“Tender Murderer”: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer in Thom Gunn’s Boss Cupid

Year 2024, Volume: 23 Issue: 3, 954 - 971, 30.07.2024

Tülay Dağoğlu

https://doi.org/10.21547/jss.1418514

Abstract

This article examines Thom Gunn’s poem “Troubadour,” in his final collection Boss Cupid (2000), containing five songs “Hitch-hiker,” “Iron Man,” “The Visible Man,” “A Borrowed Man,” and “Final Song”, all of which are sung by the infamous serial killer, Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer. Gunn’s study of Dahmer, evoking compassion, furnishes a murderer who performs his own role of “troubadour” while singing his intense feelings and aberrant actions from his own voice in a romantic mode. This act of speaking for himself highlights a strong sense of self-awareness and renders a murderer who is cognizant of his miserable situation. Thus, the poet’s treatment is with a particular empathy for such all-consuming sexual passion through an act of romanticizing the killer’s horrendous ways of murdering. Based on the poet’s lack of prejudice towards any propensities and his courage of going against the poetic conventionalities in his time, this study explores Gunn’s portrayal of Dahmer as a ‘tender murderer’, a desperate intimacy seeker victimized by his damaged psyche, thereby having sexual gratification in killing, the only way to stop his partner from leaving him. While the article engages with the phases of Dahmer’s homicidal acts operating on tender feelings in these songs, it does so through Jacques Lacan’s theories of the psyche with its three diagnostic structures: Neurosis, Psychosis, and Perversion. Two of these fundamental categories of diagnosis will be utilized to define particular symptoms, which cater to reading the tender murderer’s motive(s).

Keywords

Thom Gunn, Jeffrey Dahmer, Boss Cupid, Lacan, Psychoanalysis

“Tender Murderer”: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer in Thom Gunn’s Boss Cupid

Abstract

Bu makale, Thom Gunn’ın seri katil Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer’den dinlediğimiz “Hitch-hiker”, “Iron Man”, “The Visible Man”, “A Borrowed Man” ve “Final Song” adlı beş şarkıyı içeren son kitabı Boss Cupid'de (2000) yer alan “Troubadour” şiir koleksiyonunu incelemektedir. Gunn’ın şefkat duygusu içeren çalışmaları, Dahmer’in yoğun duygularını ve sapkın eylemlerini romantik bir tarzda kendi sesinden bize aktarırken, “ozan” rolünü oynayan bir katili ortaya çıkarıyor. Bu kendi adına konuşma eylemi, güçlü bir öz-farkındalık duygusunu öne çıkarır ve bir katilin, içinde bulunduğu sefil durumun farkında olmasını sağlar. Bu nedenle şairin katili ele alış tarzı, onun korkunç cinayet yöntemlerini romantikleştirme eylemi yoluyla böylesi her şeyi tüketen cinsel tutkuya karşı belli bir empati gösterdiğini ortaya çıkarır. Şairin herhangi bir eğilime karşı önyargısız olmasından, döneminin şiir üslubundaki geleneklere karşı çıkmasından yola çıkan bu çalışma, Gunn’ın Dahmer’i, ruh sağlığı bozuk olduğundan, partnerinin onu terk etmesini engellemenin tek yolu olan öldürmekten cinsel haz alan ve umutsuzca ilişki arayışında olan ‘nazik bir katil’ olarak tasvirini araştırıyor. Makale, bu şarkılarda Dahmer’in cinayet eylemlerinin şefkatli duygular üzerine kurulu aşamalarını ele alırken, Jacques Lacan’ın insan aklının üç tanısal teorisi, Nevroz, Psikoz ve Sapkınlık, üzerinden yapıyor. Bu temel teşhis kategorilerinin ikisi, nazik katilin cinayetlerinin arkasında yatan amacı/amaçları okumaya yardımcı olan belirli semptomları tanımlamak için kullanılacaktır.

Keywords

Thom Gunn, Jeffrey Dahmer, Boss Cupid, Lacan, Psychoanalysis

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