Психология и социология/12. Социальная психология

PhD in Psychology  Bondarenko L. A.

PhD in Psychology Lamash I. V.

Kharkiv national university of internal affairs, Ukraine

Typology of stalkers

Stalking refers to a constellation of behaviors involving repeated and persistent attempts to impose on another person unwanted communication and/or contact.

Communication can be by means of telephone calls, letters, e-mail, and graffiti, with contact by means of approaching the victim and following and maintaining surveillance.

B. Spitzberg (2006) reported that 2–13% of males and 8–32% of females are victimized by stalking at some point in their adult lives, and in the majority of such cases, the person is stalked by someone they know.

“Stalking” is new terminology, the media first used “stalking” to describe intrusions on celebrities by fans with mental disorders, but it was later generalized to cover a range of recurrent harassment behaviors, particularly in domestic disputes.

Stalking, like any complex form of human behavior, can be the product of a number of different states of mind. Stalking, which is obviously hurtful, is part of a spectrum of activities that merge into normal behaviors, often around such aspirations as initiating or reestablishing a relationship. A classification of stalkers should provide a guide to the course and duration of harassment, the risks of escalation to assaultive behaviors, and, above all, the most effective strategies for ending the stalking.

P. Mullen (1999) proposed the typology of stalkers included rejected stalkers, intimacy seeker , incompetent subtype of stalkers, resentful stalker and predator stalker.

The rejected stalking type can be defined as an individual who has experienced the unwanted end of a close relationship, most likely with a romantic partner, but also with apparent, work associate, or acquaintance. When this stalker’s attempts to reconcile fail, they frequently seek revenge.

The intimacy seeker identifies a person, often a complete stranger, as their true love and begins to behave as if they are in a relationship with that person. Many intimacy seeking stalkers carry the delusion that their love is reciprocated.

The incompetent subtype like the intimacy seeker, hopes their behavior would lead to a close relationship, satisfying their need for contact and intimacy. However, this type of stalker acknowledges that their victim is not reciprocating their affection while they still continue their pursuit. These stalkers are intellectually limited and socially awkward. Given their inability to comprehend and carry out socially normal and accepted courting rituals, the incompetent stalker uses methods that are often counterproductive and frightening.

The resentful stalker experiences feelings of injustice and desires revenge against their victim rather than a relationship. Their behavior reflects their perception that they have been humiliated and treated unfairly, viewing themselves as the victim. It is has been found that resentful stalkers often regard their fathers as highly controlling.

The predator stalker also has no desire for a relationship with their victims, but a sense of power and control. Mullen explains that they find pleasure in gathering information about their victim and fantasizing about assaulting them physically, and most frequently sexually.

M.A. Zona, K.K. Sharma, J. Lane (1993) described stalkers as having erotomania, love obsession, or simple obsession.

Erotomania is the strong, but mistaken, belief that the stalker's object is in love with the stalker. Although the exact label may vary, R. Lloyd-Goldstein, J. Meyers, G. Skoler (1998) also have discussed this phenomenon. In many instances, the victim does not know the stalker and almost always occupies an elevated station in life, making any true relationship between the two very unlikely. Usually, the only mental disorder affecting such stalkers is the delusion concerning the object of their attentions. M.A. Zona, K.K. Sharma, J. Lane noticed that generally consisting of women who target males, this group represents the least dangerous of the three categories and included slightly under 10 percent of those studied.

Love obsession stalkers is characterized by stalkers who develop a love obsession or fixation on another person with whom they have no personal relationship. The target may be only a casual acquaintance or even a complete stranger. This category represents about 20-25 percent (20-25%) of all stalking cases.

Since most are unable to develop normal personal relationships through more conventional and socially acceptable means, they retreat to a life of fantasy relationships with persons they hardly know, if at all. They invent fictional stories -- complete with what is to them real-life scripts -- which cast their unwilling victims in the lead role as their own love interest. They then attempt to act out their fictional plots in the real world.

Love obsessional stalkers not only attempt to live out their fantasies, but expect their victims to play their assigned roles as well. They believe they can make the object of their affection love them. They desperately want to establish a positive personal relationship with their victim. When the victim refuses to follow the script or doesn't respond as the stalker hopes, they may attempt to force the victim to comply by use of threats and intimidation.

When threats and intimidation fail, some stalkers turn to violence. Some decide that if they cannot be a positive part of their victim's life, they will be part of their life in a negative way. Some even go so far as to murder their victims in a twisted attempt to romantically link themselves to their victim forever.

Simple obsession stalkers represents 70-80 percent (70-80%) of all stalking cases and is distinguished by the fact that some previous personal or romantic relationship existed between the stalker and the victim before the stalking behavior began.

Stalkers in this class are characterized as individuals who are: socially maladjusted and inept; emotionally immature; often subject to feelings of powerlessness; unable to succeed in relationships by socially-acceptable means; jealous, bordering on paranoid; extremely insecure about themselves and suffering from low self-esteem.

The self-esteem of simple obsession stalkers is often closely tied to their relationship with their partner. In many cases, such stalkers bolster their own self-esteem by dominating and intimidating their mates. Exercising power over another gives them some sense of power in a world where they otherwise feel powerless. In extreme cases, such personalities attempt to control every aspect of their partner's life

Since the victim literally becomes the stalker's primary source of self-esteem, their greatest fear becomes the loss of this person. Their own self-worth is so closely tied to the victim that when they are deprived of that person, they may feel that their own life is without worth.

It is exactly this dynamic that makes simple obsession stalkers so dangerous. In the most acute cases, such stalkers will literally stop at nothing to regain their "lost possession" -- their partner -- and in so doing, regain their lost self-esteem.

Just as with most domestic violence cases, stalkers are the most dangerous when they are first deprived of their source of power and self-esteem; in other words, the time when their victims determine to physically remove themselves from the offender's presence on a permanent basis by leaving the relationship.

Indeed, stalking cases which emerge from domestic violence situations constitute the most common and potentially lethal class of stalking cases. Domestic violence victims who leave an abusive relationship run a 75 percent higher risk of being murdered by their partners.

J.R. Meloy and S. Gothard (1995) proposed “obsessional follower” as a clinical corollary of “stalker,” perhaps appealing to the Latin derivation from obsessor, one who abides or haunts (M.P. Brewster, 1998), although “obsessive pursuer” might have been preferable.

R.B. Harmon, R. Rosner, H. Owens (1995) developed a classification system using two axes: one, defining the nature of the attachment as either affectionate/amorous or persecutory/angry; the other, defining the previous relationship. A number of other typologies have been proposed, including a simple dichotomy between psychotic and nonpsychotic stalkers (J. E. Brody, 1998) and those of de G. Becker (1997), who devised four categories: attachment seeking, identity seeking, rejection based, and delusionally based.

A relatively new form of stalking, cyberstalking, uses computers to stalk individuals and may take the form of electronic mail, faxes, or harassment in Internet chat rooms. B. Wallace (2001) finds it difficult to estimate how many individuals are victims of cyber-stalking, although they also note that the number of complaints concerning this type of unwanted contact have increased in recent years. In addition, such cases prove hard to prosecute successfully.

The development of a number of typologies concerning the accurate assessment of threats made by stalkers is important direction of psychological and psychiatric studies as they propose measures for assess the threat that stalkers present, determine the causes of stalking and propose the ways for stopping of the stalking behavior and defence of victims.