PTSD: Blame Your Hippocampus/Amygdala Complex

PTSD is an increasingly common psychiatric condition that has many origins and manifestations. As with most psychiatric conditions there has been a long of history of scientists searching for some physical explanation, or at least an underlying substrate for these conditions. Everything from schizophrenia to criminal behavior has been studied. PTSD is no different.

Now a new study from Duke University, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry last November, sheds new light on possible anatomical changes in those susceptible to developing PTSD. This alteration lies deep in the brain in the hippocampus/amygdala complex, which is part of the larger Limbic System, areas of the brain associated with emotions, stress responses, learning, memory, socialization, and many other things. The researchers studied 200 combat veterans and found that PTSD sufferers tended to have smaller amygdalar and hippocampal volumes as compared to “normal” subjects.

Does this mean we now have a test for determining who is vulnerable to developing PTSD? Not yet. But this study is a step in that direction.

My first Dub Walker thriller, STRESS FRACTURE, dealt with PTSD and its treatment.

 

 

Character Dichotomies Are Everywhere

We are often told that our characters must be multi-dimensional. And that’s true. A character that is all good or all bad is flat and unrealistic. Good guys should have darker edges and bad guys should have a glimmer of silver lining. Even Hannibal Lecter had his good points.

 

Evan Dorsey seems to fit this mold. A petty thief with an apparent heart of gold. Sure he was going to do a few B&E’s and grab a little coke to smooth out his day, but he also wanted to do a good deed. Since he stole diabetic medical supplies maybe he was going to help an elderly diabetic manage her blood sugars. But somehow I doubt it.

 

REPOST: Getting Better Can Be Risky by Mark Rubinstein

Getting Better Can Be Risky

How therapy can upend a relationship.

A 55 year old man came to my office, asking me to help his wife. I thought it odd his wife didn’t accompany him to the consultation. It soon made sense why he’d come alone.

Mrs. L had always been socially fearful. Some might call it being shy or retiring, but it was much more. They had few friends, spent nearly every evening home, and settled into a predictable and uneventful life. Despite these limitations, the couple developed a comfortable psychological equilibrium.

When Mrs. L turned 52, her shyness escalated. She became completely avoidant of people; stopped answering the telephone; refused to go to a movie or local store; and the couple ceased dining out. In fact, Mrs. L’s avoidance became so extreme, she spent all her time in the bedroom. The thought of being anywhere else, even in other rooms of her house, aroused panic-level anxiety. Her condition had escalated to severe, incapacitating agoraphobia.

Each day, Mr. L went to work while Mrs. L remained in the bedroom. He did the grocery shopping; picked up dry cleaning; and attended to chores requiring any contact with people. The couple lived separate and apart from humanity.

Mr. L didn’t protest. In fact, he acknowledged the situation gave him ample time for his abiding passion: reading American history. Mr. L didn’t understand why his wife wanted to see a psychiatrist. I found this shocking, since the couple’s life appeared to be so compromised. He’d adapted to his wife’s condition, and was content with their lives. I wondered if he feared a changed Mrs. L would upend their relationship.

Some days later, despite terrible anxiety during the trip to my Manhattan office, Mrs. L began treatment. She was tired of her bedroom-bound existence. Though she reveled in dependency on her husband, there was some part of her wanting to change. And change she did: a month later, with medication and psychotherapy, she began wanting to dine out, go to a movie, and engage in normal interactions with people. It was clear her phobia was being extinguished. She also confided Mr. L seemed “not so happy” with these changes. Tensions were developing between them. I began wondering who really was the sicker partner.

After a few weeks of the new and improved Mrs. L, her husband called to say she would no longer be coming for treatment. Knowing Mrs. L would deteriorate without medication and therapy, I asked to speak with her directly. Mr. L told me, “She doesn’t want to talk with you.”

I’ll never know whether or not that was true, but what I do know is change can be a threat to any relationship. To preserve what they had, Mrs. L would be heading back to the bedroom.

Originally Published on February 5, 2013 by Mark Rubinstein, M.D. in Tales from the Couch

 

 

MAD DOG HOUSE

A Novel

Mark Rubinstein

Thirty years after escaping his hell on earth—a harrowing childhood in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn—Roddy Dolan is grateful to be living the life of his dreams. He has a successful, fulfilling career as a surgeon, a beautiful family, and a lovely home in Westchester County, New York. His past is now just a bad dream.

