The psychology of serial killers: insights from Mindhunter

exploring the relationship between identity and desire | John Douglas

I’ve been watching the Netflix show (again) Mindhunter and reading the book it’s based on by the FBI profiler, John E. Douglas, Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit.

I was reading and I came across a quote that really struck something in me…

"Detectives and crime-scene analysts have to take a bunch of disparate and seemingly unrelated clues and make them into a coherent narrative, so storytelling ability is an important talent.” — John Douglas, Mindhunter.

So, Douglas extensively studied human behavior in this context, delving into evolutionary psychology, the unfolding of crimes, and the selection process of a serial killer's victims. Utilizing available evidence, profilers construct narratives to rationalize these actions. However, the assumption presupposes that the subject being analyzed possesses an understanding or narrative driving their behavior. By probing them, we inadvertently steer them towards a narrative that further complements the already fragmented one …