Case Study of Eric Edgar Cooke

Introduction

Eric Edgar Cooke was an Australian citizen who was nicknamed the "Night Caller". Eric was a serial killer who had committed twenty-two crimes with eight of them, resulting in deaths. The crimes were determined from the year 1959 to 1963. All the crimes were committed in between the years, making it four years. He was a national threat and sensation for committing so many crimes at a short period. Eric Edgar Cooke was born on February 25th in the year 1963 in Australia and died in October 26th 1964while in Fremantle Prison, Fremantle, Australia. He disappeared through hanging through a courts order. The serial killer was buried at Fremantle Cemetery, in the city of Perth, in Australia (Stratton, 2008).

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Eric Edgar had performed all his crimes in the city of Perth, which is on the western side of Australia. He was tagged as a terrorist due to his actions. All the terror crimes committed by the serial killer were violent. They were activities that could not be conducted by an average person with a sober mind; only lunatics or psychopaths can portray such behaviours. Eric grew in a harsh environment, or unsuitable conditions for a child upbringing. His parents only got married not for the right purposes nut because his mother got pregnant to his father, who was an alcoholic. He grew up in a violent and unhappy family because his father tended to beat up his mother (Brunt, 2018). This occurrence might have affected Eric Edgar Cooke psychologically leading to his unusual adult behaviours.

Edgar in his early life would sleep at his mother's place of work to avoid beating as he would try to defend his mother from his father and at times lived in foster homes and orphanages, and he didn't have a settled childhood. He was also bullied a lot in school due to his facial deformity, which was as a result of an operation he got at three months old due to a condition he was born with. Had hare lip together with a cleft palate and also mumbled while talking (Brunt, 2018). This deformity affected him psychologically as he is said to have been shy and mentally unstable at the young age. This was due to the beatings he received from his father and the bullying at school.

At a young age, Eric Edgar Cooke was severally hospitalized due to accidents that he acquired from his father's beatings, and while running away or sleeping in the streets. At one time he was diagnosed with brain damage, he would get severe headaches and blackouts at some occasions. He had also attempted suicide on several occasions. His brain was functional in memory retaining and expressions, but at the age of six, he was expelled from school after he stole from his teacher's purse. He left school at the age of fourteen to become a delivery boy to support his family. Before quitting, he had transferred to several schools in which everyone he went, he was the centre of jokes and bullying due to his speech and facial scar. He later got a job as a blacksmith at a factory where he acquired second-degree burns after an accident.

From the age of seventeen, Eric Edgar Cook started getting involved in crimes such as personal and public destruction. He was sentenced to eighteen months in prison after he burnt a church where he had been rejected to join the church choir. He would break into houses, steal valuables and burn or damage clothes for revenge. And later he would cut newspapers that had information about his crimes with which he bragged to other boys his age trying to gain friends. (Brunt, 2018).

At his adulthood, Edgar was arrested and imprisoned for three years after fingerprints that were found from his grandmother's house matched his together with other from fifteen houses. He was charged with breaking in people's homes, stealing from them and burning items. His tracks were found easily as he had left many prints in areas of crime. He joined the army at the age of 21, where he was discharged after serving only three months after his criminal records came into the light. He had already gained the skill of using firearms and had been promoted to the level of a corporal (Colebatch, 2015). He married in the following year in a church to a waitress and seared seven children. He didn't stop minor crimes there, but he advanced to wearing women gloves while in the act.

His murders involved unrelated stabbings, hit and runs, shootings and strangling. His murder crimes are termed as opportunistic because they had no resembling traits that would lead to his next strike, hence becoming hard to get hold of him. Some of his victims were killed after waking up while he was stealing from them, two of them there was no particular reason as their homes were not disturbed, one after opening the door after a knock, other strangled with a cord of a bed lamp raped the corpse and moved it to the neighbour's lawn and penetrated its private part with a bottle of whisky. He stabbed one victim and sat on the floor drinking lemonade (Colebatch, 2015).

A defence mechanism is an insensate psychological mechanism which reduces anxiety from possible inducement. Repression or suppression, which means subjective endeavour directing personal desires toward things that will please them by shutting out their consciousness (Bokanowski, 2018). This is the main reason for the defence mechanism, which is caused by a harrowing memory, thought or feeling that makes a person get into unconsciousness. Edgar had a lot of painful memories, as seen in his biography. Everyone made fun and bullied him in school. He came from a dysfunctional family with his mother being a drunk and his father a wife-beater who beat him too. He grew in orphanages and foster homes and sometimes slept in the streets. He also had second-degree burns he got as a blacksmith.

According to Freud's defence mechanism denial is refusing to accept the realities hence obstructing external happenings from consciousness (Freud, 2018). Edgar Cook was in denial that his life was unfortunate. The detective who found the fingerprints at his grandmothers referred to him a "one of life's unfortunate". Everything in Edgar's life was negative, he had no friends, and he tried to impress by cutting of newspapers of his vengeance to look cool. His life was hard from when he was born; he passed through a miserable life.

Displacement is when one releases their anger and frustrations on things, people or objects which are of little threat (Merkle, 2018). Edgar tended to break into people's houses, stealing their valuables and also destroying or burning their clothes. He also burnt down the church where he was denied a chance in the choir.

Projection is when unwanted feelings get released towards other persons from the external world who look like a threat (Riley,2019). In this case, Edgar killed several people after they woke up and found him in the middle of his robberies. These people were a threat to his life and could also give him up to the police.

Rationalization is the insensible attempt not to address the basics of a specific behavior. This type of defence mechanisms helps the person not to feel guilty when something goes wrong. Edgar, after stabbing one victim, sat on the ground and drunk a glass of lemonade (Thomson, 2015).

Reaction Formation is the thoughts of an unconscious mind to distort the real happenings as well as to maintain a game plan (Freud, 2018). Edgar killed and raped a woman whom he carried to the neighbour's lawn to make it look like the neighbour was involved in a way. His unconscious mind was trying to distort any reality, and he reduced his anxiety by raping the woman.

Regression is a type of retreat where an individual mind goes back in time to a time where he or she felt safer than in the current situation. The ego of a person goes back to the younger days when stressful thoughts hit them (Freud, 2018). He got out of school to work and support his mother. He always gave her his weekly wages though he suffered too many injuries at the factory. His mother was a person whom he treasured, and they had passed through a lot together.

A sublimation defence mechanism is when ideas that are not socially acceptable are turned unconsciously to be socially acceptable, making the actions to take over the first ones for an extended period (Freud, 2018). Edgar lived a desperate life. He did all unsocial actions like breaking into people's houses, robbing, destroying and burning property to killing several people and assault even more. To him, it had become a sort of a lifestyle that he embraced.

References

Stratton, J. (2008). Suburban stories: Dave McComb and the Perth experience. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 22(2), 255-267.

Brunt, S. (2018). Outside the Square: Songs for Christchurch in a Time of Earthquakes. In Made in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand (pp. 97-109). Routledge.

Colebatch, H. G. (2015). Justice compromised [Book Review]. News Weekly, (2947), 23.

Bokanowski, T. (2018). On Freud's" Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence". Routledge.

Freud, A. (2018). The ego and the mechanisms of defence. Routledge.

Wolf, M., Gerlach, A., & Merkle, W. (2018). Conflict, Trauma, Defence Mechanisms, and Symptom Formation. In Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (pp. 61-78). Routledge.

Riley, J. (2019). Defence mechanisms in adolescence and the relationship with emotional regulation and personality traits.

Fenech, G., & Thomson, G. (2015). Defence against trauma: women's use of defence mechanisms following a childbirth-related injury. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 33(3), 268-281.