When he was young and living in Brooklyn, Roddy had an explosive temper and shady friends, which nearly landed him in prison at 17. If it weren’t for a compassionate judge and the Army, Roddy might have ended up going nowhere. But that’s the past, gone for good. Today, at age 45, Roddy is a different man—worthy of the respect he has earned. He is in control of his destiny and rage is no longer part of his life. Or, so Roddy thinks…until a character from his past turns up and re-evokes his long-buried “Mad Dog” alter ego.

A gripping, harrowing, and provocative psychological thriller, MAD DOG HOUSE (Thunder Lake Press; October 23, 2012,  12.99, 978-0-9856268-4-6), revolves around three men—Roddy “Mad Dog” Dolan; his best friend, Danny Burns; and Kenny “Snake Eyes” Egan—who grew up in hell together and never thought their pasts would come back to haunt them. Throughout the novel, Mark Rubinstein provokes people to think about the haunting power of the past and the demons lurking inside their loved ones…and perhaps themselves.

 

 

MARK RUBINSTEIN is a Huffington Post and Pscyhology Today blogger who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, near Sheepshead Bay. After earning a degree in Business Administration at NYU, he served in the U.S. Army as a field medic tending to paratroopers of the Eighty-Second Airborne Division. After his discharge, he went to medical school, became a physician, and then a psychiatrist. As a forensic psychiatrist, he was an expert witness in many trials. As an attending psychiatrist at New York Presbyterian Hospital and a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell, he taught psychiatric residents, psychologists, and social workers while practicing psychiatry. Before turning to fiction, he coauthored five books on psychological and medical topics.  He lives in Connecticut with as many dogs as his wife will allow in the house. He still practices psychiatry and is busily working on other novels. To learn more, please visit www.markrubinstein-author.com.

MAD DOG HOUSE
Mark Rubinstein

328 pages, $12.99

ISBN 978-0-9856268-4-6

 

I Smell Your Fear

The most primitive of our senses is olfactory–the sense of smell. It is also the most emotionally powerful. Once we have smelled something it is filed in our brains forever, and if we ever encounter the odor again, it is almost instantly recalled. Often with memories of that first encounter. A certain food, perfume, chemical, you name it, can pull us back in time more deeply than can any sight or sound.

 

 

But can you smell another’s emotion? Can you detect fear, or anger, or disgust with your nose? Animals can. If one dog or gazelle or wildebeest in a group senses fear, the other members of the group immediately sense the same danger. Herd mentality. Some of this might be transmitted through body language or certain movements, even facial expressions, but pheromones released by the concerned group member play a big role. So why shouldn’t we humans have the same ability?

Apparently, we do.

If the results of a recent study done by Gün Semin and colleagues from Utrecht University and published in Psychological Science can be believed, humans possess the ability to communicate emotions through chemical signals. This is an interesting study that used sweat to analyze these chemical transmitters.

 

Guest Blogger: Dr. Katherine Ramsland: Abuse of a Corpse

Abuse of Corpse

Some people prefer the company of the dead.

This article was originally published on November 27, 2012 by Katherine Ramsland in Shadow Boxing

Recently, the bones of a nearly complete skeleton were discovered in the home of a 37-year-old Swedish woman. Allegedly, she was using them as sex toys. Along with the bones was a CD labeled “My Necrophilia,” which supposedly provided the evidence. Apparently, photos depict this woman licking skulls. Among her effects were documents about people who enjoyed having sex with corpses. She was charged with “violating the peace of the dead.”

Here in the States, we call this abuse of corpse. This can range from corpse mutilation or rape, to corpse storage to mere exploitation. A man in Cincinnati, Ohio, for example, convinced morgue workers to allow him to take photographs of corpses posed with objects like sheet music and syringes. Into the hands of a deceased young girl he placed a copy of Alice in Wonderland.

When I was writing Cemetery Stories, I found plenty of material on the erotic attraction to corpses. The most common motive cited by psychologists is an attempt to gain possession of an unresisting or nonrejecting partner, although I’ve met a few people “half in love with death” who reject this shallow analysis.

