They told us that monsters didn’t exist… when it wasn’t entirely true

As children we were convinced that monsters only existed in stories. No one ever told us that they actually wear human skin and walk in broad daylight. Like the couple who first enchants and then mistreats and annihilates self-esteem, like parents who deny love to their children, like the terrorist who takes innocent lives or the politician capable of starting a war.

If there is one thing we all know, it is that Words are important, they create labels and attributions that are not always entirely true. The term “monster”, for example, originally has a fictional and literary connotation that does not at all prevent us from continuing to use it constantly to describe all those acts that in our eyes escape logic and represent evil.

However, it must be said that There is no scientific basis for this concept, no There are legal textbooks with a chapter on “How to Interview an Evil Person or Monster,” Nor do diagnostic manuals offer us a protocol to identify them. However… let’s admit it, it is almost impossible for us to stop resorting to this word to describe this entire range of behaviors that directly attack our primordial concept of “humanity.”

Experts in criminal psychology say that The first time the term “monster” was used to describe a person in the police field was in 1790, in London. The authorities were looking for an unusual murderer, something perverse and inconceivable that spread panic in certain London neighborhoods for almost two years. It was, of course, Jack the Ripper.

Monsters of flesh and blood, people devoid of humanity

The word “monster” still retains its original implications, those where the supernatural combines with the evil to harm us, to bring us doom. So, Every time we designate someone with this term, what we actually do is strip them of all human attributes.of all “natural” essence.

Now, if at the beginning we have pointed out that behind this word it is nothing more than a simple label without any scientific substrate behind it, it is worth saying criminal profiling experts have made this mistake at some point in history. An example of this was what happened throughout the 70s in the United States with Ted Bundy.

Within the criminalistic universe, Ted is the most ruthless serial killer in history. During interrogations he suggested that he could have killed 100 women. A figure to which the authorities gave credence, due to the cruelty of the character, despite the fact that they only found the bodies of 36 of his victims.

However, after the disappearances of dozens and dozens of university students, it was discovered that the name of Ted Bundy was behind these and many more acts that are difficult to imagine. Brutal murders that left the authorities themselves speechless. They labeled him a “monster”: not only because of the atrocities committed, but because of the complexity of his results in the different psychological tests that were administered to him.

The conclusion reached is that Bundy was not psychotic or a drug addict, nor an alcoholic, he did not have brain damage nor did he suffer from any psychiatric illness.. Ted Bundy simply enjoyed doing evil.

There is another place where monsters live: in our minds

We know that our world, our closest reality, is sometimes like those disturbing paintings by Brueghel the Elder, where evil hides among the daily life of the crowd, among the rumor of the masses in a city, known or unknown, in a any street However, Monsters capable of harming us not only live around us; In fact, where they take up the most space is in our own minds.

Sometimes, fear, our emotions and thoughts can grip us to the point of locking us in a very dark place where we become lost, suffocated and imprisoned by our own demons. There are writers who have managed to perfectly represent that journey where one makes contact with their own monsters. to know them and make them yours, to re-emerge to the surface free of those chains.

Dante did it with Virgil in the “Divine Comedy”, Lewis Carroll also did it with Alice and Maurice Sendak did it with Max in “Where the Wild Things Are.” This last book is a small delight of children’s literature. His story invites us to make multiple reflections regardless of our age, regardless of our previous filming. Because at some point we can all be victims of those inner claws, where the monsters themselves drag us to a strange place.

“When Max put on his wolf costume he had an overwhelming desire to get into mischief, and then his mother called him “MONSTER!” and Max replied “I’M GOING TO EAT YOU!”

-“Where the Wild Things Are”, Maurice Sendak-

This small work allows us to take a trip hand in hand with a child. This adventure reminds us that in Sometimes you have to visit that wild and chimerical kingdom where our strangest and most surreal creatures live.. Far from anchoring ourselves to it, we must overcome it. Of course, not before letting out our screams, playing without rules, getting angry, laughing, crying…

We will leave our footprints in the country of monsters and our rusty crowns to ascend again, feeling free for having transcended the darkness, purified and above all satisfied to return with more strength to our real life. Because yes, because the monsters that we had been referred to as children do exist.

However, and given that we cannot always control those who camouflage themselves in our external life, Let us be able, above all, to scare away those who appear in our minds from time to time.

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