SHRUNK: Crime and Disorders of the Mind is a collection of powerful stories by international forensic psychologists and psychiatrists who write about the many complex mental health issues they face and the care involved in dealing with them. Unlike any other book within the genre of True Crime, Shrunk forms a unique bridge between mental health and law. Chapters focus on cases where judges and juries call upon the opinions of forensic experts when dealing with the mentally disordered criminally accused. Edited by scholar Dr. Lorene Shyba and psychologist Dr. J. Thomas Dalby, with a foreword by Dr. Lisa Ramshaw, Shrunk is written and edited to appeal to medical and legal professionals; students of medicine, psychology, and law; and the interested general public. Shrunk is the second book in Durvile Publications' 'True Cases' series.
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Dr. Lorene Shyba and Dr. J. Thomas Dalby, editorsIntroductionJim: Can you remember back that far? I can't remember what happened yesterday. (He laughs) I can't. How do you do it?Plato: Oh, I had to go to a head-shrinker. Boy, he made me remember. Rebel Without a Cause, (Ray 1955)As editors of this book we auditioned a great many titles before settling on Shrunk, but how better, we reckoned, to write about the worlds of mental health and the law than to find a word used to describe the act of shrinking heads, or trying to understand the workings of a disordered mind. From the legal side, criminal defence lawyers use this term after meeting clients for the first time and assessing the circumstances of the crime. C.D. Evans QC, for example, recalls from his experience defending accused murderers and violent offenders that "If the crime is bizarre or absurd, it is a wise precaution to get the client's head shrunk. In Tough Crimes: True Cases by Top Canadian Criminal Lawyers, the first book in this 'True Cases' series, we discovered that lawyers such as John Rosen had similar thoughts when first encountering Paul Bernardo's disturbed mind, as did Joel Pink QC when unravelling the Antigonish Beech Hill murders. From the mental health side, psychologist Dr. Lawrence Ellerby entices us to enter his Shrunk story about a journey from deviance to rehabilitation by promising to share the "contributions we shrinks can make in this difficult and complex social problem. And the informed general public, who make up a valued sector of our readership, might be of a mind to help out friends the way Plato, Sal Mineo's character, did when explaining his new-found clarity of mind to James Dean's character Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause, "Oh, I had to go see a head-shrinker. After all, who is there among us who hasn't been touched by mental illness among friends or family.When we first started working on Shrunk, our idea was to create an anthology that would interface between the legal, the medical, and the behavioural by focussing on cases where judges and juries have called upon mental health experts when faced with the mentally disordered criminally accused. We assembled a list of eminent forensic psychologists and psychiatrists who we thought might be motivated to help build a solution to the problem of understanding mental illness in the criminal justice system. We asked them to consider their own involvement and how being exposed to people with mental health disorders affected them personally. Among our questions were: What were the outcomes in terms of your personal reflections? Was there a case that altered your perspective on humanity?The original, previously unpublished stories that emerged from our invitations brilliantly illuminate a wide range of topics. These include Personality Disorders in the various Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) clusters, unlawful behaviour due to delusions and psychopathy, the criminal responsibility of accused persons, fitness of accused to stand trial, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), wrongful convictions, and treatment and social consequences. We are in awe of the intense effort shown by our authors to inject their hearts and souls into explaining their experiences. Our international contributors, Dr. Louise Olivier from South Africa, Dr. Jack White from Australia, and Dr. Sven Å. Christianson from Sweden revealed unique legal situations in their countries, as did Dr. Donald Dutton when describing a remarkable case in the United States. Their stories resonate with interesting terminology and turns of phrase that we edited only gently; in fact, we allowed individual voices to come through from all of our authors, whether Canadian or from countries beyond our borders. Within the editing process, we occasionally nudged writers to identify and focus on the heart of the story but we never had to ply their enthusiasm. Unlike any other book within the genre of True Crime, Shrunk presents the work of forensic professionals who have delved deeply, and with great commitment, into the disturbed human psyche. 'Forensic.' The word evokes images of crime scene tape or a cold corpse on the stainless steel autopsy table but its real meaning is much broader and simpler. Forensic is derived from Latin and literally means 'in the forum' or in modern terms 'in the court'. The forum in ancient Rome was the centre of most social debates and although the legal structure of the Romans did not have the same structure as in modern times, it was understood that the forum was where problems were formally and finally settled. When the word is added as a qualifier for psychologists and psychiatrists, it denotes that the focus of the work has a legal purpose. As such, many of the expectations or assumptions that might be made of other medical and behavioural science professionals cannot always be applied to the forensic breed. Forensic experts have, as a primary client, the ...
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Contents Endorsements Other books by the Editors Dr. Lisa Ramshaw, Foreword Dr. Lorene Shyba, Introduction PART ONE, Legacy Cases 1. Dr. J. Thomas Dalby, Clifford Olson Unplugged 2. Dr. Sven Å. Christianson, A Cat-and-Mouse Game 3. Dr. Patrick Baillie, David Milgaard:Tunnel Vision and Wrongful Conviction 4. Dr. Jack White, The Bodies in the Barrel Case: Wagner, The Muscle Man PART TWO, Current and Conundrums 5. Dr. Joel Watts, The Case of Luka Rocco Magnotta: A Forensic Adventure Down the Rabbit Hole 6. Dr. Louise Olivier A Battered Wife Kills: The Revenge of the Unconscious Mind 7. Dr. Stephen Porter and Ms. Tianna Dilley, The Tina Eisnor Murder Case Treachery, Amnesia, and Dubious Retribution 8. Dr. Donald Dutton, The Carnation Killers, Folie à Deux 9. Dr. Barry Cooper and Ms. Jacqueline M. Kanipayor: Not Criminally Responsible; Or Not? 10. Dr. Marc Nesca, Catathymic Murder and Necrophilia PART THREE, Insights and Glimpses of the Future 11. Dr. Jeffrey Waldman Vince Li 12. Dr. Lawrence Ellerby Taming the Lion: A True Story of Community Risk Management 13. Mr. Justice Richard D. Schneider, A Day in Mental Health Court 14. Dr. David Dawson, Phil, Eddie, and Margaret 15. Mr. William Trudell, Defending the Mentally Ill: There Must Be More To the Story ACKNOWLEDGMENTS