner dialog into a consistent extraneous catechism. The narcissist is equally auto-erotic. In the sexual act, he merely masturbates with other - live - people's bodies.

The narcissist's life is a big repetition complex. In a doomed attempt to resolve embryotic conflicts with prodigious others, the narcissist resorts to a restricted repertoire of coping strategies, defense mechanisms, and behaviors. He seeks to recreate his departed in each and every new relationship and interaction. Inevitably, the narcissist is invariably confronted with the same outcomes. This recurrence single reinforces the narcissist's rigid reactive patterns and deep-set beliefs. It is a vicious, intractable, cycle.

Correspondingly, in whatsoever cases of ordered killers, the murder ritual seemed to have recreated early conflicts with significant objects, such as parents, authority figures, or peers. The outcome of the replay is diametric to the original, though. This time, the killer dominates the situation.

The killings allow him to inflict abuse and trauma on others rather than be abused and traumatized. He outwits and taunts figures of authority - the police, for instance. As uttermost as the killer is concerned, he is merely "getting back" at society for what it did to him. It is a form of figurative justice, a balancing of the books, and, therefore, a "good" thing. The murder is healthful and allows the killer to release hitherto repressed and pathologically transformed aggression - in the form of hate, rage, and envy.

But repeated acts of escalating gore fail to alleviate the killer's irresistible anxiety and depression. He seeks to vindicate his unfavourable introjects and sadistic superego by being caught and punished. The serial killer tightens the known noose around his neck by interacting with law enforcement agencies and the media and thus providing them with clues as to his identity and whereabouts. When apprehended, most serial assassins experience a big sense of relief.

Serial killers are not the single objectifiers - people who treat others as objects. To some extent, leaders of all sorts - political, military, or corporate - do the same. In a range of demanding professions - surgeons, medical doctors, judges, law enforcement agents - objectification efficiently fends off attendant horror and anxiety.

Yet, serial killers are different. They represent a dual failure - of their own development as full-fledged, productive individuals - and of the culture and society they grow in. In a pathologically narcissistic civilization - social anomies proliferate. Such societies breed malignant objectifiers - people absent of empathy - also known as "narcissists".

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