Psych Murders

Psych Murders
Author: Stephanie Heit
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 151
Release: 2022-09-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0814349889

Experimental writing that takes you inside psychiatric wards and shock treatments toward new futures of care. Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist; Bronze Medal winner from the Independent Publisher Book Awards; Midwest Book Award Gold Medal Winner! Stephanie Heit's hybrid memoir poem blasts the page electric and documents her experience of shock treatment. Using a powerful mélange of experimental forms, she traces her queer mad bodymind through breathlessness, damage, refusal, and memory loss as it shifts in and out of locked psychiatric wards and extreme bipolar states. Heit survives to give readers access to this somatic, visceral rendering of a bipolar life complete with sardonic humor, while showing us the dire need for new paradigms of mental health care outside closets, attics, prisons, and wards. Psych Murders adds a vital layer of lived experience of electroshocks and suicidal ideation to the growing body of literature of madness and mental health difference.

On Killing

On Killing
Author: Dave Grossman
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1497629209

A controversial psychological examination of how soldiers’ willingness to kill has been encouraged and exploited to the detriment of contemporary civilian society. Psychologist and US Army Ranger Dave Grossman writes that the vast majority of soldiers are loath to pull the trigger in battle. Unfortunately, modern armies, using Pavlovian and operant conditioning, have developed sophisticated ways of overcoming this instinctive aversion. The mental cost for members of the military, as witnessed by the increase in post-traumatic stress, is devastating. The sociological cost for the rest of us is even worse: Contemporary civilian society, particularly the media, replicates the army’s conditioning techniques and, Grossman argues, is responsible for the rising rate of murder and violence, especially among the young. Drawing from interviews, personal accounts, and academic studies, On Killing is an important look at the techniques the military uses to overcome the powerful reluctance to kill, of how killing affects the soldier, and of the societal implications of escalating violence.

The Mind of a Murderer

The Mind of a Murderer
Author: Richard Taylor
Publisher: Wildfire
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2021-01-21
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1472268172

'An intricate and brilliantly written psychiatric perspective on the most perplexing of crimes' Kerry Daynes, author of The Dark Side of the Mind 'Beautifully written and very dark' Nimco Ali OBE 'Whodunnit' doesn't matter so much, not to a forensic psychiatrist. We're more interested in the 'why'. 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: Why do people kill? Does committing a monstrous act make someone a monster? Could any of us, in the wrong circumstances, become a killer? As Taylor helps us understand what lies inside the minds of those charged with murder - both prisoners he has assessed and patients he has treated - he presents us with the most important challenge of all: how can we even begin to comprehend the darkest of human deeds, and why it is so vital that we try? The Mind of a Murderer is a fascinating exploration into the psyche of killers, as well as a unique insight into the life and mind of the doctor who treats them. For fans of Unnatural Causes, The Examined Life and All That Remains. MORE PRAISE FOR THE MIND OF A MURDERER: 'A fascinating insight into what drives criminality - and a punchy polemic against mental-health service cuts' Jake Kerridge, Sunday Telegraph 'A fascinating, well-written and compelling account of the mental state in homicide' Alisdair Williamson, TLS 'A dark, fascinating and often surprising glimpse into the minds of those who kill, from a forensic psychiatrist who's seen it all' Rob Williams, writer of BBC's The Victim 'An excellent, engaging and honest book, full of interesting, powerful and important observations' Alison Liebling, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Cambridge

The Color She Gave Gravity

The Color She Gave Gravity
Author: Stephanie Heit
Publisher: Operating System
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9781946031020

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Women's Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. Disability Studies. Movement Studies. Dance. '"[I]n the slow gestures / of a person adjusting / to too much light' and with the faith of a chemist, Stephanie Heit sets fire inside her own dark and offers 'light someone not yet arrived/will understand.' THE COLOR SHE GAVE GRAVITY is a breathtaking (which is to say, life-giving) book that both stills and energizes by breaking and reforming the unseen bonds of DNA, language, geography, and history."--TC Tolbert "Stephanie Heit's THE COLOR SHE GAVE GRAVITY is a sonorous force field calling on tenderness, care, vigilance and abandon. An all-encompassing clarity saturates mind, spirit, movement and emotion. To locate the blind spot and unburden experience of the horizon's relentless pressure--this is what the text does tenfold, imparting and dispelling the inexplicable along peripheries and in intimately centered frames of movement: gorgeously evocative and intensely realized capacious psychic flows."--Brenda Iijima "Stephanie Heit has choreographed, in her first full-length poetry collection, a deeply engaging articulation of the interplay between mental illness and the creative instinct, history and destiny, and limitation and willful boundary. Here, we have an author brave enough to say 'I suffer' and talented enough to excavate the lyrical beauty of that suffering. THE COLOR SHE GAVE GRAVITY offers the reader a textured view of a graceful body torn between trying to remember and trying to forget."--Airea D. Matthews "In these fierce, moving poems, we witness a self as it seeks its right path through those landscapes we call world. We are taken along, wandering through urban streets or across beaches that once were lakes, sometimes dreamily, sometimes searingly awake, digging through stories and years. These poems enact one of our most potent human gifts: our ability to find ourselves tumbling, falling down, standing up--in proprioceptive relation to everything in our earthly realm."--Eleni Sikelianos THE COLOR SHE GAVE GRAVITY traces longing for connection between women. An ecopoetics of the bodymind, these poems take us inside a dance inside an imaginary city inside sculpted spaces inside the insomniac body inside sister grief inside she. The work emerges from a landscape of somatic engagement and by experiences of psychiatric systems and multiple hospitalizations. Cover Photo: "Crossing Visible," by Gwynneth VanLaven

