The Great Courses – Extreme Offenders: Psychological Insights Details
Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Jeffrey Dahmer. Their names are infamous, their crimes extreme. What could we possibly hope to learn from studying the psychological motives behind some of modern history’s most notorious serial killers?
Criminologists and forensic psychologists dedicate their careers to understanding the root causes of extreme behavior, not to glorify such behavior, but rather to better understand how the human mind can reach such extremes—and how to watch for similar warning behaviors in future potential offenders. As a result of what they’ve learned from the close study of modern cases, and from advancements in our understanding of how the human mind works, psychologists have been able to devise early intervention strategies and provide more effective treatment for some types of extreme offenders.
In Extreme Offenders: Psychological Insights, Katherine Ramsland, Professor of Forensic Psychology at Desales University, distills her years of experience studying extreme offenders into 12 fascinating episodes that plunge you into some of the darkest criminal mental states, methods, and motives. Blood fetishists, lust-motivated predators, money-hungry murderesses—these and other mass, spree, and serial killers each had their own developmental journey toward violence. What set them off on such horrible paths? How can we hope to stop future extreme offenders before they start? The answers require an intense journey into the heart of human darkness, beyond which we can hope to see glimmers of bright hope for the future of mental health treatments and a more thorough understanding of the human mind.