During my research, my contacts in the funeral industry told me I’d never get these people to admit to anything. On the contrary, I found a few who were quite willing to describe why they find decomposition, skulls, and bones so erotic. As long as I could stomach it, they were happy to talk.

One female apprentice embalmer claimed that during the first four months of her employment, she’d had sex with an average of ten corpses a month. She admitted that she couldn’t achieve satisfaction with the living, in part because she’d been molested as a child and later raped. She could sexually express herself without fear, she insisted, only to corpses.

A self-styled vampire told me he liked drinking blood from the dead. He called himself Anubis and said that as a boy he got to watch an embalmer at work. “I wanted to taste the blood,” he said, “because I thought it would save their memory.”

Drs. Jonathan Rosman and Phillip Resnick list three basic types of “true” necrophilia:

1: Necrophilic homicide, or murder to obtain a corpse for sexual pleasure

2: Regular necrophilia, the use of corpses already dead for sexual pleasure

3: Necrophilic fantasy, envisioning these acts but not acting on them

In their study of 122 cases, most fit into the second category.

The Swedish woman’s bone-eroticism doesn’t surprise me. In fact, it’s quite tame compared to other acts of necrophilia. Over time, I’ve collected stories from clinical sources and arrest reports. Among them are the following:

Police psychologist J. Paul de River documented the case of an Italian gravedigger who grew aroused whenever he buried a beautiful young woman. In time, he began having sex with the dead. When caught with his mouth on the genital area of a decedent, he admitted to having violated hundreds of corpses.

In 2006 in Wisconsin, three young men were caught digging up the grave of a 20-year-old female accident victim. Their intent had been to have sex with the body. The proof: they’d stopped on the way to buy condoms. (The same state produced Ed Gein, who dug up graves to make himself a bodysuit from female parts, and Jeffrey Dahmer, who abused corpses in extremely vile ways.)

And necrophiles aren’t always male. Karen Greenlee was to deliver the body of a 33-year-old man to a cemetery for a funeral, but instead she abducted it. She was charged with stealing a hearse and interfering with a funeral. Into the casket she’d put a letter that detailed her erotic episodes with what she estimated had been between 20 and 40 male corpses. Calling herself a “morgue rat,” she said it was an addiction.

During the 1840s, Sergeant Francois Bertrand dug up fresh corpses with his bare hands in several Parisian cemeteries in order to have sex with them. His youngest had been only seven. He, too, claimed he’d been compelled beyond his ability to control it.

Henri Blot was 26 when he began digging up graves in France. A ballerina had died and he pulled her body from the grave to rape it. When he was finished, he fell asleep, waking only when the groundskeeper discovered him. After his arrest, he reportedly said, “Every man to own taste. Mine is for corpses.”

Victor Ardisson, a mortician, reputedly had sex with over 100 corpses in his care. He sometimes dug them up and took them home. It was there that police found the decaying body of a three-year-old girl. Ardisson had heard that she was ill and had fantasized endlessly about her corpse. When she died, he’d stolen her from a graveyard and had performed oral sex in the hope of reviving and restoring her. He kept her next to him when he slept. He also possessed the head of a thirteen-year-old girl, which he kissed and called “my bride.”

Abuse of corpse is a crime, stipulated according to what would outage normal family and community sensibilities. In most cases, these acts are misdemeanors. However, some states have much stiffer penalties for necrophilic sexual acts.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland has published 46 books and over 1,000 articles. She teaches forensic psychology and her area of specialization is serial murder. Her latest book on the subject is The Mind of a Murderer.

 

Connecticut Massacre Not New, Just Disturbing

Multiple murderers are often classified as Mass, Spree, or Serial Killers. The definitions vary from expert to expert but the general classification is:

From HOWDUNNIT: FORENSICS

MASS MURDERERS: Those who kill more than four people in one place at one time would fit this classification. These killers often have a clear agenda and want to send a message. This is the killer who walks into his workplace and shoots several people in a rapid-fire assault. The attack often ends with the killer taking his own life or in a “blaze of glory” with the police killing him in an exchange of gunfire. The motive is often some perceived wrong by his co-workers or employer. Examples are the University of Texas Tower shooter Charles Whitman, Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and Virginia Tech University killer Seung-Hui Cho.

