The Criminal Personality, Volume I: A Profile for Change

by Samuel Yochelson, Stanton Samenow

The Criminal Personality presents a detailed description of criminal thinking and action patterns and convincingly argues that these patterns cannot be explained by sociologic or psychologic explanations alone.

A Jason Aronson Book

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

552 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1977

Reviews

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Profiling the errors of criminal thinking and why this population so hard to work with. They want to blame everything and everyone for what happened and take 0 responsibility

[Sean Rhoades · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an incredibly insightful read. The newer, smaller, Inside the Criminal Mind by Samenow is the cliff notes version of this book. At over 500 pages, this book is extremely thorough.

All criminals have what is called a criminal personality but not everyone who has a criminal personality is necessarily a criminal, but they think (erroneously) the same way. The years of study of Yochelon and Samenow answer the age old debate of nurture versus nature. With ample evidence of accounts from twins and siblings who grew up in the same environment, one becomes a criminal and the other lives a responsible life. The difference is the criminal mind works vastly different than a responsible person. This is evident in their highly predictable thinking errors which the book goes through great detail in explaining and identifying.

The material is not hard, but can be dry at times. Fortunately, I was able to be in contact with an expert with 30 years experience identifying and counseling those with a criminal personality who was able to answer my questions.