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4.1.2. Selective Inattention
This strategy is used by manipulators to ignore or refuse to pay attention to what other people are saying towards them.
Data 4
Dr. Dobson : One of the final murders you committed was 12-year-old Kimberly
Leach. I think the public outcry is greater there because an innocent child was taken from a playground. What did you feel after that?
Were they normal emotions after that?Appendix ii, no. 45 Ted Bundy
: I can’t really talk about that right now. I would like to be able to convey to you what that experience is like, but I won’t be able to talk
about that.Appendix ii, no. 46 In the conversation above, Dr. Dobson as the interviewer asked Ted about
one of his murder cases. Dr. Dobson wanted to know how Ted’s feeling was after committing such a terrible crime; whether Ted regretted it or not. On the contrary,
Ted didn’t give any exact answers. He pretended not to be able to answer the question by saying “I can’t really talk about that right now.”
4.1.3. Rationalization
Manipulators use this strategy to justify their behavior as rationally as possible to make people think that there is a big chance that they are right. Most of
the times, people cannot sense that they are doing manipulation because what the manipulators say makes just enough sense.
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Data 5
Dr. Dobson : For the record, you are guilty of killing many women and girls.
Appendix ii, no. 3 Ted Bundy
: Yes. Yes, that’s true. Appendix ii, no. 4 Dr. Dobson
: How did it happen? Take me back. What are the antecedants of the behaviour that we’ve seen? So much grief, so much sorrow, so
much pain for so many people. Where did it start? How did this moment come about? Appendix ii, no. 5
Ted Bundy : As a young boy of 12 or 13 certainly, I encountered in the local
grocery stores and the local drug stores, just softcore pornography. And you know the anecdote, young boys do explore the back rows,
sideways and byways of neighborhoods, and oftentimes, people would dump the garbage and whatever they’re cleaning their houses.
From time to time, we would come across pornographic books of a harder nature, more graphic. This also included detective magazines.
And I want to emphasize this. The most damaging kind of pornography – and I’m talking from hard, real, personal experience –
is those that involve violence and sexual violence. Because the wedding of those two forces – as I know only too well – brings about
behaviour that is just too terrible to describe.Appendix ii, no. 10, line 5-14
In the conversation above, Dr. Dobson asked Ted about what were the roots behind his behaviour of killing a lot of women and girls. Ted then gave a long
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explanation about how it first started. He said that as a young boy of 12 or 13, he encountered pornographic books in his neighborhoods. He claimed that the kinds of
pornography that involves violence and sexual violence are capable of bringing behaviour that is too terrible to describe, which actually referred to his own
behaviour. In one way, what he stated above makes just enough sense. He stated it in
such a logical and understandable way of how in the first place he was engaged in pornography. However, at the same time, this can also be an effective tactic to justify
his violent behaviour. As Simon 2000:84 claims that a rationalization is the excuse that manipulators try to offer for engaging in an inappropriate or harmful behaviour.
Michaud Aynesworth 1989:320 believed that Bundy’s sudden condemnation of pornography was his last manipulative attempt to rationalize his
action by providing Dr. Dobson, a longtime anti-pornography advocate, precisely things that he wanted to hear. While in fact, Ted told Michaud and Aynesworth in
1980, and Hagmaier the night before he spoke to Dobson, that pornography played an insignificant role in his development as a serial killer. Dekle 2011:219 claimed,
“The problem wasn’t pornography. The problem was Bundy.” So it is obvious that justifying his behaviour as a result of his addiction to pornography is Ted’s attempt
to manipulate people to believe that he was not the only one who should bare all the responsibilities.
Data 6
Dr. Dobson : It pornography fueled your fantasies?Appendix ii, no. 13
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Ted Bundy : In the beginning, it fuels this kind of thought process. Then, at a certain time, it is instrumental in crystallizing it, making it into
something that is almost a separate entity inside.Appendix ii, no. 14 Based on the conversation above, Ted stated that it was pornography that
fueled his thought process, but not only that. According to his opinion, pornography also contributed in crystallizing the thought process and making it become a separate
entity inside his mind. Clearly, the statement above shows another rationalization that Ted tried to
offer by stating how pornography contributed in shaping his violent behaviour which is the act of killing women and girls.
4.1.4. Diversion
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