The Devil You Know: Stories of Human Cruelty and Compassion Dr Gwen Adshead, Forensic psychiatrist
Event details
York Ideas Lecture
Chaired by: Dr Mark Freestone
Dr Gwen Adshead is one of Britain’s leading forensic psychiatrists, and she has spent thirty years providing therapy inside secure hospitals and prisons. Whatever her patient’s crime she aims to help them to better know their minds by helping them to articulate their life experience. Through a collaboration with co-author Eileen Horne, The Devil You Know brings her work to life and sheds new light on the unpredictable nature of the therapeutic process as doctor and patient try to find words for the unspeakable. These are stories of cruelty and despair but also of change and recovery.
Image credit: Philip Vanoutrive.
Gwen's book, The Devil You Know: Stories of Human Cruelty and Compassion and Mark's book, Making a Psychopath: My Journey into 7 Dangerous Minds are available to buy from our partner, Fox Lane Books.
About the speakers
Dr Gwen Adshead trained at St George’s Hospital, the Institute of Psychiatry and the Institute of Group Analysis. She has published over one hundred academic works; she holds an MA in Medical Law and Ethics as well as an honorary doctorate from St George’s Hospital Medical School and has lectured widely, including as a visiting professor at Yale and as the Gresham College Professor of Psychiatry. In 2013, she was honoured with the Royal College of Psychiatry’s President’s Medal.
Dr Mark Freestone is Reader in Mental Health in the Centre for Psychiatry and Mental Health, Queen Mary University of London. He has worked in prisons and forensic mental health services for over 15 years as a researcher and clinician, including in the High Secure Category A prison estate, which houses some of the UK’s most notorious and high-risk criminals. He has also worked at Rampton and Broadmoor Special Hospitals as part of the Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder (DSPD) Programme.
He is a consultant to BBC America’s Killing Eve, an editor of the Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology and currently an advisor to NHS England on services for men and women with a diagnosis of severe personality disorder as well as to the London Violence Reduction Unit on services for young adults at risk of violence and victimisation. He has published several academic articles on personality disorder, psychopathy and violence risk, and a book about his work, Making a Psychopath (Ebury/Penguin Random House).