How serial killers and maniacs fit into Symbolic Interactionism?
There is a lot about S.I in terms of
human behaviorism and self-completion, but when it comes to S.I relation with mental disorders, not much has been written about it.
Social behaviorists like Mahler and Goffman have gone a long way to explain what it takes for an individual to be in S.I, but the way in which the concept of self-identity and self-completion has been explored by Rose, is spell bound to many social psychologists. The reason is the simplicity of Rose’s theory, the way in which he has explored the pitfalls of ‘social reality’ by acknowledging the differences between “Me”, “I”, and “Self” has endear him to the world of social psychology.
Maniacs, serial killers or those subjected to some kind of mental disorder are the ones who are socially or emotionally rejected either by the society or by close family members and friends. If we analyze them for a while under Mead’s Sequence of Acts (MSA) we will come to realize that their potential does not follow what Mead has constructed for a
healthy minded individual. For example a healthy minded individual who socially entails an identity follows MSA in such manner that he fulfills all the four steps of a normal social being, impulse, perception,
manipulation and consummation. Whereas an unhealthy mind’s graph does not conform to the perception, manipulation and
consummation phase. However the first phase of MSA i.e., impulse is generated in every human being. That simply refers to the notion that every human being is creative in his own nature and it is the society that makes him pessimistic or optimistic whatsoever.
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