For my Psychology portfolio I chose to present the movie Ed Gein. This movie is a psychological thriller based on the life of America's first famous serial killer. Ed Gein, a reclusive farmer who was convicted for necrophila, cannibalism, and murder is a unique story. The fact that Ed Gein's below average childhood evolved a deranged murderer declared criminally insane was very interesting. After watching Ed Gein I was propelled to understand the psychosis behind this man and his true story.
Born at the turn of the century into the small farming community of Plainfield, Wisconsin, Gein lived a repressive and solitary life on the family homestead with a weak, ineffectual older brother and domineering mother who taught him from an early age that sex, women, and anything impure was a sinful thing abominable to God. One time when Augusta, his mother, viciously beat him with a belt because he was caught masturbating. Despite tongue-lashings and the overt physical abuse, Gein adored his mother. He called her a devout Christian woman and a saint. He had little adoration for his father who was unattached, verbally abusive man to the entire family. Shortly after the death of his father, Gein killed his brother out of rage and utter disgust when he called their mother a brute hag. His mother died unknowing of this fact one year later. She left her son a thirty-nine-year-old bachelor, still emotionally enslaved to the tyranny his parents contributed to his life.
Ed ran the family's 160-acre farm by himself. He was alone for the first time. Physically speaking, Gein was an average man with a regular build, brown hair and light eyes. He was simply seen as a shy, harmless and eccentric farmer. Some residents considered him "safe" enough to baby-sit their kids. However, he still missed his family and in his solitude, Gein began to withdraw from reality. Cognition was adequate and working in this man.