The third source I am blogging about is a secondary source from an education forum sight that discusses the psychological aspect of Gein’s childhood. I chose this source because it talked about influential moments in Gein’s childhood that ended up shaping the choices and decisions he made later in life. This appeared import because I had not read anywhere else about two distinct memories Gein remembers that correlate and begin to explain the love-hate relationship between him and his mother.

This source demonstrated rhetorical distance because it talked in a third person voice and was presented in a way that emphasizes knowledge and information instead of persuading the audience on whether Gein was  guilty or innocent and/or sane/insane.

In this article by Adam Wilkonsin he argues that like most psychologically damaged people his problems were rooted in his childhood. Wilkonsin further goes on to explain that Gein’s mother had desperately wanted a daughter but instead was given another boy. Gein’s mother, Augusta, was disappointed because she hated and mistrusted men but vowed that Ed wouldn’t turn out like the rest of the male population. She was determined to protect him from not only the godless men she saw around her but also from women that she viewed as prostitutes and whores.  For 39 years Augusta controlled and dominated Gein, causing Gein to develop an intense love-hate relationship for his mother. Gein idolized his mother but never received any affection from her. With him being so young and closed off from the outside world he soaked up her religious views without a shadow of a doubt that it was wrong or skewed. Wilkonsin further goes on to explain that one of Gein’s earliest childhood memories is when he “peered through the open door of the slaughter house behind his parents grocery store and watched, mesmerized as his father held up a trussed pig. Then, he remembered in vivid detail, how his mother skillfully slit its belly and drew out the entrails with a long knife.” (1) People that remember Gein as a young boy remember him being shy and not being able to bear the sight of blood while privately he had an unnatural interest in gory horror. After his father died due to the decades of incessive drinking, his brother dieing  from a fire, and his mother dying from a stroke Gein was all alone. He was now left alone in a world he didn’t understand. One that he had been told was evil. As twisted as his mother’s demonstration of affections were she was the only one that showed him anything so after she passed away it only made sense for the targets of his future affection were women that resembled her. Gein became obsessed with medical experiments carried out by the Nazis on the Jewish and the autonomy of the female body that his mother had excluded from him. He filled his days with reading books like medical encyclopaedias and pornographic magazines. The further and further he dove into his readings the more and more corrupt his thinking became from the violence and repression of his childhood until it became a twisted compulsion of hating his mother and wanted to become like her. Gein targeted all ready dead bodies from the graveyard until 1954 when he began much more dangerous. Because Gein wanted to be just like his mother it made sense for him to target women that resembled her such as Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden.

I think that this is a very credible and useful source because it gives examples from Gein’s psychological meetings and dives into his childhood where his problems truly originated. It’s interesting to see how much his mother influenced and controlled Gein. With this source it is definatley a strength to have it focus more on his childhood then the conviction and trial.

From this source I learned a lot about the emotional hold Augusta had on Gein. It was very valuable to read examples about the relationship between the two of them since many critics blame Gein’s mother for his grave robbing’s and killings.  I found it really interesting that one of Gein’s earliest memories was of his mother slicing a pig open because it is exactly what he did to all of his victims as well as to the bodies he stole from the cemetery. I think that this was another way he could relate and connect to his mother after she had died. It was an attempt to “become like her” even though she was gone. This source had great value because it also focused on his childhood where the stem of Gein’s psychological damage originated so it was interesting to obtain more information about that. From here I would like to find out why Augusta was so critical of her boys as well as explore why she was so distasteful to men and viewed women as prostitutes.

I believe that this source helped fill in the cracks of my other sources because they explained the big picture but never really explained why he had such attachment to his mother. I would still like to do more research on Gein’s childhood and possibly explore Augusta’s childhood too. After the research I’ve done so far it seems that although I’m answering my initial question I’m gaining more and more questions the further I dive into my sources.

Work Cited:

Wilkonsin, Adam. Crime Case Study: Ed Gein, Making A Killer. 12 January 2006. Web. 5 November 2013.