While there's often a cryptic appeal in recounting and carefully dissecting with the scissors of reason every act and fact that might point to the figure of a serial killer, we mustn't lose sight of the focus of these investigations, analyses, or reconstructions: memory. Recounting criminals also means remembering those who have suffered the oppression of violence, so that the figure of the victim isn't emptied of its intrinsic meaning, reduced to a mere statistic.
Deviance and secularization.
It's undeniable that industrial society has served as a catalyst for the spread of social well-being and democracy; equally, its negative, or rather, nefarious, aspects are evident: never before has nature been manipulated—and therefore devastated—in the name of progress, and the consequences are plain for all to see every day.
Alongside the most obvious and objective corollaries – pollution, the rampant dehumanization in large metropolises, unbridled consumerism – many adduce others, often tendentious, and aimed at idealizing times gone by: only peasant society would have known, according to certain ways of thinking, the authentic values of life – God, family, work, etc. – and, consequently, would have been immune from the degenerations that instead characterize contemporary, materialistic and annihilated civilization: among these, the absolute lack of spiritual values which inevitably lead to boredom, apathy and delinquency. [ i]
Phobopathy: blood and popcorn.
The growing public interest in the phenomenon of serial killers, with particular emphasis on the more macabre and morbid aspects, has led some scholars of the American school to speak of a new type of pornography [ii] . This morbid research, augmented by the media and countless dedicated internet pages, has given rise to one of the most memorable mystifications that a criminological subject has ever produced.
Hence the need, perhaps a little pretentious, to include these anomic and ambiguous attitudes in the term phobopathy , from the Greek fobos ( φόβος) fear and pathos ( πάθος ) to become excited; wanting to take one of the other positive meanings of this term whose interpretation varies according to the context.
Phobopathy, therefore, is an irrational interest in those subjects whose deviant actions are not repudiated or feared, but rather glorified by an inexplicable cognitive process that leads to an erroneous outcome, thus perceiving the deviant action as bewitching and captivating. This condition should not, however, be confused with sadism, a paraphilia conceptualized by the German psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing who, inspired by the practices illustrated in the works of the Marquis De Sade, includes in this term that perverse practice in which pleasure is obtained through the suffering caused to others [iii].
Not even the German language with its emblematic Schadenfreude [iv] comes to our aid in explaining or expressing a full meaning.
The versatility of the term's scope could easily give rise to lengthy and misleading theorizing, thus implying certain human sciences (and beyond) by exhuming concepts too distant from the topic under consideration. We will therefore limit ourselves to this mere introduction of the term, with the tacit understanding of considering and exploring it further should we encounter, through study or by chance, a specific instance of the act or action.
The Verzeni case.
In the vast panorama of criminal deviance made in Italy , among those individuals who still today arouse phobic tendencies, Vincenzo Verzeni occupies a prominent position, for his ferocity and sadism.
The Buttanaco vampire was the first documented Italian serial killer and among some enthusiasts of the genre he is often associated with his more illustrious British colleague, Jack the Ripper . Verzeni's modus operandi , although cruder, was in some ways similar to that which would characterize the London murderer only fifteen years later: both killed exclusively women, mutilating and removing their organs, but only Verzeni deserves the praise in this comparison, distinguishing himself by having even practiced vampirism and necrophagy. In the section dedicated to sadism, Krafft-Ebing lists Verzeni's feral sexual habits in Psychopathia Sexualis as case no. 48 among those of lust-driven killings in which actual rape is absent and " sadistic slaughter alone represents a substitute for intercourse [...] the lives of his victims depended exclusively on the more rapid or slower onset of ejaculation ." [v]
Conclusions.
Today, one hundred and fifty years later, despite humanity having repeatedly demonstrated its inhumanity, we still find ourselves studying, reading, and researching these deviant figures, who, albeit negatively, have now become part of our species' culture and social history.
Why do fantasy and interest so sweetly intertwine and merge when we find ourselves analyzing certain deviations? Was the philosopher De La Rochefoucauld right when he said that there are crimes that become innocent and even glorious because of their splendor, number, and excess [vi]?
Donato Sergi
Bibliographical notes
- [I] Salvatore Napoli, Vincenzo Verzeni: the Vampire of Bergamo, 2020.
- [ii] Marco Strano, Manual of Clinical Criminology, SEE, Florence, 2003, page. 328.
- [iii] «Sadism, the perverse practice in which pleasure is obtained through suffering caused to others», Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis. With Especial Reference to the Anthropatic Sexual Instinct. A Medical Forensic Study, Translated from the Twelfth German Edition. First Complete Translation into English, Bell Publishing Company, New York, 1965, p. 80.
- [iv] From German Schaden "danno"And joy "gioia", literally: "Enjoying the misfortune of others".
- [v] R. von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, Manfredi, Milan 1966, p. 154 (ed. or, Psychopathia Sexualis, Ferdinand Enke, Stuttgart 1886).
- [vi] «The ya des crimes qui deviennent innocents et même glorieux par leur éclat, leur name et leur excès», François de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections or sentences and moral maxims, Au Bureau Principal des Editeurs, Paris, 1829, p. 57.
