Looking into the Eyes of a Killer: A Psychiatrist’s Journey through the Murderer’s World

by Drew Ross

Drew Ross explores the many contradictions and misconceptions that prevail when juries and judges evaluate insanity pleas and issues of blame. From 1990-1997, Ross served as a forensic psychiatrist for the criminal justice system. His job was to judge the "sanity" of people charged with murder. The law requires black and white answers: Did someone kill because of a psychosis? Should he or she be confined to a prison or to a mental hospital? What makes a person into a killer? In session after session, Ross was drawn into the killers' - and their victims' - nightmares. Unfortunately his training had taught him that the human mind is more complex than the law would allow, and little by little, he began to find his role unbearable. Looking into the Eyes of a Killer details one man's journey into the darkness of the human psyche and the evils of a system. Examining the record and searching his own soul, Ross looks at the degree to which murder is aberrant and chillingly reveals how killers are not always so different from the rest of us. Never falling prey to easy solutions, he makes a compelling argument for new guidelines for dealing with violent criminals, and shows how our failure to "reform" them springs from our unwillingness to confront ourselves.

271 pages, Hardcover

First published March 21, 1998

About the author

Drew Ross, M.D. is President of Alef Ani, a scientific research organization, and is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii. He has taught at Harvard Medical School and has received Honorable Mention from the Keyes Award in Psychiatry and from the Fellows Award of the American Acedemy of Forensic Sciences. A consulting editor at The American Journal of Psychoterapy, he has published numerous articles in professional journals.

Reviews

[Peacegal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm fascinated by the world of forensic crime detection, but there wasn't as much of that in here that I would have hoped. Some interesting case studies, but I agree with other reviewers that the author inserts himself a little too much in the text. I do like that he acknowledged the elephant in the room of psychopathy--that we decry psychopaths among the general populace but praise them as tough and enterprising when they are CEOs and politicians.