Ted Bundy Psychological Theories

Ted Bundy is a notorious serial killer who targeted a number of young attractive women. Bundy like many other serial killers had a type. He preferred his victims to be women with small builds and long brown middle parted hair. Why long brown middle parted hair and a petite frame? Bundy fell madly in love with a woman named Stephanie Brooks. Brooks would ultimately reject Bundy thus causing resentment and ill feelings towards women with similar physical attributes. Bundy also expressed resentment towards women, in particular his mother due to lies she constructed about Ted’s parental lineage (Ted Bundy). Bundy’s motivation for killing falls underneath a combination of two perspectives: frustration – aggression model and general strain theory. Bundy falls into the frustration – aggression model of killer for a handful

The general strain theory is a theory constructed by Robert Agnew. It states that violence; particularly criminal violence, is the result of straining emotions such as depression, frustration, and anger. These emotional strains arise from one of four sources: negative stimuli, removal of positive stimuli, shortcomings, and failure to achieve goals (Fox et al. 34). For Bundy, finding out that the woman who he believed to be his sister growing up was his mother was negative stimuli cognitively. He was in a sense hidden and probably felt a tinge of shame and rejection from his own mother. Bundy is known to have stated that his grandfather was a man that he respected and looked up to. At a very young age, Ted was ripped away from his beloved grandfather and thusly experienced the removal of positive stimuli. Ted experienced the third source of strain, shortcomings, when Stephanie Brooks rejected him and their college relationship. Finally, Ted experienced the failure to achieve goals when he unsuccessfully tried to get his beloved ex Stephanie to fall back in love with