A Father's Story

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He has since come to question almost everything he thought he knew about his child and the history they shared, not to mention his own level of responsibility for how his son's path developed. If that was my brother and my brother killed their son, I would not abandon my brother," Smith said. They added another sibling that they were paying more attention to because he was colic and let's be honest he was the best kid so they're going to give him more attention where as Jeffrey was odd so they probably stay clear of him. Jeffrey was born in Milwaukee in 1960 after his mother had endured a very difficult pregnancy (after giving birth to another son, she would spend time in a mental institution).

If it is sensationalism (like so many other books about serial murder), then he certainly has a bizarre method for doing so; if it is a clarification of facts, then it is incomplete and meandering; if it is an apology, it is sincere but just totally weary from years of apology. About the book:On July 23, 1991, Milwaukee chemist Lionel Dahmer discovered - along with the rest of the world - that his son Jeffrey was a murderer who, over a period of many years, had carried out some of the most ghastly crimes ever committed in the United States. The sections where the father says that Jeffrey was like him in certain ways I think it was a reach. and slimy, ham-fisted attempts to place the blame for Jeffrey's behaviour on anybody else but him-- particularly his first wife, the fragile and quite-obviously emotionally bullied birth mother of his son's, Lionel gives us less an insight into his son's psyche than a pure view of a father and husband of stunning emotional disassociation: a weak, deluded, egotistical and loathsome little man whose multiple failings read like a litany of dissemblances and pitiful excuses. This was a great opportunity to get into the mind of Dahmer, to understand more of his personality; His psyche.He delves into his own feelings of guilt and responsibility, and ultimately seeks to understand what led Jeffrey down such a dark path. I cannot imagine what it took to examine all of his own inner demons, to analyze them and dissect them, in the hopes of being able to understand the horrifying actions of his son. Mentally ill mother, no job or income of her own) BUT, Lionel had the job, money, and means to leave the marriage. His social life, which should have been expanding, narrowed to a circle that was no larger than his mind, an imagined world in which his friends were phantoms, his lovers mere lumps of unmoving flesh. An anguished memoir written by the father of a serial killer, trying to imagine what went so horribly wrong inside his family.

But for most parents the world over, these and similar worries are the only ones they will have to face. The book is simply, as the title states, a father's story, sort of Dahmer's way of working through and trying to understand how his son could possibly be capable of the horrible acts he committed. He actually suggests and seems to believe in that moment that without a belief in God there is nothing to deter someone from hurting others.I can't begin to imagine the nightmare that has become of this man's life after his son committed such gruesome crimes. From a certain point Lionel knew his son was terribly troubled, but he never could have imagined how bad things really were.

His lack of conscience, his lack of empathy, his inability to consider the cost of fulfilling his own perverted fantasies (genetic, learned, or some combination thereof), these were Dahmer's problem. For at any moment, in the middle of comedy, at the tail end of drama, just before a commercial, we might suddenly see the face of my son, a face that I, at least, profoundly did not want to see.

book DOES NOT discuss the actual crime in detail(the whole cannibalism, sexual assault, where how with whom it happened), because press, media, police already did. He sends his troubled son to her and then when she's in her 80s he leaves her to live on her own in another state.

All through the book, Dahmer juggles his paternal love for Jeffrey with the acceptance that his son committed unspeakable acts.Dahmer and his wife Shari received support from Theresa Smith, sister of victim Eddie Smith, who is mentioned in the acknowledgments. While reflecting, he "speculates that his own youthful shyness, fascination with bombs and fears of abandonment added up to a monstrous genetic inheritance. Jeff intrigues me, because, the love that Lionel felt towards his son was highly relatable to me, do not take this the wrong way, I am NOT a murderer.