2024-04-04 16:07:47
Dangerous Minds: Violent Crime Files from Forensic Psychiatrists
Author｜Taji. Dr. Taj Nathan
Translator｜Li Weicheng
Publishing House｜Startup Culture
Publication date｜2024/03/27
“Serial killers”, “matricide”, “infanticide”, horrific incidents of violence and abnormal behavior, there are real people behind them that we don’t know. Mental health problems should not be equated with danger, but some dangerous behaviors must be understood from a psychiatric perspective.
Having been engaged in forensic psychiatry for more than twenty years, Taji. Dr. Nathan actually comes into contact with ten criminals in the book, presents the conversation process with them in detail, and analyzes these “patients” from a medical perspective, allowing us to get a glimpse of how these people in prisons, courts, and wards are treated. Childhood trauma or social and cultural influences may lead to risky behaviors.
Content excerpt
Dangerous Minds: Violent Crime Files from Forensic Psychiatrists
Cyber: The Delusional Man Who Killed His Mother (Excerpt)
Unless Seb agreed to talk, I had no way of knowing what he was thinking. Likewise, I didn’t want him to just sit in jail, and I thought the evidence at the time was enough for us to fight for evaluation and treatment in a hospital. I contacted a judicial hospital with an appropriate level of care and obtained a written proposal from the Ministry of Justice, so I obtained permission to transfer the prisoner.
When we met once more six weeks later, Seb had been transferred to the hospital. Seb and Esther. Dyson, unlike Dyson, won’t be in the hospital indefinitely, and I think–based on what I’ve seen in his past record–that his symptoms may improve with treatment.
At the judicial hospital, the ward nurse who escorted Seb to the interview room once once more introduced me to him. Before I even had a chance to check if his communication had improved, I might already tell he looked different from last time. Many (but not all) of my patients who suffer from mental illness seem to improve dramatically on antipsychotic medications. But unfortunately, most people are also troubled by various side effects of drugs. Nearly thirty years ago, when I first became a psychiatrist, antipsychotic drugs, which were widely used at the time, often caused involuntary movements in patients and attracted unwanted and prejudicial attention from others. Fortunately, modern antipsychotic drugs are far less likely to cause neurological side effects, although the newer drugs can sometimes cause metabolic changes in patients—a sign of which is weight gain. I speculated from the way Seb had put on weight that he should start taking antipsychotic medication.
Seb told me that he was indeed taking antipsychotic medication, and although he felt like he mightn’t get enough no matter how much he ate, his condition had improved significantly. Even if he still can’t be called talkative, at least Seb is now willing to participate in our conversation. He told me that a few months before his arrest, he began to feel overwhelmed by waves of uneasiness that evolved into a constant sense of foreboding and fear. Everything around him felt wrong. There was a hazy aura surrounding the people, and he wondered if they were people he knew before. Then Seb figured it out, and he found himself surrounded by a bunch of impostors. The woman pretending to be his mother looked and acted just like his mother, but Seb was convinced that she was just a liar and had kidnapped the real mother. The usurper imitated him perfectly and vehemently refuted his accusations. Later, he explained to me that he felt that she was forced to have no way out, so she retorted so vigorously, in a desperate attempt to maintain the scam. When he talked regarding his crime, his tone became more passionate, and there was no outward emotion (it felt like his memory was not integrated with his emotions – although he admitted the fact of the crime in words, his tone sounded like I am just an objective bystander). Seb’s options are dwindling. He has no choice but to expose the scam. If he reveals to the impostor that he knows the truth, his true mother may be harmed. He hesitated until that last night, when he stabbed the woman he thought was not his mother while she slept.
The true mother did not reappear, which Seb took to mean that the conspiracy was more complicated than he originally thought. So he decided that the best course of action would be to tell no one what he knew. Generally speaking, he was able to control himself and not show his frustration, but sometimes his emotions were so strong that he mightn’t bear it, such as the time he held the nurse hostage following staying in the hospital wing for several days. Seb’s conversations with me demonstrated his ability to break away from his original obsession with conspiracy and question the validity of his own ideas. I asked him when his perspective began to change, and he said it was a few weeks following admission, around the time he started taking medication.
We came to a consensus on Seber’s diagnosis. Apart from delusions, Seber did not experience any other psychotic symptoms such as auditory hallucinations or hallucinations, leading us to conclude that he was suffering from delusional disorder, a disease of the same type as schizophrenia. This type of paranoia also has a specific name: Capgras syndrome (Capgras syndrome), the name comes from Joseph. A case described by Joseph Capgras: In June 1918, a middle-aged woman in Paris met with the local police chief and asked him to send two police officers to accompany her to witness evidence of a large-scale crime. She told police that many children were illegally imprisoned across Paris, and her basement was no exception. Police took her to a hospital and later to the Sainte-Anne Mental Asylum. After a year or so, she was transferred to another mental hospital: Maison Blanche. While she was there, she caught Capgra’s attention. Capgra, a psychiatrist, was interested in the themes of substitution and disappearance in her delusions. She believes she has been kidnapped and that she and others have identical doppelgangers. She felt that “these clones imitated each other so vividly that it was unbelievable.” Capgra and colleagues published a report on this case, calling the phenomenon the “illusion of doppelgangers.”
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