Re: Augusta Gein, the woman who drove a man Psycho

Michael Snyder wrote:

"catherine yronwode" <cat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:46348982.F4FB35B8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"ddnoe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" wrote:

Augusta Gein, the woman who drove a man Psycho
By
Denise Noe

[snip]

"Just Say No" can turn into its own dangerous form of obsession as
shown by the peculiarly one-track mind of Augusta Gein.

Augusta Gein never killed anyone.

What's your point, Cat?

My point is that Ed Gein was probably psychologically disturbed due to
genetic factors. I advocate for nature over nurture in most of these
cases of mentally ill killers who come from mentally ill families. As
anyone knows who has read about the case knows, although his mother was
peculiar and socially maladjusted, the more mentally imbalanced of his
parents was actually his alcoholic, violent father, not his religiously
obsessive mother.

The article painted a picture of the social extension of his mother's
anti-sexual beliefs somehow causing the son to become a grave-robber and
a killer, and even mentions "smother-mothering" as a factor, when it is
obvious that the mother had no violent tendencies, but the *father* did.
Had Ed Gein only followed in his mother's foosteps -- had her mental
illness been the only factor -- he would not have killed.

In my opinion, fixing the sole blame on the mother's social oddness when
her son became a violent killer is unreasonable because it is obvious to
me that a combination of genetically-mediated factors -- the mother's
obsessiveness PLUS the father's violence -- is what led Ed Gein's mental
illness to take the peculiar form that it did.

cat yronwode
.

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