The Dark Side of the Mind: True Stories from My Life as a Forensic Psychologist

by Kerry Daynes

‘offence paralleling’ – when a person behaves in a pattern that resembles or serves the same function as his criminal behaviour.

Telling our personal stories, naming and acknowledging our experiences, is fundamentally how human beings make sense of our world.

through the simple act of talking we process and understand ourselves, and others.

Emotions need a voice. Without it they seep out eventually.

‘gaslighting’ – when an abuser manipulates their victim into doubting their own perceptions and sanity.

psychological distress, in whatever form it is exhibited/plays out, is frequently a plausible reaction to the slings and arrows that life throws at us.

social disadvantage: poverty, poor housing, insecure and low-paid jobs, missing out on formal education, living in stressful environments or having to move home frequently.

Between half and three-quarters of people receiving mental health care report having been either physically or sexually abused as children.

mental distress is more likely a product of complex, overlapping personal and social factors than simply wonky brain chemistry or unfortunate genetics.

Behavioural analysts at the UK Emotional Intelligence Academy have since identified the 3-2-7 rule: if a suspect has a cluster of three reactions (for example, nodding, flushing and voice dropping in pitch), across two or more of the six channels that communicate emotional information (interactional style, voice, verbal content, facial expression, body movements and physiological changes) within seven seconds of the question, it is a reliable indication of deception.

Misogyny – an ingrained prejudice against and contempt for women and girls – is one of the few human conditions that hasn’t yet been declared a mental illness. Probably because, if it were, it would be a pandemic.

‘grooming’ (the process by which an abuser manipulates a victim and overcomes any likely

resistance by them over time)

Erotomania is simply the illusion of love. It describes a false belief, held by a person, that their target – most often someone older who occupies a higher social status than them – is passionately and irrevocably in love with them, although the target in question has often had little or no contact with the person labouring under the delusion. The diagnosis is more commonly applied to women than men,