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

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She added: “Psychology is so important when it comes to breaking down the reason why a person has committed an offence. This is a bit of a fringe notion and not an official psychiatric diagnosis. Machiavellianism refers to the use of self-interest strategies, such as deceit, flattery and emotional detachment, to manipulate social and interpersonal interactions. The combination of Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy is referred to as the 'dark triad' of personality traits and is thought to be associated with adverse workplace behaviours and financial misbehaviour. 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. 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’.

Sana 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. Narcissists tend to require constant attention and excessive admiration, and they expect to be recognised as superior. They exaggerate their own achievements are are preoccupied with fantasies about success, power and beauty. They can be exploitative or manipulative to get what they want, and they have an inability or unwillingness to recognise the needs and feelings of other above their own. They may insist on having the best car or the best office; they may demand the most comfortable bunk in the prison cell; or they may be come angry if they're not the first patient to be seen..... In my inexperience, I thought it obvious that, as this was a case of a mother killing a newborn baby, ‘the balance of her mind must have been disturbed’ – still the legal criteria for infanticide.

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Richard Taylor: She was very isolated. The father wasn't in the picture. She was isolated from her family. She became depressed during the pregnancy and it got worse after the pregnancy. And I think in her case, it reached the state where I kind of formed the view that it was almost as if the child didn't exist. You know, she didn't want this child. The child didn't really exist in her mind, and so she disposed of the child. And afterwards she was really very blank and, as I say, almost as if the baby had never been born. The brains of murderers look different from those of people convicted of other crimes—differences that could be linked to how they process empathy and morality.

In Holloway I was asked to see Amelia Stevenson, who had been remanded there having been charged with murder. She herself was a modern-dayResearch has shown that harsh discipline doesn't actually work as a child-rearing strategy, especially with the most anti-social kids. Fledgling psychopaths with callous-emotional traits often make excellent bullies, choosing skilfully how best to hurt their victims without caring about the impact, and they are notably impervious to punishment. 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. A fascinating, well-written and compelling account of the mental state in homicide' Alisdair Williamson, TLS personal hair stylist: Dr. Michelle Ward / personal makeup artist: Dr. Michelle Ward (11 episodes, 2015-2016) On the contrary, my view is that such stereotypes are broken down by sympathetically examining real-life cases while emphasising their rarity. The diagnosis of schizophrenia relies in part on the identification of psychotic experiences such as delusional beliefs or hallucinatory voices. It comes as a surprise to many that these experiences are not uncommon among the general population.

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 his twenty-six years in the field, Richard Taylor has worked on well over a hundred murder cases, with victims and perpetrators from all walks of life. In this fascinating memoir, Taylor draws on some of the most tragic, horrific and illuminating of these cases - as well as dark secrets from his own family's past - to explore some of the questions he grapples with every day: Dr. Michelle Ward goes behind prison walls to find out why Karl Knapp gunned down his estranged girlfriend and two other people during a drug-fueled spree. View Details