Listening to Killers

Listening to Killers
Author: James Garbarino
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2015-03-12
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0520958748

Listening to Killers offers an inside look at twenty years' worth of murder files from Dr. James Garbarino, a leading expert psychological witness who listens to killers so that he can testify in court. The author offers detailed accounts of how killers travel a path that leads from childhood innocence to lethal violence in adolescence or adulthood. He places the emotional and moral damage of each individual killer within a larger scientific framework of social, psychological, anthropological, and biological research on human development. By linking individual cases to broad social and cultural issues and illustrating the social toxicity and unresolved trauma that drive some people to kill, Dr. Garbarino highlights the humanity we share with killers and the role of understanding and empathy in breaking the cycle of violence.

The Silent Patient

The Silent Patient
Author: Alex Michaelides
Publisher: Celadon Books
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2019-02-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250301718

**THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** "An unforgettable—and Hollywood-bound—new thriller... A mix of Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting, and Greek tragedy." —Entertainment Weekly The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

Psych: a Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read

Psych: a Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read
Author: William Rabkin
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2009-01-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780451226358

Based on the hit USA NETWORK television series A tie-in readers will be totally "psyched" about... Shawn Spencer has convinced everyone he's psychic. Now, he has to either clean up or be found out. After the PSYCH detective agency gets some top-notch publicity, Shawn's high-school nemesis, Dallas Steele, hires him to help choose his investments. Naturally, their predictions turn out to be total busts. And the deceptive Dallas is thrilled that he has completely discredited and humiliated Shawn once and for all, until he's found murdered. But the police have a suspec found at the scene with a smoking gun. And she says Shawn took control of her mind and forced her to do it. After all, he is a psychic?

The Perversion of Virtue

The Perversion of Virtue
Author: Thomas Joiner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2014
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0199334552

In The Perversion of Virtue, suicide researcher Thomas Joiner explores the nature of murder-suicide and offers a unique new theory to explain this nearly unexplainable act: that 'true' murder-suicides always involve the wrongheaded invocation of one of four interpersonal virtues.

Women Who Love Men Who Kill

Women Who Love Men Who Kill
Author: Sheila Isenberg
Publisher: Diversion Books
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2021-10-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1635768071

The “engrossing, thoroughly researched look at women who are in romantic relationships with incarcerated men”—fully updated with twenty-first-century cases (Publishers Weekly). In 1991, Sheila Isenberg’s classic study Women Who Love Men Who Kill asked the provocative question, “Why do women fall in love with convicted murderers?” Now, Isenberg returns to the same question in the age of smart phones, social media, mass shootings, and modern prison dating. The result is a compelling psychological study of prison passion in the new millennium. Isenberg conducts extensive interviews with women who seek relationships with convicted killers, as well as conversations with psychiatrists, social workers, and prison officials. She shows that many of these women know exactly what they are getting into—yet they are willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of a love without hope, promise, or consummation. This edition of Women Who Love Men Who Kill includes gripping new case studies and an absorbing look at how the digital age is revolutionizing this phenomenon. Meet the young women writing “fan fiction” featuring America’s most sadistic murderers; the killer serving consecutive life sentences for strangling his wife and smothering his toddler daughters—and the women who visit him in prison; the high-powered journalist who fell in love and risked it all for “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli; and many other women absorbed in online and real-life dalliances with their killer men.

Why We Snap

Why We Snap
Author: Douglas Fields
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2016-01-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0698194314

The startling new science behind sudden acts of violence and the nine triggers this groundbreaking researcher has uncovered We all have a rage circuit we can’t fully control once it is engaged as R. Douglas Fields, PhD, reveals in this essential book for our time. The daily headlines are filled with examples of otherwise rational people with no history of violence or mental illness suddenly snapping in a domestic dispute, an altercation with police, or road rage attack. We all wish to believe that we are in control of our actions, but the fact is, in certain circumstances we are not. The sad truth is that the right trigger in the right circumstance can unleash a fit of rage in almost anyone. But there is a twist: Essentially the same pathway in the brain that can result in a violent outburst can also enable us to act heroically and altruistically before our conscious brain knows what we are doing. Think of the stranger who dives into a frigid winter lake to save a drowning child. Dr. Fields is an internationally recognized neurobiologist and authority on the brain and the cellular mechanisms of memory. He has spent years trying to understand the biological basis of rage and anomalous violence, and he has concluded that our culture’s understanding of the problem is based on an erroneous assumption: that rage attacks are the product of morally or mentally defective individuals, rather than a capacity that we all possess. Fields shows that violent behavior is the result of the clash between our evolutionary hardwiring and triggers in our contemporary world. Our personal space is more crowded than ever, we get less sleep, and we just aren't as fit as our ancestors. We need to understand how the hardwiring works and how to recognize the nine triggers. With a totally new perspective, engaging narrative, and practical advice, Why We Snap uncovers the biological roots of the rage response and how we can protect ourselves—and others.