 

Charles Whitman

 

SPREE KILLERS: These individuals kill several people at two or more locations with the killings linked by motive and with no “cooling-off” period between. The spree killer goes on a rampage, moving from place to place, city to city, even state to state, leaving bodies in his wake. It is as if an underlying rage pushes the perpetrator to act, and once he begins, he doesn’t stop or deviate from his goal. As with mass murders, the spree often ends in suicide or a confrontation with law enforcement. Andrew Cunanan offers an example of a spree killer.

 

Andrew Cunanan

 

SERIAL KILLERS: These offenders kill several people at different times and loca- tions with a cooling-off period between the killings. The cooling-off period, which may be days, weeks, months, even years in duration, distinguishes se- rial from spree killers. The catalog of serial killers includes some very famous names: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Henry Lee Lucas, Gary Ridgway, Jeffrey Dahmer, Randy Kraft, Dennis Rader, and many others.

Ted Bundy

 

They all look so innocent don’t they?

The events in Connecticut would be classified as Mass Murder. This is always a shocking crime but when children are involved the shock is greatly magnified. Sadly, the mass killing of children is not confined to small town Connecticut and is definitely not new.

It just happened in China, and in her article “Who Shoots Children?” my friend Dr. Katherine Ramsland puts it in historical perspective.

 

Blog Repost: Katherine Ramsland: Self Reflections From Serial Killers

Self Reflections from Serial Killers

A nineteenth-century French pathologist invented criminal autobiographies.

Published on November 7, 2012 by Katherine Ramsland in “Shadow Boxing”

It was an innovative idea: get incarcerated offenders to tell their life stories. Collectively, they might thus offer clues about the nature of criminality. And it wasn’t a psychiatrist who thought of this, but a Jack-of-all-trades pathologist.

By the late 1800s, Dr. Jean Alexandre Eugène Lacassagne, a medical professor from the University of Lyon, had already initiated or invented a number of forensic practices, and to this list he added criminal autobiographies.

He believed that solid data might come not just from scientific observers like himself and his medical colleagues but also from the subjects themselves. Lacassagne first tried a few interviews, but then he devised what he viewed as a more productive idea that would benefit the offender as well. He identified those who wished to express themselves, either in writing or with drawings, and he encouraged them to do so.

Lacassagne supplied the instruments they needed and told them to address their writings or drawings to him. Each week, he visited the prison to check their notebooks, correcting and sometimes guiding the budding authors into productive directions. If they filled a notebook, he gave them another, and sometimes he would publish their work in his professional journal. Occasionally, he paid them.

From both males and females, Lacassagne collected more than sixty such manuscripts, averaging about twenty-five pages. However, one inmate, set for execution, had filled six notebooks.

If Lacassagne thought a manuscript was not acceptable, he made the prisoner rewrite it, but he usually left the choice of material to the subject. A few participants came to view Lacassagne as a friend or father figure, especially those who felt improved by the experience. Many were keen to work with a such a prominent scientist to try to understand themselves.

As his theory suggested, Lacassagne learned from these writings that many prisoners’ family histories were full of violence, tension, poverty, and disease. This taught him a great deal about the origins of, and influences on, criminality.

Some of the men had never had a relationship with a woman, he discovered. They often had little education and only a precarious means of supporting themselves. Their marginality contributed to their impulse to commit crimes and most had started young, earning numerous short prison sentences.

Writing their life story, some attested, made them feel slightly less anonymous, as if they might actually have something important to say. A few made observations about other prisoners they’d met, too.

Scholars who have studied these documents suggest that some offenders had deliberately blackened their character or mentioned a background that supported Lacassagne’s theory simply to capture the doctor’s attention. However, he had no sympathy for malingerers, and he caught a few.

Yet this is, indeed, a primary concern with the scientific study of criminal personalities via personal contact. Examiners have difficulty veiling their interests as they listen, and astute subjects who want to impress them figure out what to say. Despite the oft repeated desire to “assist science,” either party can become more interested in his own goals.

