My Liberal Views

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF STALKING

STALKING

-          This is unwanted or obsessive attention or contact by an individual or a group towards another person. Specifically, this unwanted obsessive attention is geared towards harassing and intimidating the other person. In quite a number of legal jurisdictions stalking is a criminal offence.

INTRODUCTION

The definition of stalking and what really constitutes stalking vary according to discipline and jurisdictions. This difficulty in having a common definition stems from the fact that psychology and psychiatry look at stalking from different perspectives. Some actions that may be construed as stalking in one legal jurisdiction maybe legal in another. For example, to gather information, sending gifts. It can be an accumulation of a series of actions which in themselves are legal such as calling on the phone or sending an email.

PSYCHOLOGY AND BEHAVIOUR

A)    STALKERS

Some stalkers have the mistaken belief that another person loves them, referred to as erotomania. They include former partners and co-workers. Most victims are stalked by a person they know very well. Only a minority of cases of stalking have the stalkers as being mentally ill. Stalker can be classified as either psychotic, that is those people with pre-existing psychotic disorders such as delusional disorders and schizophrenia, and nonpsychotic with disorders like depression, substance dependence, antisocial, narcissistic or paranoid. In ‘A Study of Stalkers’(Mullen et al, 2000)  the following were some types of stalkers:

i)                   Rejected stalkers- follow their victims to correct, avenge a rejection e.g. divorce, separation or termination. They suffer from narcissistic personality and paranoid personality.

ii)                 Resentful stalkers- have a vendetta because of a sense of grievance against the victim. They have a desire to frighten and distress the victim. They suffer from paranoid schizophrenia and paranoid personalities.

iii)               Intimacy seekers- seek to establish an intimate loving relationship with their victim. They suffer from delusional disorders involving erotomanic delusions.

iv)               Incompetent suitors- have poor social and/or courting skills but have a sense of entitlement to an intimate relationship with victims who may already be in a relationship with someone else.

v)                  Predatory stalkers- spy on their victims in order to prepare and plan an attack on the victim. A majority of these attacks are sexual in nature.

In addition, Joseph Davis a professor of Psychology at San Diego State University added the following type of stalkers.

vi)               Vengeance/terrorist stalker-   also called political stalker, they force their victims to emit a certain response with the intention of accomplishing a political agenda. By use of threats and intimidation they force their victims to refrain from a certain activity.

B)    VICTIMS

Mullen and Pathe from their research with victims of stalking identified the following types of victims of stalking.

i)                   Prior intimates- these victims had been in a previous intimate relationship with their stalker. They constitute the largest category and most common type of victims. Most female stalking victims fall in this category

ii)                 Casual acquaintances and friends- most male victims of stalking fall in this category.

iii)               Professional contacts- these are victims who have been stalked by people they had a professional relationship with. They include a student stalking his/her teacher, a patient stalking his/her doctor.

iv)               Workplace contacts- the stalker visit their victims at their workplaces. They may include an employee, an employer or a customer.

v)                  Strangers- the victims are unaware how their stalkers began stalking them since stalkers admire them from a distance.

vi)               The famous- these victims are individuals who are heavily portrayed by the media such as athletes and actors/ actresses.

Most women stalkers often target other women whereas men only stalk women. The toll as a result of stalk may make a victim to change employment, residence or phone numbers.

CYBERSTALKING

This is the use of computers and other electronic technology to facilitate stalking.

LAWS.

Stalking and Cyberstalking is illegal in most jurisdictions in the world. In the US, the state of California was the first to enact laws against stalking before other state followed suit. In Kenya, the Prevention from Harassment, 2014 made stalking an offence.