Harold Shipman's Motivation - Trauma or Narcissism?

I was interesting in checking up on Shipman's motivation, after the suggestion at a talk I attended on Tuesday that it may have been simply down to "distress recordings" of his mother's death. One of the facts that I was not aware of was that - unlike other people that have been traumatised by their mother's death in early childhood, this was not in fact the case. His mother, Vera, died in 1963 from lung cancer when he was 17.

But despite the late age at which this took place, Mavis Klein, writing as a psychotherapist in the Independent at the time of Shipman's death commented that: "Largely unconsciously and informed by a complex mixture of innate temperament and circumstantial early experiences, all human beings are motivated by a personal agenda that aims to give their lives overall meaning and significance. Particularly traumatic experiences in childhood are often the key to accessing an individual's central lifelong heroic quest. "

She goes on to add that:  "In the case of Harold Shipman, his witnessing, at the age of 17, his mother's agonising death from cancer almost certainly explains his multiple murders. I suggest that his lifelong motivation was to free himself of the trauma of his mother's death by rewriting his personal history. His gentle, painless killing of his usually elderly female patients were all bids to make his mother die painlessly. This was mad, not bad. (I believe the relatively few male patients he murdered were stand-ins for himself in a subsidiary bid to end his own suffering.) His undisputed kindness and gentleness as a GP were the sane and laudable way in which he sought to cancel his mother's agony."

But why Shipman, and not countless others who have seen their mother die from cancer? Shipman was not unique. And why late in his career, rather than at an early period? I have to say that I find this kind of unitary explanation unsatisfactory, it is rather like tying down motivations to "selfish genes".

 

The philosopher Paul Browsley commented on the weakness of the Klein position, that it produces one motivation, but ignores all the other possible motivations (see below).  The Independent also looked at the wide range of views about his motivation, and concluded that: "Psychiatrists have expressed many opinions about the mental state of Britain's worst serial killer, but on one thing they are agreed: Shipman was a narcissistic control freak who enjoyed the power his profession gave him over life and death. His arrogance was ultimately his downfall when police used a psychological ploy to break his iron-like conceit during one of the taped interviews conducted after his arrest."

 

It is easy to provide motivations after the event by the bucketful; it is much harder to explain why one single motivator should be the cause. But the fact that he was a  "narcissistic control freak" should surely come into some part of the explanation, especially as it is about the only fact for which we have clear evidence from his behaviour.

 

 

 

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Letter: Forget psychotherapy, Harold Shipman is simply evil

Paul Brownsey

Sir: With what frightening confidence psychotherapist Mavis Klein informs us of Harold Shipman's motivation: he was trying to free himself of the trauma of his mother's painful illness and death by engaging in gentle painless killing of elderly female patients, the murders being "bids to make his mother die painlessly".

The trouble is that it takes very little thought to come up with a host of other stories purporting to explain his murders. Here are some.

He was consumed with rage against the universe for his mother's death and, because he never had an elderly mother to cherish, sought to deny the same to other people.

Humankind's fundamental fear is that of death, and by killing others Shipman was unconsciously trying to keep death occupied and keep it from his own door.

He was abused as a child, though he has repressed the memory, and by killing people older than himself is getting back at the older generation who failed to protect him.

Everyone is basically murderous and he simply had opportunities to give vent to this urge which most of us don't have.

He suffered from lack of self-esteem, which is known to be the cause of all bad behaviour, and sought to boost his self-esteem by arrogating to himself God's prerogative of deciding when a life shall end.

And so on. How could one ever tell whether Mavis Klein's account, rather than one of these many others, is the truth?

PAUL BROWNSEY

Department of Philosophy

Glasgow University

 

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Psychological profile of a narcissistic control freak turned serial killer

Shipman: The Murderer

By Steve Connor
Saturday, 6 January 2001

Was he mad or just plain evil? What was going through the mind of Harold Shipman when he so ruthlessly played God with his patients?

Was he mad or just plain evil? What was going through the mind of Harold Shipman when he so ruthlessly played God with his patients?

Psychiatrists have expressed many opinions about the mental state of Britain's worst serial killer, but on one thing they are agreed: Shipman was a narcissistic control freak who enjoyed the power his profession gave him over life and death. His arrogance was ultimately his downfall when police used a psychological ploy to break his iron-like conceit during one of the taped interviews conducted after his arrest.

The senior policeman in charge of the case deliberately handed over the interview to two less experienced officers, one of whom was a young policewoman Shipman evidently held in contempt.

The tactic was meant to puncture his feeling of selfimportance, which he used to defend himself by answering questions in a pedantic manner to control the course of the interrogation. Throughout the interview, Shipman continued to stare at Marie Snitynksi with a condescending countenance. He thought he had an unassailable intellectual superiority over his interrogators until he was suddenly confronted with unequivocal evidence showing that he had forged computer records.

The interview ended abruptly with Shipman's solicitor asking for a private consultation. After the interviewers had left, Shipman broke down, falling to his knees, sobbing. This, though, was not the remorse of a guilty man but the bitter feelings of frustration from a supremely arrogant person who had been accustomed to being treated with unquestioning authority and respect by his patients.

Richard Badcock, the forensic psychiatrist who saw Shipman on behalf of the police, said that being a control freak in itself cannot be the explanation for his murderous nature.

"There are lots of control freaks out there and they don't all go around killing people. But you have to understand what's important to him, in essence, which is not just self-control but his perception of that control," Dr Badcock said.

"He is very controlling when you're in his presence, rather arrogant. There is a sense that he is very driven about this, not casual. He is behaving like this because it's absolutely important to him to do so," he said.

At 17, Shipman witnessed the slow death of his mother from lung cancer, an experience that is thought to have left a lasting impression. On the day she died, he went for a long run, an unusual act of bereavement.

Some psychologists speculated that his mother's death could have been the source of his morbid fascination in older women. Shipman is thought to be a necrophiliac - not necessarily a sexual interest in the dead, but just in death itself.

But Shipman's main motivation seems to have been his unquestioning belief in his own self-esteem. His narcissism eventually led to his downfall - the forged will he wrote said that the dead woman wanted to reward her doctor for doing so much for the local community.

Gerard Bailes, a consultant psychologist at East Anglia Regional Forensic Science Services, said: "Narcissism would probably be an important factor in his motivation. He considers himself important but everyone else is not. They can't see they have done anything wrong and the more you confront them with what they did, the more they blame you."

Shipman has refused to confess to his crimes and is unlikely now to do so. This is not because he is in self-denial but because he may not see any advantage to it, Mr Bailes said.