Familicidal Hearts: The Emotional Styles of 211 Killers

Blending the social, the historical, and the emotional into a new way of making sense of a horrific crime, this is a provocative meditation on gender roles, social forces, and modern life itself.

Award-winning author and sociologist Neil Websdale uncovers the stories behind 196 male and 15 female perpetrators of this shocking offense, situating their emotional styles on a continuum, from the livid coercive to the civil reputable. With highly detailed and riveting case studies, Websdale explores the pivotal roles of shame, rage, fear, anxiety, and depression in the lives and crimes of the killers. His analysis demonstrates how internal emotional conflict, against a backdrop of societal pressures, is at the root of familicide, challenging the widely accepted argument that murderers kill family members to assert power and control. Websdale contends instead that most perpetrators struggle with intense shame, many sensing that they failed to live up to the demands of modern gender prescriptions, as fathers and lovers, wives and mothers. What emerges is a compelling theory about the haunting effects of modern emotional struggles on perpetrators, controlling and upstanding alike.<

Platform:

OvidSP

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

Product Type:

Book

Author:

Websdale, Neil

ISBN:

978-0-19-531541-7

Specialty:

• Social Work

Language:

English

Edition:

1st

Pages:

336

Publication Year:

2010

Doody Core Title Score:

• ()