Writers who track John Douglas, the FBI's legendary "mindhunter," recognize those words from his own writing.
This former chief of the FBI's Investigative Support Unit is revered by many crime writers as THE pioneer of modern behavioral profiling of violent criminals.
In a crime novel the negative force must be strong enough to wage a good fight with the good guy.
The legendary editor Ruth Cavin told us often that you can fix plots, but your characters have to hold their own.
After the first time I heard John Douglas speak at MWA-NY, I became fixated by his ideas. I read all his books – Mindhunter, Unabomber, Journey Into Darkness, Obsession, The Anatomy of Motive, Sexual Homicide, The Cases That Haunt Us, including his own fiction, Broken Wings and Man Down.
He explained that the law enforcement community moved from sole reliance on the "Bible" – the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – into the CCM, the Crime Classification Manual that Douglas, with his colleagues Ann W. Burgess, Allen G. Burgess and Robert K. Ressler, developed. A catalog of crime behavior that showed investigators not only that X type behavior was a form of mental illness, but how dangerous it might be!
Douglas and his associates developed a method of profiling criminals that has been the foundation of many criminology professionals, not only at the FBI Behavioral Science Investigative Support Units, but to police departments and prosecutors worldwide.
As a profiler and interviewer of countless notorious criminals, Douglas' landmark studies have guided numerous crime writers.
John Edward Douglas was born in Brooklyn and served in the U.S. Air Force. Well-educated, with a doctorate, he served at FBI as a SWAT Team sniper, a hostage negotiator and taught hostage negotiation and applied crimnal psychology at Quantico.
As a consultant worldwide, he was the model for Jack Crawford in Thomas Harris' novels Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs, as well as consultant for the films.
Countless crime writers have learned from John Douglas about the inner working of personalities whose main goals in life are to kill and to hurt.
To manipulate, dominate and control.
Few of us have walked into danger freely as Douglas has, "through an open yard where violent prisoners roamed freely, a scene that reminded me of Dante's Inferno. Where the most violent criminals might try to kill us for the prestige for having murdered an FBI agent."
Douglas believes that most violent offenders came from dysfunctional backgrounds. That most psychopaths "seemed so charming, so ordinary." That behavior reflects personality. That many violent criminals are "ego driven." That behavior is consistent. Even in its inconsistency, it's consistent.
That criminals find "overwhelming emotional satisfaction in manipulating, dominating, controlling and exerting life-or-death power over another person."
That "with the exception of a very few truly insane (and generally delusional) individuals, these people choose to do what they do."
Douglas is a valid guide for any writer who wants to dig deeper into the motives of his/her villains.
In his own words, he gives one path a writer might want to try: "As I had so many times before, I put myself into the mind of the killer." (Journey Into Darkness, p. 15.)
We crime writers can also remember the words of Raymond Chandler for our heroes… "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid." (The Simple Act of Murder)
Thelma Straw
Blog Archive
-
▼
2013
(129)
-
▼
March
(13)
- How I Became A Woman of Mystery
- Children of Imagination
- Meet Jerome Coopersmith
- You Had Me at "Hello"
- The House in St. Michaels
- On Being Irish in Albany on March 17
- The Jersey Monkey Redux
- Embalming Evita
- A Role Model for Crime Writers… The Real ARGO Guy!
- Bitter, Sour, Cynical, but Having Perhaps Some Red...
- How to Describe the House of Representatives
- WHO Done It? And WHY?
- Digging Up the Ancestors
-
▼
March
(13)
Popular Posts
-
We need to talk. Before my thoughts on this subject solidify. On Facebook, two or three of my friends tend to post or share pictures eight...
-
I was a New York City policeman for 20 years: from 1967 to 1987, seminal years in the modern history of the NYPD, during which I rose from P...
-
I find myself staring at the blank computer screen once again, with Friday on the way. I turn my eyeballs inward, seeking a topic to bloviat...
-
Some people come into this world nicely dominant in their left brains and therefore neurologically prepared to spell well and find typos at ...
-
The greatest joy, for me, of being an active member of MWA/NY is the people I meet. Jerry is one of them. He is one of our few dramatists....
-
Words are unnecessary to tell the glory of Rome. The pictures below will give you a tiny taste. But I will tell you a story at the end--a...
-
No, even though it is almost December and trees are lit up all over Manhattan, this post is not about a little girl and a Santa-impersonator...
-
I remain amazed what one can find when one begins researching a book. I have been digging around, looking for the history of East Africa i...
-
I met Stephen Solomita at an MWA dinner 20-plus years ago. I struck up a conversation, having read his first novel, A Twist of the Knife , w...
-
For the last week or so I've been deep into Ancestry.com, tracing the ancestors on my mother's side all the way back to the Great Mi...