image of Familicidal Hearts: The Emotional Styles of 211 Killers

Familicidal Hearts: The Emotional Styles of 211 Killers

Publication Year:
2010
Edition:
1st
Author:
Websdale, Neil
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN:
978-0-19-531541-7
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Description
Blending the social, the historical, and the emotional into a new way of making sense of a horrific crime, this is a provocative meditation on gender roles, social forces, and modern life itself.

Award-winning author and sociologist Neil Websdale uncovers the stories behind 196 male and 15 female perpetrators of this shocking offense, situating their emotional styles on a continuum, from the livid coercive to the civil reputable. With highly detailed and riveting case studies, Websdale explores the pivotal roles of shame, rage, fear, anxiety, and depression in the lives and crimes of the killers. His analysis demonstrates how internal emotional conflict, against a backdrop of societal pressures, is at the root of familicide, challenging the widely accepted argument that murderers kill family members to assert power and control. Websdale contends instead that most perpetrators struggle with intense shame, many sensing that they failed to live up to the demands of modern gender prescriptions, as fathers and lovers, wives and mothers. What emerges is a compelling theory about the haunting effects of modern emotional struggles on perpetrators, controlling and upstanding alike.

Captivatingly written and expertly researched, this provocative book weaves a gripping tale of modern-era ""haunted hearts."" Blending the social, the historical, and the emotional into a new way of making sense of a horrific crime, Familicidal Hearts is a provocative meditation on gender roles, social forces, and modern life itself.

Features:
  • Offers new theory of familicide, shifting attention from power and control toward emotional styles and gender roles
  • Detailed case studies draw on interviews, crime statistics, and agency data
Details
Platform:
OvidSP
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Product Type:
Book
Author:
Websdale, Neil
ISBN:
978-0-19-531541-7
Specialty:
  • Social Work
Language:
English
Edition:
1st
Pages:
336
Publication Year:
2010

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