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Shrunk Excerpt #4

“Clifford Olson Unplugged”
by Dr. J. Thomas Dalby
Shrunk: Crime and Disorders of the Mind

Olson wanted desperately to be the most notorious serial killer of all time and had registered the titles of two books by himself; “Profile of a Serial Killer” and “Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer: A Profile.” Official copyright certificates were issued with these titles despite the fact that there were no books written and thankfully there never would be. This self-delusion, that he was an ‘author’ and uniquely tainted criminal was just another clue to his aberrant personality. He claimed that he was negotiating a publication contract in the range of three and a half million dollars for his literary works. Even in prison, Olson continued his constant antisocial behaviour .... He continued to taunt other inmates about his special privileges. When I went through some of his confiscated correspondence, Olson had enticed young schoolgirls, who apparently wanted the excitement of corresponding with a serial killer, to send Polaroid pictures of themselves in various stages of undress.

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J. Thomas Dalby PhD, R. Psych, ABN has been a forensic psychologist for thirty-eight years and has been a Diplomate of the American Board of Professional Neuropsychology since 1984. He is a Professor (Adjunct) in the Department of Psychology at the University of Calgary and was also a member of the Faculty of Medicine at this university for twenty-six years. He has held a continuous appointment with Athabasca University since 1977. He was formerly administrative head of psychology departments at two Calgary hospitals. Dr. Dalby is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, and in 2013 received the highest honour for professional psychologists in Canada—CPA award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology as a Profession. He also is a recipient of the Dick Pettifor Memorial Award for exceptional career achievements from the Psychologists Association of Alberta. He has published over a hundred professional books, chapters and articles in medical, psychological and legal forums. He has conducted over fourteen-thousand forensic evaluations and provided courtroom testimony on over nine hundred occasions. His clients have included the National Hockey League, the United Nations, and police services, insurance companies, and law firms across North America.

Shrunk Excerpt #3

Shrunk: Crime and Disorders of the Mind
“David Milgaard: Wrongful Conviction and Tunnel Vision”
by Dr. Patrick Baillie

I don’t mean be taken as doubting that David displayed bizarre, irrational, potentially psychotic symptoms on multiple occasions during his twenty-three years in custody. At times, his sleep was seriously disrupted by anxiety over his case; at times, he accessed prison brew or other substances that might have influenced his behaviour. Likely, at times, he was psychotic. My concern relates to how those symptoms were then viewed in terms of his risk for ‘re-offence’, especially when the only delusion repeatedly cited was the one relating to David being wedded to his contention that he was innocent regarding the death of the young nurse.

About Dr. Patrick Baillie
Patrick Baillie, Ph.D., LL.B. is a forensic psychologist at the Peter Lougheed Centre in Calgary and a lawyer. Since 1995, he has been a Consulting Psychologist with Calgary Police Service, Psychological Services Division. He has written hundreds of pre-sentence assessments used by all levels of courts in Alberta. For six years, he was a member (and for two years Chair) of the Accreditation Panel of the Canadian Psychological Association; and in 2007, he was named as a member (and, later, Chair) of the Mental Health and the Law Advisory Committee of the Mental Health Commission of Canada. In 2008, he received the John G. Paterson Media Award from the Psychologists Association of Alberta for his contribution towards keeping the public informed about psychological knowledge via the media. In the months after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, he served as a volunteer psychologist with New York Police Department and, in 2011, he travelled to Haiti to provide psychological services after that country’s devastating earthquake. In 2014, he received the John Service Member of the Year Award from the Canadian Psychological Association, in recognition of his various volunteer efforts to promote the field of psychology.

Shrunk Excerpt #2

“A Cat-and-Mouse Game”
by Dr. Sven Å. Christianson
From: Shrunk: Crime and Disorders of the Mind

The convicted serial killer Sture Ragnar Bergwall, alias Thomas Quick, whom the Swedish people had followed in the media for fifteen years as the personification of evil, suddenly declared himself innocent of eight murders he had been convicted of in six separate trials held between 1994 to 2001. He played a cat-and-mouse game with justice where he provided two versions of the truth. In the first version, he admitted to many murders, claiming at one time up to thirty. In the second version, he took back these confessions. No matter which version he represented, signs of a psychopathic personality, sexual deviation, and sadism were obvious in his makeup. The genesis of Bergwall’s retracted confessions was his association with Hannes Råstam, an investigative journalist whose specialty was tracking down false confessions of convicted offenders. Two to five years after Bergwall and Råstam first met, and with massive media support, decisions were made to refer each of the cases to the Swedish Court of Appeal. Prosecutors decided to withdraw public prosecution in all of these cases, and subsequently, in 2014, Bergwall was released from a high security clinic as a free man.

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Sven Å Christianson PhD is a Professor of Psychology, and Chartered Psychologist at the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Sweden. He has authored or co-authored over one hundred scientific papers and a number of books, for example Handbook of Emotion and Memory; Traumatic Memories; Advanced Interrogation and Interviewing Technique; Offenders’ Memories of Violent Crimes; Inside the Head of a Serial Killer; and Psychological Myths in the Legal System. The objective of his research programme is to gain an understanding of the relationship between emotion and memory, with a specific focus on victims’ and offenders’ memories of violent and sexual crimes. Dr. Christianson has been a consultant in numerous murder, rape, and child sexual abuse cases, and he is often used both as a speaker and as a psychological expert witness.

Shrunk Excerpt #1

Over the next weeks, excerpts from Shrunk: Crime and Disorders of the Mind will be featured on Lorene Shyba's blog. Order book from http://durvile.com

Excerpt #1. Foreword, by Dr. Lisa Ramshaw
From: Shrunk: Crime and Disorders of the Mind

A few years ago, a Toronto man ran over a police officer with a snowplow, killing him. The day before the jury began to consider its verdict, Rob Ford, the infamous then-Mayor of Toronto, called in to a local radio show to complain about the ‘not criminally responsible on account of a mental disorder’ (NCR) defence. Ford talked about how it hurt to see the guy go scot-free and asserted that if you killed someone and acted mentally disturbed chances of freedom were pretty much assured. After the man was found NCR, and was to be sent to a forensic psychiatric hospital instead of to prison, the hockey commentator Don Cherry echoed Ford’s thoughts, posting on Twitter that “it seems if you kill someone and act mentally disturbed then you can be let free.” But people with psychotic disorders do not ‘act’ mentally disturbed; they are mentally disturbed. John Kastner, who produced and directed the documentaries of tragic crimes and forgiveness NCR: Not Criminally Responsible (2013), and Out of Mind Out of Sight (2014), put it well by asking, ‘Do we punish anybody else for an illness? A truck driver has a heart attack and kills ten people. Is he a criminal?’

Lisa Ramshaw MD DPhil FRCPC is the Forensic Psychiatry Subspecialty Program Director and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. She is a staff psychiatrist in the Forensic Service at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and has been a consultant psychiatrist in Nunavut for more than ten years. Her clinical practice includes assessments of criminal responsibility, fitness to stand trial, risk of violence and sexual violence, and assessments and care of individuals under the jurisdiction of the Ontario Review Board. She is also a member of the Ontario Review Board.