Criminal Personality

Samuel Yochelson, Ph.D., M.D., was until his death in 1976, director of the Program for the Investigation of Criminal Behavior at Saint Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D.C. and research professor of clinical psychiatry at George Washington University School of MedicineStanton E. Samenow, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in Alexandria, Virginia. He is also the co-author of The Criminal Personality, Volume II: The Change Process, and The Criminal Personality: Volume I, A Profile for Change.

The basic defect of traditional treatment systems is the persisting concept that criminals think and reason as non-criminals do and that they, therefore, respond similarly to both reasoning and love. Yochelson and Samenow have definitely profiled the characteristics of the errors of criminal thinking, together with their derivatives—feeling and behavior. They show persuasively that because of ingrained and pervasive errors of thinking, criminals live and act in a world with entirely different assumptive bases than those of non-criminals. The authors then proceed to develop a treatment program using a phenomenological process. This exhaustive and painstaking study marks a turning point in the history of efforts to rehabilitate criminals.

• Chapter 1 The Reluctant ConvertsChapter 2 History of the Concept of the Criminal PersonalityChapter 3 The Criminal's Way of LifeChapter 4 Thinking Errors Characteristic of the Criminal: I. Criminal Thinking PatternsChapter 5 Thinking Errors Characteristic of the Criminal: II. Automatic Errors of ThinkingChapter 6 Thinking Errors Characteristic of the Criminal: III. From Idea Through ExecutionChapter 7 Non-arrestable Phases in the CriminalChapter 8 Tactics Obstructing Effective TransactionsChapter 9 The Work in Perspective