The laugh of Satan: a study of a familial murderer

A teenage murderer who killed his mother, his tiny half-brother, and his step-father was studied through the imagery he associated to three different editions of inkblots. These sets included the Rorschach, Behn-Rorschach, and Ka-Ro plates. The data were used to theorize about clues, dynamics, and diagnosis in this extreme case of adolescent violence. Family background and developmental history are included. The author takes the position that a conventional analysis of these data alone is not sufficient to fully understand familial murderers. Several of C.G. Jung's concepts, notably his view about the power of shadow-projections to influence conscious percepts and his philosophy about evil as a collective phenomenon, were used to speculate about ways we might extend our understanding of this subject's extreme form of violence. Defining the archetype as an energy-complex, the discussion theorized about possible ways different forms of paranoid ideation may arise.