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Jimmy Savile
‘Jimmy Savile had what is known as the dark triad of personality characteristics: ­psychopathy, Machiavellianism and ­narcissism.' Photograph: John Redman/AP
‘Jimmy Savile had what is known as the dark triad of personality characteristics: ­psychopathy, Machiavellianism and ­narcissism.' Photograph: John Redman/AP

Inside the mind of Jimmy Savile

This article is more than 9 years old
It's easy to label him evil, but if we are to avoid future abusers like him we must try to understand him

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To explain Jimmy Savile's crimes as evil or wicked misses the mark. The important lesson is that he was deeply disturbed, as well as disturbing. Some of the psychology behind his abusive behaviour – which was set out in more, shocking detail today – can be pieced together from its pattern. Many of the assaults were without warning. He would suddenly place his hand somewhere he should not, plant his mouth on unsuspecting lips. Frequently this was done in public places. The root of such intrusion is projection.

It is a mechanism we all may use when we have an uncomfortable feeling to get rid of. We sometimes employ each other as emotional dustbins: you are feeling depressed or angry and without thinking about it, you do something to make someone else feel those things. To understand what Savile was feeling when he groped in public, hear how his victims felt – humiliated, powerless, frightened, finally angry. Those will have been the emotions he lived with and, more or less, urgently needed to extrude.

In many cases sexual arousal seems to have been almost incidental, with no attempt to achieve orgasm. There does not seem to have been a single instance of Savile displaying true affection, or a wish to give pleasure: in his life he had no sustained, loving relationships.

On the occasions when he achieved orgasm through penetration, or by compelling his victims to fellate him, they report him as having immediately lost interest once he had ejaculated. They might as well have been inanimate objects. This would be consistent with Savile having had a high degree of dissociation – feeling at one remove from events, a detachment. In accord with that, he must have had several different selves, enabling him to flit between roles, from charity worker to famous DJ to abuser, and quickly back to non-abuser.

He had what is known as the dark triad of personality characteristics: psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism. These are common in famous or powerful people, and part of that mix is a strong likelihood of sexual promiscuity. Such people often are able to slide effortlessly between personas. They are usually impulsive stimulus seekers, easily attracted to substance abuse, risky sex and gambling. Savile must have had a fantastical inner life – grandiose, wild and desperate. While his main predilection was for girls and young women, he sometimes ranged from five to 75-year-olds of both sexes and, it seems, may have engaged in necrophilia.

He created safe environments in which he could act at will. His experiments beyond young females may have been because the buzz from them had worn off through repetition and he sought more extreme kicks. Given that inflicting distress was his primary goal, the gender and age of a victim might not matter.

We do not know whether Savile was abused as a child. The only clear fact is that he had a very intense enmeshment with his mother, seeing all other women as mere vehicles for his distress, marriage unthinkable. We also know he had a semi-psychotic relationship with his mother after she died, perhaps believing that he could communicate with her.

Most probably the dissociated position from which he abused – a coldheartlessness – resulted from a lack of responsiveness from his mother in the early years. Studies suggest that early care which is not responsive to the child's needs, or overcontrolling, significantly increases the risk. Dissociation can also be caused by emotional abuse (being demeaned and harshly criticised), as well as the physical or sexual varieties.

Man hands on misery to man. Since abuse, rather than genes, is now clearly emerging as the principal cause of both personality disorders and psychoses (like schizophrenia), it is all too possible that Savile drove some of his victims as crazy as him. It is horrible to contemplate the possibility that he may have spawned other abusers by his crimes.

The only way to have avoided a person of Savile's psychology would have been a society that puts the needs of every small child first. In that case, his relationship with his mother would be noticed and appropriate help provided.

More on this story

More on this story

  • Jimmy Savile inquiry extends to 41 hospitals

  • Jimmy Savile: detailed investigation reveals reign of abuse across NHS

  • Former child patients recount horrors of Jimmy Savile abuse

  • How Jimmy Savile charmed his way into hospital corridors

  • Savile told hospital staff he performed sex acts on corpses in Leeds mortuary

  • Jimmy Savile's hospital abuse: the full dossier

  • Jimmy Savile's victims were aged five to 75 at Leeds hospital, inquiry finds

  • Jimmy Savile: timeline of his sexual abuse and its uncovering

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