Was Ted Bundy Actually Autistic?

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02 Jan 2006, 10:04 pm

Ted Bundy was good on "Married With Children". Or was that a different person?

NeantHumain
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02 Jan 2006, 11:42 pm

Sean wrote:

NeantHumain, since sociopaths and psychopaths aren't always serial killers or other kinds of extremely violent criminals, perhaps you could get the information about them you can't seem to find from us through introspection?

This sounds like a personal attack to me.

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02 Jan 2006, 11:56 pm

I think you might've hurt his feeling or something.

NeantHumain
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03 Jan 2006, 1:35 am

Sean wrote:

From what I have read on this thread, I doubt Ted Bundy was autistic.

I didn't know very much of anything about Ted Bundy's life or crimes until I stumbled upon an article about him in Wikipedia. One of the first paragraphs I read sounded like a description of a pretty typical AS social troubles to me, so I concluded that the stuff I've heard about Ted Bundy being a classical psychopath might be inaccurate. Lying, manipulation, charm, and especially homicidal tendencies are not typical autistic traits, though, so who knows.

Sean
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03 Jan 2006, 1:36 am

NeantHumain wrote:

Sean wrote:

This sounds like a personal attack to me.

I checked the definintion of a psychopath, and discovered I was completely wrong about you, and yes, it ammounted to a personal attack. Therefore, I appologize for both counts. I concede defeat in this discussion and will butt out. I do wish that all of this would get moved to the members only forum though.

NeantHumain
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03 Jan 2006, 7:21 am

Sean wrote:

NeantHumain wrote:

Sean wrote:

This sounds like a personal attack to me.

I checked the definintion of a psychopath, and discovered I was completely wrong about you....

I agree. Almost everyone has a few traits from the various personality styles; in fact, that's what makes a person's personality adaptive instead of maladaptive. I probably have a few traits of the psychopathic personality just as I do of the obsessive-compulsive personality, the schizoid personality, and so on.

I am not exactly what counts as having a score of one or two for each of the items of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (a whole manual exists to describe how to score each item of the PCL-R, which licensed clinical psychologists and psychiatrists can purchase), but I can guess somewhat from a commonsense understanding of the phrasing. I will highlight in bold what PCL-R from the Cooke and Mitchie three-factor analysis I might likely possess in some form:

Cooke & Mitchie, 2001 wrote:

Arrogant/Deceitful Interpersonal Style

Glibness/superficial charm Although I am certainly not charming—I cannot recall ever having been described as such or found much fanfare among women—I can certainly be somewhat glib in my way of speaking at times. This has to do with my love of parodying and showing the ridiculousness of things.
Egocentricity/Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying If trolling can be said to be lying, I troll fairly often although I haven't done much trolling lately.
Conning/Manipulative

Deficient Affective Experience

Lack of remorse or guilt Besides ecstasia's control freakery on #wrongplanet by taking offense at everything I said, which resulted in my ban from that place, I have heard from Larval that at least one person was somehow genuinely hurt by my trolling as "undergradalice" and later "autisticalice" in that channel. I had no idea that ottily had a panic attack over my questions and undergraduate psychology student pose. I do not feel my trolling was wrong, though, at least not in the sense that, if someone hit someone, it would be wrong; but I do feel sorrow for ottily's psychological state. I've never really had a panic attack other than when I lost my wallet temporarily, and I would never in a thousand years have thought that asking questions like "What do you like most about your autism?" and saying things like "I believe the social interaction difficulties in autism are willful," (which I do not believe) would cause someone to have a veritable panic episode.
Callous/Lack of empathy
Shallow affect I have quite nearly flat affect rather than shallow affect.
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Impulsive/Irresponsible Behavioral Style

Need for stimulation/Proneness to boredom
Parasitic lifestyle
Lack of realistic, long-term goals
Impulsivity It's not the impulsivity of someone who's considered fun to be around and more outgoing but the impulsivity of someone who has very little to do.
Irresponsibility

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03 Jan 2006, 12:16 pm

Bundy had a temper on him the size of the Grand Canyon. Not to mention he had mood swings. Despite that Bipolar was "in" at the time, I still agree that he mostly likely had it.

