Ed Gein Psychoanalytic Theory

The nature of Ed Gein’s crimes and abnormal behaviors throughout his life can be connected to his tumultuous relationship with his mother and the isolation and abuse he experienced at her hands. Ed was the second of two sons born to Augusta and George Gein in Wisconsin on August 27, 1906. George and Augusta owned a small grocery store in La Crosse County but Augusta decided to pack up and move to a large farm property in Plainfield, Wisconsin to deliberately isolate the boys from city life. Augusta was an evangelical Lutheran that despised her alcoholic husband for his inability to keep a job. She preached to her family the fire and brimstone verses of the Old Testament that included death, murder and divine retribution for the innate evil …show more content…
Psychoanalytic theory supports the idea that no behavior is accidental. Personality is therefore caused or influenced by past experiences that are stored to later manifest into action and behavior. Viennese neurologist Sigmund Freud formulated a structural theory of behavior via a three tiered system of the Id, the Ego, and the Super Ego. These forces are what shape our personality and influence our decisions, relationships, and experiences, both normal and abnormal. Freud defined identity as always being in conflict with its various parts. He discussed the “evil inside of us” as something that is not an external temptation, but something that is learned. In opposition of behaviorists, Freud believed we learn evil just like we learn anything else, and if we do not develop successfully, we do not learn to fight the impulses. Evil is not Pavlovian, it is inside of us and is something we must contend with internally for all our life. It is through this process of explanation that the crimes and behaviors of notorious serial killer Ed Gein is addressed and analyzed in juxtaposition with his troubled childhood and history of abuse at the hands of his evangelical, overbearing