The Criminal Mind
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The Criminal Mind
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Narrated by:
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Dr Duncam Harding
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
An edge-of-your-seat journey into the darkest depths of the human mind from forensic psychiatrist Dr Duncan Harding
- A likeable young girl who’s burnt her family home to the ground
- A man with no memory of the night he killed his wife
- A teenager whose visions and voices have had murderous effect
One question binds these and others from the casebook of Britain’s leading forensic psychiatrist: Why?
What drives a person to commit seemingly inexplicable crimes? Dr Duncan Harding is the person the police and the courts turn to for answers.
An expert witness, he must try to establish a defendant’s mental state and motivation. And their fitness to stand trial.
Growing up in a broken, violent home, Harding became a doctor because he wanted to be good and kind. It led him on a journey that has brought him face to face with psychopaths, taken him to the limits of his compassion and to the darkest corners of his own troubled past.
But he’s never turned away nor given up hope. Mesmerising, insightful and redemptive, The Criminal Mind is his unforgettable story.
'Engrossing' DR RICHARD SHEPHERD, author of Unnatural Causes
‘A riveting memoir … interweaves Harding’s often very moving life story with his memories of working as a forensic psychiatrist … the book left me with a powerful respect for the people in the health and justice systems who put their lives on the line to keep patients, and the rest of us, safe’ - MAIL ON SUNDAY
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Gabrielle Pendlebury
- 05-10-24
Very engaging
Really captured the complexity and suspense was generated - an excellent book. Would recommend for anyone interested in understanding the reality.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Andy McQuilken
- 14-09-24
Fascinating
Interesting insight into juvenile forensic psychiatry. A truly amazing line of work, one I’d wished I’d taken.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- D. Gillespie
- 03-11-24
Fascinating but,,,
Interesting stories, incredibly sad and reveals how much damage can be done to individuals both by their families and institutions/justice system. Largely well written and read. I did however find the author’s biases and prejudices crept into a lot of his recollections. E.g the one young female patients he focussed a lot on her size ( unable to hide his disgust in describing her dancing). The kid was being continuously fed, so hardly any wonder she was overweight, Whilst you know that people are judgemental, in such a book as this, it would have been better edited out of the story.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- phoeb23
- 12-11-24
Brilliantly written and read
A personal and touching journey through adverse childhood experiences, careers in science research and medicine, child psychiatry and forensic psychiatry. Provides a glimpse into the world of children who commit serious crimes, but never forgets they are children. Unusually, this is read by the author and he does a fantastic job.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Greta
- 24-09-24
Know thyself!
This book is written by a learned forensic psychiatrist who stands up in courtrooms and serves as an expert witness in the worst kind of trials that hit the newspapers. Dr Harding, with a clarity and a kindness that I definitely wasn’t expecting, shares not only a lot about his comprehensive understanding of the criminal mind but also much of his own mind and his own personal journey.
The fact that this erudite doctor is prepared to be so disarmingly open is not only fascinating and refreshing but extremely unusual. The virtue of cognizant transparency is perhaps one of the most important messages in the book. What I take from it is that the more capable we are of looking at ourselves with honesty, insight and compassion the more able we are to empathise with others and the less likely we will be to unhinge…. in all sorts of ways from minor to unreachable.
Dr Harding unfashionably calls out the current preference of explaining away culpability by blaming everything on our backstories.
But while most of us would find it unacceptable to clump, metaphorically or literally, someone who got in our way over the head with a brick others bypass this reticence. Dr Harding’s job is to work out how much rational control an individual has over their actions. But instead of enclosing the criminal mind in an isolated box, Dr Harding calls us to question all forms of socially acceptable unkind and inappropriate behaviour; the scorn which masquerades as manners in a barrister, the sadism as legal protocol in a police officer, the lack of moral fortitude in the ever forgiving parent, the work load in the national health service which can barely spare time to give emotional support to a patient even if their injury is emotionally generated.
Dr Harding offers many thought provoking examples of our pernicious, hidden in full view collective social culpability.
This is a brilliant, most unsettling book which like bitter medicine has the power to heal.
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