A few offenders wanted to be viewed as experts in crime or at least in their particular variety of crime (sort of like incarcerated serial killers today who want to help the FBI). Some of Lacassagne’s subjects even believed that the “docs” had it all wrong: these professionals viewed criminals through the distorted lens of a pet theory. Because they want the crimes to make sense, i.e., to have an understandable motive, they leapt too readily to their own conclusions.

One killer of four claimed that while the professionals who evaluated him attributed his offenses to greed, he saw the influence of a childhood head injury, lifetime substance abuse, and the sudden blinding sensibility that preceded each stabbing event. No one who examined him had even considered these items as causal, and in this, said the offender, they were remiss.

Lacassagne once said, “Societies have the criminals they deserve.” Although he believed that disease and addiction, passed on to successive generations, could cause mental and physical degeneracy, he leaned toward the idea that poverty, social marginalization, and other such factors were significantly involved.

___

Dr. Katherine Ramsland has published 46 books and over 1,000 articles. She teaches forensic psychology and her area of specialization is serial murder. Her latest book on the subject is The Mind of a Murderer.

 

 

Guest Blogger: Katherine Ramsland: Who Killed Nicole?

Who Killed Nicole?

 

Nicole Brown Simpson’s Body at her Bundy Home

 

A serial killer claims credit for the Simpson/Goldman double homicide.

Confessions come out of the woodwork in high profile cases: the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Black Dahlia murder, and JonBenet Ramsey all attracted voluntary confessors, but most just craved an association with fame. John Mark Karr had even picked out Johnny Depp to play him in the inevitable movie about the murder of young JonBenet. And then there’s the Nicole Brown Simpson/Ronald Goldman double homicide from 1994. We have a suspect who’s once again getting some attention, compliments of Anthony Meoli.

A consultant with a master’s degree in forensic psychology, Meoli has corresponded with and interviewed numerous serial killers and death row inmates. Among them are Danny Rolling, Loran Cole, and Lee Boyd Malvo. Next week, Meoli is set to appear on My Brother, the Serial Killer (Nov. 21) on the ID Network regarding his interviews with serial killer Glen Rogers.

It’s not the first time that Rogers, convicted of three murders, has been in the picture for this infamous double homicide. However, Meoli has information that suggests we should reconsider past dismissals of Rogers’ claim. I invited him to tell me more about it.

 

Rogers and Meoli

 

“My motivation for writing Glen Edward Rogers,” Meoli said, “was triggered after reading several Internet articles and a book about his crimes. What really garnered my attention was that he had been tried, convicted and sentenced to death in not one state but two – Florida and California. The fact that California was willing to extradite an already convicted man from Florida’s death row made me curious as to what had happened in all the states in between. It seemed, at least from a cursory review of some of the cold cases surrounding him, wherever Glen Rogers went, someone either ended up missing or dead. What I would find was rather astounding.”

I asked about the start of their correspondence.

“My first letter from Glen was received on October 4, 2009,” said Meoli, “as he sat on death row at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida. He responded by saying, ‘I received your letter a while back and debated about writing back because someone in Georgia had caused other inmates lots of trouble.’ I dispelled his fear with my next letter, knowing that trust had been a core issue with Glen his entire life, and he was quick to respond. By the end of 2009, he’d written an additional seven times. A bond had been struck between us, what it was I cannot explain, but it was set.”

Rogers soon started writing on a regular basis, two or three times a week. Meoli said that on May 6, 2010, a revealing letter arrived.

“It concerned his first murder as a teenager, with his father. After twelve years of writing to death row inmates, I’d grown accustomed to ‘stories’ about unsolved crimes (often these boastful claims are merely a test or a ruse to elicit money to get more details), but his letter seemed different. Glen narrowed the year to between 1975-1976 and described the female victim in vivid detail. He also described the car that they’d used and where he and his father had buried the woman. He asked me to look up this cold case to see if this woman had ever been found. Glen even hinted at an ability to draw her face, which I convinced him to do and which was sent about a month later.”

Within about six weeks, Meoli sent Rogers a second questionnaire. With it he asked Rogers if he had anything to do with the 1994 Brown Simpson/Goldman murders?

“Surprisingly,” Meoli told me, “he answered in the affirmative. Glen began divulging more information about his past crimes and his family. Each letter was now 5-10 pages in length.”