Egocentricity is also seen in Psychopaths. Don't mistake that for autism. Sure, his high school life wasn't the greatest, but there was suspicion he'd already made his first murder by then. He was already possibly homicidal. Anyone with any kind of mental illness can have a poor time socially in school. The same outcome does not mean it's the same cause.

Bundy was also manipulative as hell. And he was a genius at it. His IQ was 126. Not the highest ever heard of, but not shabby either.

He had some odd quirks, yes. Possibly a bit OCPD. He had to always have on new socks.

But I have never read anything about him of all the books I have on him, that suggested he was autistic in any way. Psychopathic, yes. Bipolar, yes. Narcissistic, most probably. OCPD, perhaps. But autistic, no way.

He had a sh***y childhood. Environment can have a huge effect on a child. Don't forget that.

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11 Jan 2006, 9:40 pm

NeantHumain wrote:

Sean wrote:

NeantHumain wrote:

Sean wrote:

This sounds like a personal attack to me.

I checked the definintion of a psychopath, and discovered I was completely wrong about you....

Cooke & Mitchie, 2001 wrote:

Arrogant/Deceitful Interpersonal Style

Glibness/superficial charm Although I am certainly not charming—I cannot recall ever having been described as such or found much fanfare among women—I can certainly be somewhat glib in my way of speaking at times. This has to do with my love of parodying and showing the ridiculousness of things.
Egocentricity/Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying If trolling can be said to be lying, I troll fairly often although I haven't done much trolling lately.
Conning/Manipulative

Deficient Affective Experience

Lack of remorse or guilt Besides ecstasia's control freakery on #wrongplanet by taking offense at everything I said, which resulted in my ban from that place, I have heard from Larval that at least one person was somehow genuinely hurt by my trolling as "undergradalice" and later "autisticalice" in that channel. I had no idea that ottily had a panic attack over my questions and undergraduate psychology student pose. I do not feel my trolling was wrong, though, at least not in the sense that, if someone hit someone, it would be wrong; but I do feel sorrow for ottily's psychological state. I've never really had a panic attack other than when I lost my wallet temporarily, and I would never in a thousand years have thought that asking questions like "What do you like most about your autism?" and saying things like "I believe the social interaction difficulties in autism are willful," (which I do not believe) would cause someone to have a veritable panic episode.
Callous/Lack of empathy
Shallow affect I have quite nearly flat affect rather than shallow affect.
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Impulsive/Irresponsible Behavioral Style

Need for stimulation/Proneness to boredom
Parasitic lifestyle
Lack of realistic, long-term goals
Impulsivity It's not the impulsivity of someone who's considered fun to be around and more outgoing but the impulsivity of someone who has very little to do.
Irresponsibility

IMO, you seem a little too interested in psychopathology. It worries me.

NeantHumain
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11 Jan 2006, 11:28 pm

aylissa wrote:

IMO, you seem a little too interested in psychopathology. It worries me.

Why? I find studying abnormal psychology to be quite interesting. I study the subject in an academic style. I'm not really interested in the gruesome crimes psychopaths commit because that's too gruesome. I find abnormalites of behavior and how they occur fascinating.

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12 Jan 2006, 9:55 am

I was obsessed with serial killers for about two years.

Provided Neant wants either to just study them or even be on the "good side" (i.e., law enforcement), everything's fine and dandy.

Now, if he's studying psychopaths for pointers...

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12 Jan 2006, 11:52 am

NeantHumain wrote:

aylissa wrote:

IMO, you seem a little too interested in psychopathology. It worries me.

Speaking of psychopathology, in Underdog, I diagnosed the main characters of that cartoon with various forms of psychopathology. It's quite shocking that such behaviorally disturbed individuals were shown to children as role models and entertainment!

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18 Mar 2010, 1:51 am

eamonn wrote:

No he wasnt, psycopaths lack emotions more so than autistics who usually just dont display it in an NT way, i for instance have far greater empathy than your average NT robot. Besides after watching "married with children" quite a lot during my childhood i think i would have noticed if he was even slightly autistic.

