Entwistle murder trial: Sex addiction and the will to kill

Watching handsome Neil Entwistle stand steely with frozen emotion, as the juror read out their verdict, I was briefly tempted to take a fantasy ride and return a not plea, but outward mien is about the ultimate deceit. The suggestion that he was sex addicted creates a window to assess the drive for homicide. A foremost researcher in the psychology of addiction once noted that at the heart of this defect is, “a spiritual and emotional impoverishment that causes the self to invest in some thing or person to obtain a sense of worth and security”. It true that he was embattled with failed businesses, but a lifestyle that indicates inner emptiness provides a snap shot of Neil life in the last days. Any addiction can competently disallow progressive growth of the spirit which prevents long lasting fulfillment.

He may have been saddled and asphyxiated by his circumstance, but the main essential source of fortitude is one’s family, which he apparently walked away from. Instead of drawing closer to the ageless healer; a daughter and a wife, he instead sought, “temporary relief from his emptiness”. In a way his capacity for love was transformed by basic human experience into a self seeking disordered attachment with his vices and a morbid pre-occupation with what he was unable to achieve in spite of an effort he thought was abundant. In many cruel ways he confirms the suggestion that who the person his determines his response when motivated to do anything, even to kill. Some may be drugged to do harm, while others with even a greater amount of the same drug, will do no harm.

This saga reminds a lot of us of the frailty of our composure and how emergent it is to proffer more competent solutions for coping with various stressful situations in other to prevent the total collapse that precipitates harms to our love ones. Our addictions are more of reflective devices that tells us about our deepest ills.