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(Mie ' Ce. a ee U6 ee eee Ressler et al. / MURDERERS WHO RAPE AND MUTILATE claimed not to remember. This man went to prison for the first killing. When he was released he knew he would kill again. He revealed that he sought the high level of emotional arousal not in the killing, but in the successful dismemberment of his victims and the disposal of the parts without detection—an act that took thought and planning. MacCulloch and colleagues (1983) observed in their sample of sex offenders with sadistic fantasies that from an early age, the men had difficulties in both social and sexual relationships. They suggest that this failure in social/sexual approach might be partly responsible for the development of a feeling of inadequacy and lack of assertiveness. This inability to control events in the real world moves the man intoa fantasy world where he can control his inner world. This fantasy of contro] and dominance is bound to be repeated because of the relief it provides from a pervasive sense of failure. MacCulloch and colleagues (1983) suggest that when sexual arousal is involved in the sadistic fantasy, the further shaping and content of the fantasy may be viewed on aclassical conditioning model; the strong tendency to progression of sadistic fantasies may then be understood in terms of habituation. Eysenck (1968) argues the acting out of elements of the deviant fantasies is a relatively short step in those whose personalities pre- dispose to repeated thinking or incubation. In these cases the fantasies would theoretically at least form part of a conditional stimulus class and possibly become a necessary condition for sexual arousal. Thus a conditioning model, writes MacCulloch and colleagues (1983), may explain not only the strength and permanence of sadistic fantasies in these abnormal personalities but their progression to nonsexual and sexual crimes. This model provides an explanation for what Rein- hardt (1957) called the “forward thrust of sexual fantasies in sadistic murderers.”’ Our last example of a mutilator murderer underscores the reality-orienting fantasy of successful disposal of the body as the cognitive set, driving repeated murders. Although all murders in our study contained a sexual element, it was apparent that motives differed. Some victims were raped and then murdered; others were murdered and then sexually mutilated. Rapists who murder, according to Rada (1978), rarely report any sexual satisfaction from the murder nor perform sexual acts post- mortem. In contrast, the sadistic murderer (Brittain, 1970), sometimes called lust-murderer (Hazelwood & Douglas, 1980), kills prior to or simultaneously in carrying out a ritualized sadistic fantasy. 92