The latest issue of the Journal of Constructivist Psychology includes an article by David Winter from the University of Hertfordshire (UK) and Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust (UK) setting out a personal construct theory approach to understanding how serial killers and other violent offenders perceive their crimes.
Here’s the abstract:
This article presents a categorization of pathways to violence and homicide, including serial killing, in terms of personal construct theory. Violent offenders’ reactions to their offences are considered in relation to the degree of consistency between their actions and their construing of the self and the world. Implications for the assessment and treatment of people who have committed acts of homicide or violence are discussed; and the extent to which it is possible and desirable to adopt a credulous approach with such individuals is explored, including consideration of the truth of offenders’ accounts, the therapeutic relationship, and moral relativism.
Read on for more discussion of the paper.
Winter’s paper is in two halves, the first setting out his proposed “taxonomy of violence and of those who commit it” (p. 249), and the second exploring the limits of a therapeutic approach that emphasises acceptance of the client’s perception of their world and their acts, when that client is an extremely violent offender.
Winter draws on personal accounts given by Moors murderer Ian Brady, serial killers such as Dennis Nilsen, Harold Shipman and Andrei Chikatilo, gangsters like the Kray twins and many others in explaining his taxonomy. Although I don’t know enough about personal construct theory to judge how well it is applied here, I found his use of vivid quotes from these killers engaging and effective. I was particularly taken with the category of ‘Violence as Escape from Chaos’, exemplified in this passage:
In the case of Dennis Nilsen, who invited young, often homeless, men back to his flat because he was lonely and then kept their bodies “for company” for several days after killing them, at least some of the murders appear to have given him a sense of creating a beauty and meaning in death out of people whose lives were chaotic. Thus, describing one of the bodies, which he had carefully washed and dried, he wrote: “He looked really beautiful like one of those Michelangelo sculptures. It seemed that for the first time in his life he was really feeling and looking the best he ever did in his whole life. . . . I just lay there and a great peace came over me. I felt that this was it, the meaning of life, death, everything.” (Masters, 1986, p. 130) [from p. 257 of Winter’s article]
In the second half of the article Winter goes on to describe the problem faced by a personal construct psychologist attempting to understand a violent offender, whilst trying to remain true to George Kelly’s guiding principle: “from a phenomenological point of view the client—like the proverbial customer—is always right.” (Kelly, 1955, p. 322, quoted on p. 247 of this article). What happens, asks Winter, when the client has carried out horrific crimes, that inspire revulsion in others (including psychologists)? What are the limits to the ‘credulous approach’?
Winter describes his own experiences of struggling to adopt a credulous approach to violent offenders, and highlights the dangerous line between the credulous approach and being ‘taken in’ by a violent offender, but also points out that adopting a non-judgemental, empathetic approach is often the most effective approach to take with criminals who are reluctant to admit to details of their crimes.
BTW, I was also fascinated by Winter’s quotes from his recent personal correspondence with Ian Brady on the topic of moral relativism - in particular, Brady’s view that:
[…]the paths taken by common criminals are trivial by comparison with those of “American gangsters . . . the Bush gang of ex-oil executives and their recent successful armed robbery in Iraq” and of “Blair, a minor henchman and late-developed psychopath who has bombed five countries in six years” (I. Stewart-Brady, personal communication, May 21, 2003, quoted on p. 268 of the article).
- David A. Winter (2007). Construing The Construction Processes Of Serial Killers And Other Violent Offenders: 2. The Limits Of Credulity. Journal of Constructivist Psychology 20(3):247 - 275
Photo credit: Phillip the Filipino, Creative Commons License
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