The Mind of a Murderer: A glimpse into the darkest corners of the human psyche, from a leading forensic psychiatrist

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Not only is wife-murder frighteningly common, but juries have historically been far more sympathetic to men who kill unfaithful wives, say, than women who kill abusive husbands. “If you are not a feminist already,” Taylor declares at one point, “you will be by the time you finish this book”, although that won’t simplify every moral issue for you: some feminists argue that we mustn’t paint husband-killers as abuse victims, as it “denies women a sense of agency for their actions”.

This work represents more than 10 years of data collection across eight prisons in two states,” Kiehl said. “We are fortunate to present the world’s largest sample of its kind and the results are quite remarkable.” Sana Qadar: Now Dr Taylor wants others to understand what goes on in the mind of a murderer too, and he's written a book by that very name. Still, he candidly admits that psychiatrists are fallible, with their own foibles and hobby-horses. And of course, when it comes to court, juries are perfectly prepared to ignore any number of psychiatrists, as happened in the trial of the late, unlamented Peter Sutcliffe, whom the expert witnesses had unanimously judged to have “diminished responsibility”. How Do Neural Implants Work? – IEEE Spectrum. IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/what-is-neural-implant-neuromodulation-brain-implants-electroceuticals-neuralink-definition-examplesSana Qadar: Early in his medical career, Dr Richard Taylor found himself more interested in the 'why' than the 'what'. By that I mean it wasn't the nature of a wound that interested him most, but the story behind it.

Changing the workings of the brain can even affect personality and empathy. A historic case that showed this quite dramatically was the railroad worker Phineas Gage, who developed anti-social behaviour after his forebrain was punctured by an iron rod during an accident. ( 1)Fascinating. Different from several of the other forensic science memoirs I have read in that the author takes a more academic and low-key look at a number of cases in which he has been involved as a forensic psychiatrist, most of which are less well-known cases which haven’t caught public attention quite as much as the headline cases of some books I have read. Which isn’t to say they are any less interesting as a consequence, in fact the tone and content makes for some very well argued points and a thorough introduction to the work determining whether criminals are responsible for their actions and to what extent (mad, sad or bad). In the meantime, that's All in the Mind for this week. Thanks to producer James Bullen and sound engineer Tim Jenkins. unexplained symptoms. When the child had been admitted to a paediatric ward for observation, Tamara had tampered with the drip, causing a life-threatening infection by contamination of the infusion, and putting her child in intensive care. Next Tamara suffered an apparent seizure in police custody and was transferred to the Mayday emergency room. Richard Taylor: I only really fully learned the story whilst writing this book and family members were opening up about it. And obviously, I got their permission to say as much as I have said in the book, that this was a psychosis, this was a postpartum psychosis where she essentially lost touch with reality, although, like the case of Stella North that we talked about, it wasn't totally straightforward, but she ended up initially in prison custody at a women's prison, Holloway, where I later ended up working. And I think my decision to take up the post at Holloway may have been influenced by this family story, a sort of curiosity. Again, it wasn't something I was consciously thinking about when I took up that job. But she ended up in psychiatric hospital and had a range of treatments. She ended up having psychosurgery, which is pretty extreme and no longer used. And so her story helps illustrate the whole issue of infanticide, but it also tells us a little bit about the history of psychiatry and how treatments have changed. Findings like these only provide a glimpse into criminal psychology, but they share a common message: the identification of a neuronal fingerprint is more than science fiction – we’ve just not quite worked out the details yet.

Whether or not we give in to the need to condemn, we must recognise that condemnatory explanations do not encourage an understanding of the complex real-world causes of violence. They do not help us find solutions. And applying these narratives involves inhibiting the very thing that we condemn violent offenders for failing to show: empathy.

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In the world, 19% of women in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have suffered sexual or physical abuse by their partner, in Western Europe the figure is 22%, North America 32% and in the Middle East and North Africa, 45%. Sana Qadar: So Jonathan Brooks killed his mother, in his case during an episode of psychosis. But if you turn that scenario on its head, you get mothers who kill their children. That's something Dr Taylor encounters more often than you'd think.

Otherwise, communication was mostly done by shouting indiscriminately across the central space of the unit. Sometimes these were calls to welcome a new arrival who was in their fold, or to threaten ones who were not. Alternatively, the focus of their attention could be the officers; either to plead for something, or announce their aggressive intentions.They also have difficulty vocalising their distress, something we psychiatrists call ‘alexithymia’, loosely translated as ‘the absence of the words to describe a state of mind’. Whodunnit' doesn't matter so much, not to a forensic psychiatrist. We're more interested in the 'why'. foundling, abandoned at birth and found in a plastic bag on the doorstep of a hospital before going on to short-term foster placements and a children’s home. Sana Qadar: I can't imagine what it's like to confront that for the first time. How did that affect you? The Neuroscience of Pleasure | HuffPost Life. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/compass-pleasure_b_890342