Rogers placed Meoli on his visitation list, and on November 6, 2010, they met for the first time. Because Meoli had requested special approval, he was able to spend several hours.

 

“It was during this visit that Glen described how he became involved in the Goldman/Simpson murders. He explained that he’d detailed his involvement in some of the art he’d sent me prior to my visit and if I looked closely I would see the clues. In a July 2010 drawing, he’d depicted the basic design of the murder weapon along, with the victims’ skulls.”

Post-visit, another drawing also depicted the weapon. Rogers had killed Goldman, first, he’d said, which had drawn Nicole outside.

“This was a murder-for-hire plot,” Meoli stated. “Glen explained that it was designed to be inside the condo, but Goldman arrived to the wrong place at the wrong time. Since Rogers was a much larger man, standing nearly 6’2” and 240 lbs, he’d subdued Goldman without leaving much evidence.”

This, apparently, was his MO: leaving little evidence. Other artwork depicted other murders, seemingly taking place over several decades – many more than the three for which he’d been charged and convicted.

“Considering that most death row inmates usually remain quiet, especially in Florida, and especially those who are well past the average time of execution,” said Meoli, “I found it peculiar that Rogers was readily admitting his alleged involvement in the Goldman/Simpson murders, and others. Why Rogers has kept up his insistence on these murders remains a mystery.”

Meoli has spent nearly 50 hours during eight visits with Glen Rogers. He insists that he’s detected no malingering during Rogers’ repeated recollections of this infamous night. “Glen has had time to believe it.”

Meoli points out that Rogers had lived in California at the time of the murders, just 25 minutes away from the scene. He’d worked for a painting company that had performed an estimate on Nicole’s condominium. The truck used for work was identified by a detective as one of the vehicles at the scene, (a white, Ford F-350, primarily used by contractors) along with an unidentified strand of long blonde hair allegedly found beneath under Nicole Simpson’s body, which was not hers. At the time, Rogers had long blonde hair.

Yet, what about the DNA evidence against OJ – the stuff that wasn’t contaminated or problematic?

“Rogers admits O.J. is not innocent,” Meoli counters, “but says he did not commit the murders. If we look at the case for which O.J. Simpson was convicted in Nevada, he hired someone to do his dirty work. So, is Rogers the actual perpetrator of the ‘Crime of the Century?’ It is my professional opinion that Glen Edward Rogers believes this to be the case. As to why he is so vehement about implicating himself, it remains a mystery. It could be a ruse to buy him more time or, as he puts it, ‘I needed to tell the world what happened.’”

It’s about time that some crew at ID put this case together for the rest of us to ponder. Since Meoli has collected so much information, I, for one, am looking forward to watching it.

_____

Dr. Katherine Ramsland has published 46 books and over 1,000 articles. She teaches forensic psychology and her area of specialization is serial murder. Her latest book on the subject is The Mind of a Murderer.

 

 

Colin Ireland’s Career Path: He Just Wanted To Be a Serial Killer

There are many career choices available. Some make sense, others less so. Colin Ireland is a case in point. He wanted to commit the perfect murder but he also wanted to be a famous serial killer. Difficult to be both. The perfect murder means the case is never solved while to be famous everyone must know what you did. A real problem for Colin.

Here is a great article from Dr. Katherine Ramsland on Colin’s dilemma.

 

I Hear You . . . But You Sound Funny

Most hallucinogenics cause visual distortions and altered perceptions. Remember Lucy’s kaleidoscopic eyes? Users often misinterpret what they see (marmalade skies) or see things that aren’t really there (pink elephants). DiPT (Diisopropyltryptamine), while it can also cause visual and perceptual problems, primarily causes auditory distortion. For you guitar players out there, it can sound like a flanger or phase shifter. A wobbling or swirling of the sound.

One form of this drug, 5-Methoxy-diisopropyltryptamine, is sold on the streets as “Foxy” or “Foxy Methoxy.” In addition to auditory distortions, it can also cause euphoria, hypersexuality, emotional lability, hyperactivity, anxiety, and even out-of-body experiences.

Sounds like a Van Halen or ZZ Top concert to me.

 

I know all you creators of fictional villains out there are constantly looking for ways your bad guys can cause harm and aggravation to other characters. Employing this drug in your story could produce some interesting scenes.