Seaman, 1983, 6).

The frustration/aggression hypothesis was also derived from Freud. He believed that aggressive energy build-up must be periodically released before it reached dangerous levels. If it were not released then it would lead to certain acts like serial killing. Others believe that such frustration dissipates naturally without violent acts, and that the theory cannot help in explaining serial murder (Horse, 2001, 5).

The development approach is what I talked about at the beginning of the paper. I am going over this theory repeatedly because this is what I believe makes these monsters and I think it can be stopped. This approach goes into more depth about the childhood symptoms. This approach talks about the childhood behavior of bed-wetting, arson and torturing of animals. The bed-wetting is said to be a form of sadistic and hostile rebellion towards parents. Fire setting is associated with violence and torturing animals is a further form of rebellion against keeping pets as cherished friends (Mukherjee, 1998). Physical abuse as a child also plays a prominent role in the development of a serial killer. This abuse creates mistrust, an inability to establish meaningful personal or sexual relationships, feelings of low self-worth, lack of social skills, a sense of helplessness, inability to make decisions, and inability to plan life goals. The sexual abuse will make a person withdrawal into a fantasy life. To protect themselves from going crazy, the people being abused may pretend that the abuse is actually happening to someone else. After a person is abused so long, their fantasy world becomes reality and the killings could start.

The personality approach to serial killing is a broad topic that holds many controversies. Aside from psychopathic personality disorder, other personality traits have been identified as contributing to serial killer behavior. Traits of impulsiveness, low empathy and poor social skills have been found in serial killers. Others traits such as antisocial behavior, and hypersensitivity to criticism come from the serial killers with low self-esteem (Horse, 2001, 2). If intelligence can be associated as a personality variable, then average to high intelligence is likely to assist a serial killer in avoiding police detection and capture. This might explain why such levels of intelligence are found in serial murderers and it takes so long for law enforcement to finally track these killers down (Mukherjee, 1998, 7). The role of personality in the study of serial killers is an area of continuous debate. The proper testing of serial killers has yet to be done and seems to be the only way to find out for sure.