DEVIL YOU KNOW: Stories of Cruelty and Compassion

Stories of human cruelty and compassion, Dr Gwen Adshead has spent 30 years providing therapy inside secure hospitals in prisons. Whatever her patient's crime - serial homicide, stalking or arson - she helps them to better know their minds by enabling them to articulate their life experience. Case by case she takes us into the treatment room and sheds new light on the unpredictable nature of the therapeutic process as doctor and patient try to find words for the unspeakable. This book has now become a Sunday Times Bestseller with the sub-title 'Encounters In Forensic Psychiatry', and it is a myth-buster of a book 'crammed with compelling, constructive, candid and compassionate insights into the criminal mind.' - Val McDermid. From one of the most distinguished and brilliant minds in psychiatry, you will keep reading not out of morbid or macabre fascination of these stories of extreme cruelty, but to understand the darker side of what it means to be human. It is a captivating journey through the corridors of Broadmoor Hospital and beyond, into the prison system, the community and the consultation room and Adshead's voice is constant and reassuring. Large softback, 355pp.