Skip to main content

Mindhunter and the Importance of Talking to the Incarcerated


Image result for Mindhunter


Mindhunter is an American crime drama series, and it is loosely adapted off of the non-fiction book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit by John Douglas and Marl Olshaker. The two major characters in the show Holden Ford and Bill Tench are based off on real life FBI agents John E. Douglas and Robert K. Ressler respectively who are considered to be the first to establish the field of criminal profiling, and have even been credited with coining the term “serial killer” (though this has been disputed by some)
The series is set in 1977, a time where the FBI’s understanding and use of criminal psychology was almost non-existent, and deals with the protagonists first foray into this field. There is a new spate of crime that the FBI do not understand, murders that seemingly are committed without any comprehendible motive, a murder committed by a stranger to the victim.
The show starts with the scene of a terribly mismanaged hostage situation, rife with threats and guns aimed at the person holding some civilians hostage. It is clear in a matter of a few seconds that the criminal is in the midst of some serious mental health issues, he is confused and appears to have delusions, and does not happen to have any real intent to use the gun he is holding to attack anyone. Holden tries to deescalate the situation, which ends in the criminal committing suicide with the gun he is holding. The hostage situation is deemed a success and Holden is asked to teach. It quickly becomes apparent to the viewers, and later to Holden himself, that though he considered the operation a failure as the negotiation had to end in the death of the criminal, the FBI considered it a success due to the lack of civilian deaths.
As Holden teaches, he realises that everybody is, in fact completely uninterested. The FBI trainees do not understand the importance of learning to talk to the perpetrators in hostage situations. They were much more willing to shoot them instead. To Holden all the firearm training they are receiving is meant to be a last resort. He appeals to them in class when he says “Just listen. Listen to what he has to say. Try to understand him instead of trying to dominate him. Look for common ground. Our goal is no body bags. That is the hostage-negotiater win-win”. He emphasises the importance of understanding the criminal, understanding where he comes from, what makes him act the way he does, all of which completely goes over the head of everybody he is talking to.

Holden soon starts talking to various criminals who are behind bars for extremely violent crimes, convicts he calls ‘sequence killers’. The show’s main focal point is the fact that Holden does not believe that these people were born with criminality preprogramed within them, but that their experiences and the environment in which they grew up in contributed to the gruesome acts they carried out. Holden believes that aiming to understand what experiences contributed to their violent outbursts would be the key to catching future criminals and preventing further crimes of this nature. For example, while interviewing his first ‘sequence killer’ Ed Kemper, Kemper reveals to him that a major reason for his violence against women was the constant humiliation as well as the physical and emotional abuse he faced throughout his life at the hands of his mother. Holden soon realises that traits like this were common in most of those he interviewed later. He identified certain common characteristics among serial killers, like the fact that most of them came from terribly dysfunctional families, that they committed acts that were considered sadistic during childhood- like torturing small animals, and had habits like setting fires. He used the information that he now has to create profiling techniques. The profiling techniques subsequently help in catching serial killers.
The true essence of the show lies here. The show emphasises the importance of talking to, and of understanding the criminal you have incarcerated. Most crime dramas are aimed at catching the criminal, but Mindhunter is aimed at understanding what makes criminals act the way do. The idea of talking to a person who is dangerously ‘crazy’, and who is ‘crazy’ beyond reformation is difficult to comprehend, and justifiably so. Many serial killers rape and torture their victims, and trying to understand why they do these things seems simply absurd to many. But the motive of conversing to them should not be to have them justify their acts, but to glean information from them. The knowledge one gets from talking to criminals helps catch further criminals, and could at one point prevent a crime from occurring in the first place. The knowledge could help rehabilitate potential criminals, and never let them reach a point where they commit a crime. Mindhunter reiterates the value of going one step further, going a step further than reducing violence by putting a dangerous criminal behind bars, and that is to use a criminal’s experiences to prevent further violence. At one point Bill Tench says the following words, which sums up the crux of the show and this blog post:
“How do you get ahead of crazy if you don’t know how crazy thinks?”

*This is not to say that there aren’t certain problems with Mindhunter. If one is unaware of the almost insignificant relationship between violence and mental illness, the show might suggest that there is a strong correlation between the two. This is not the case in reality. The show also does not use sensitive language when it comes to talking of those with mental illness. There is the constant use of the word ‘crazy’, however this could have simply been done to preserve the accuracy (and ignorance) of the time.

References:
Fincher, D.(Director). (October 13, 2017). Mindhunter [Netflix series]. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Burari Deaths: The Psychopathology of Lalit, a Biopsychosocial Perspective

Pankhudi Narayan Blogpost 1  TW: Death, mentions of suicide.         On July 1st of 2018, eleven members of a family were found dead in their shared home in the Burari area of Delhi. The deaths seemed to be fashioned in a ritualistic manner and evidence suggested that the family members were willing participants. This was the Bhatia family, a typical middle-class Indian joint family. Bhopal Singh who had passed away and his wife Narayani Devi formed the older generations of the family and were Lalith’s parents. The most compelling evidence in the uncovering of the events that led to the death of an entire family was provided by eleven diaries found by authorities. The diaries described the events that transpired before the deaths, discussing a ritual that needed to be conducted and the diary entries were corroborated by the post mortem findings as the accounts were found to be consistent with injuries (Yadav et al., 2021). It was uncovered that Lalit, a member of the family who was the

Disorderly Delvian: A Deep Dive into "Anna Delvey" through the Lens of NPD

       A markedly thick accent, a mop of blonde hair, a magical array of unimaginably expensive clothing, and an air of calculated mystery mesh uncomfortably together to invent Anna Delvey, the centre of Netflix’s appropriately named documentary/drama series, “Inventing Anna”. This series tells or rather retells the fascinating story of how one woman deceived the creme de la creme of New York society as well as some prestigious financial institutions under the guise that she was a wealthy heiress from Germany. The series follows a journalist, Vivian Kent, as she tries to uncover the carefully constructed web of lies Anna spun around high society after her arrest, heavily interspersed by flashbacks, present-day court hearings, and interviews with the enigma herself (Shondaland, 2022). Anna as a character, infused with a troubling reality and a dramatised narrative, presents an interesting scope to study the symptomatology of Narcissistic Personality Disorder as presented in her behaviou

Made in Heaven: An analysis of Faiza Naqvi

Vyoma Vijai Blog Post 3 ‘Made in Heaven’ is a popular Indian web series created by Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kaagti and was launched in March 2018. The show gained a lot of attention in the first few days of it coming out. It is a bold show that focuses on marriage practices in the rich and elite class of Delhi. The show focuses on the social issues and practices that are often not spoken of or are kept closeted. These issues include homosexuality, dowry, molestation and other questionable Indian customs. The story follows the lives of multiple characters at the same time. The two most important characters are Tara and Karan who run a wedding planning agency.   Tara is married to a rich industrialist whose name is Adil and her best friend in the show is Faiza, played by Kalki Koechlin. This essay analyses Faiza’s character and her role in this web series. Faiza is a complex character to understand. Her actions make it hard for the viewers to decide whether they l