/lit/ - Literature

>"[Ted] describes at length his inability to figure out whether or not he was attractive to women and references a passing comment of a friend of his family's at the age of 15, that made him believe he was quite attractive. […] At times in his writings, he focuses, in an extraordinary amount of detail, on passing or short lived relationships or potential relationships with females. This is illustrated by his discussion of his relationships with (REDACTED) when he was 10, (REDACTED) when he was 16, (REDACTED) when he was 17, (REDACTED) when he was 32, "Ms. Z" when he was in graduate school, and (REDACTED) when he was 36.”

>"aside from his mother, who doted on him as a boy, there appears to have been no substantive relationship with a woman in all his life"

>The court psychiatrist: "it is evident that he has repeatedly developed idealized romantic attachments to women with whom he has little familiarity or contact. These women, for the most part, are unaware of the degree of his attachment. That he has maintained these idealized attachment over extended periods of time, is outlined extensively in his writings. It appears that the onset of this disorder for Mr. Kaczynski was in his early 20s. It is likely that for many years he has intermittently experienced exacerbations in the intensity of this disorder. Those periods have been preceded by prodromal symptoms of depressed mood, insomnia, increased distractibility, and intensification of sexual identity problems. "

>"Before his arrest he’d had almost no experience with women, as he confided repeatedly to his diary. The opposite sex confounded him: What did women want? How did you know when they liked you? Why was it so hard? But as a notorious serial killer, he attracted the interest of women, dozens of them, who wrote him to say how handsome they thought he was. They called him “Teddy,” sent him provocative pictures, told him about their sex fantasies and begged to visit him. One woman, in a letter sent to Kaczynski’s attorneys, even proposed marriage. [...] The letters shocked him so much that even though he rejected the mental health profession he wrote to a psychologist to ask if he thought the woman might be mentally unstable. “Can unresolved anger lead to sadomasochistic sexual impulses?” he wrote."

>"Kaczynski [...] lacked even elementary social skills. Russell Mosny recalls one of Kaczynski's rare dates. [He] borrowed his parent's car and took a girl to a movie. A half hour into the show, he excused himself and walked out of the theater, then returned [...] thirty minutes later he left again, then returned. He repeated these mysterious exits twice more. But the last time he did not return. After the movie was over, the girl found Ted waiting for her on the street. "Where have you been?" she asked. "I parked the car at a thirty-minute meter and had to keep putting nickels in," he explained. [...] "I ran out of money for tickets to get back into the theater."