This is an important, informative and also, morally, a very beautiful book.
Dr Gwen Adshead (a forensic psychotherapist, Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at Gresham College, Jochelson visiting professor at the Yale School of Law and Psychiatry, and consultant forensic psychiatrist at Ravenswood House), seeks to determine no more and no less what causes people to behave in a violent and criminal manner. This is not a search for justification she makes very clear, but a search for explanation, meaning, with the aim of preventing such behaviour in the future and thus, make a significant contribution to human happiness, both in terms of the criminals themselves and their potential victims.
In a similar manner to the books of Oliver Sacks it is structured around a series of case histories. These are composites and they are used both to conceal the identities of the patient or patients concerned and to solidify the type of criminal conduct on which Dr Adshed is seeking to shed light.
We are introduced to the notion of the "bicycle lock" a sort of five figure number that triggers the crime. The first two numbers of the pin are pre-existing, socio-political and unalterable, such as poverty, genetics or violence in the family home, the second two numbers are factored in to the person's life as they grow up, particular events, education, drugtaking et cetera, and the last number is the particular occurrence that triggers the crime, the last penny to drop, the unleashing.
The crimes covered are carefully selected: serial murder, gang violence, child abuse etc.
Dr Adhead's aim is to get her patients to recognise the reasons for their behaviour and gently coax them towards empathy, towards an understanding of the pain they have inflicted on their victims. She makes clear that for many this will not be a clement process, that if she is successful they will suffer more, at least in the short term, but she deems it necessary so they may eventually truly forgive themselves and heal. Thus, we are offered a complete biography of most of perpetrators this helps to contextualise and understand their crimes, which is the main thrust of the book, and then we witness, for most anyway, their slow plodding progress towards enlightenment.
Ironically, there are actually only two offenders that Dr Adshead believes may be unredeemable, uncomfortably, they are both middle-class, well educated and white; privileged, in other words. The first, a solicitor, no less because she seems to meet the classic definition of mad, since a deep part of her, seemingly beyond the aid of either therapy or drugs, seems to be entirely out of touch with reality, although her presentation outside of this kernel of irrationality is highly organised and effective and therefore, deceptive. The second, a man and a former doctor, is because he is protected by his unassailable privileged position in society, is addicted to sadistic child pornography. Limited kudos to him, unlike the solicitor, at least he recognises he may actually have a problem, but ultimately he refuses to seek effective help for it, and cannot be persuaded to do so. One of the few comic moments of this book occurs when Dr Adshead confesses that she would rather be counselling one of her former criminal patients in Broadmoor, Britain's main high security mental asylum, then this apparently urbane GP, in her comfortable private practice.
This book is priceless one of the best endeavours I have encountered, I do not hesitate to recommend it, even for lovers (I confess I belong to that number myself) of true crime because it is invaluable in helping understand what makes those who have committed crimes tick, indeed, what makes us all, tick...