Thank you! When I saw the title of the forum I was bracing myself for more of the NT thinking that we lack the capacity for emotion, but your saying that we "just don't display it in an NT way" does it justice to a "T" in my opinion. I understand completely what you say about the "average NT robot."

D'you think just the fact that he lacked a full emotional range and therefore could not relate to emotional experiences made his interactions with normal adolescents painful and awkward? After seeing videos of how he spoke, I wonder if his form of articulation was so smooth by NT standards he might have sounded creepy and glib to some of them even when he wasn't being glib.

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18 Mar 2010, 6:53 am

It's so amazing how he could get women so easily and talk to them and hit on them before killing them. But yet he couldn't do that in his childhood? I wonder what changed?

I feel I lack emotion but I don't go around killing anyone or doing manipulation.

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18 Mar 2010, 11:35 am

I doubt an autistic killer could charm women into going with a strange man in a car without any red flags going off. That takes a lot of charm, a lot of manipulation and social intuition. It's not like he chad to club them down and put'em in the trunk, he actually had them thinking it was a good idea because he was so sweet and couldn't possibly be dangerous....

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18 Mar 2010, 12:04 pm

NeantHumain wrote:

Oh, here's a bit more:

The Crime Library wrote:

As a youth, Ted was terribly shy and was often teased and made the butt of pranks by bullies in his junior high school. Regardless of the sometimes humiliating experiences he suffered, he was able to maintain a high grade average that would continue throughout high school and later into college. Friends from high school would later remember Ted as being a more popular figure than he was in junior high. Although he was very shy, Ted was thought of as "well dressed and exceptionally well mannered." Yet no one recalled him dating anyone during that period. His interests lay elsewhere such as in skiing and politics. In fact, it was in high school that Ted's interest in politics began to bloom.

Ted told Michaud and Aynesworth that his mother was the most directly involved in raising her kids:

"'We didn't talk a lot about real personal matters," says Ted. 'Certainly never about sex or any of those things. My mom has trouble talking on intimate, personal terms.'"

Michaud took a close analytical look at Bundy's youth and came up with some insightful conclusions:

"No one noticed that he was different, not like other children. He looked and acted like them...But he was haunted by something else: a fear, a doubt --sometimes only a vague uneasiness -- that inhabited his mind with the subtlety of a cat. He felt it for years, but he didn't recognize it for what it was until much later. By then, the rip in his psyche, had become the locus of a cold homicidal rage."

Even though he was popular, good-looking and friendly, Bundy had very few dates during his high school years. This social awkwardness and fear of social situations haunted him into his college years at the University of Puget Sound and the University of Washington.

Ted told Michaud and Aynesworth, "My social life was a big zero. I spent a great deal of time with myself. It was lonely for me...I didn't feel socially adept enough. I didn't feel I knew how to function with those people. I felt terribly uncomfortable."

Source: Bell, Rachael S.; Bardsley, Marilyn. "Ted Bundy, notorious serial killer." The Crime Library. 2 Jan. 2005 <http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/bundy/years_2.html?sect=>.

This sounds pretty typical for an adolescent with Asperger's syndrome—except for the homicidal rage.

I had homicidal rage as a teen (and as a child) but then I suspect I also have bipolar.

LipstickKiller wrote:

Ted Bundy was quite charasmatic. That's the smoking gun he was not autistic.

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18 Mar 2010, 12:14 pm

LipstickKiller wrote:

My thoughts exactly, besides those in the Spectrum are hardly murder material. Rage to the point of self-inflicted injury, but not enough to inflict injury on others. What makes people go on a killing spree varies . . . but, a lot of their common traits are: high IQ (usually with experience that allows them to commit their acts more efficiently), socio/psycho-pathic mindset (manipulators), self righteous (glorify what they do, and try to back it up/explain with twisted logic). Ted Bundy, Eddie Gein, Zodiac, Charles Manson, Son of Sam, Unibomber follow this setup to the letter. To me, its not a question of why they do it, but what set them off to do it in the first place (abusive childhood, mental trauma from something horrific, etc).

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