CRIMINAL MINDS

Part 1:

Criminal Minds is an American police-procedural television program that premiered September 22, 2005 on CBS. That date was at the beginning of the spring season in Australia where I have lived now for 44 years after growing-up in Canada until the age of 27. Ten years after the inception of this popular series the program is still going strong in 2015. The series follows a team of profilers from the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit based in Virginia USA. The show differs from many procedural-dramas by focusing on profiling the criminal, called the unsub or unknown subject, rather than the crime itself.

You don't need to know who writes the scripts, or who produces, directs or stars in the show. But if you are curious, you can read about these aspects of the series at several internet sites. Viewers like myself certainly take an interest in the characters, and a brief run through several online information locations will bring you up-to-speed with who-is-who and the reception the program has received in the last decade.

Part 2:

I began to watch this series in my early 60s several years after taking a gradual retirement from FT, PT and casual-volunteer work in the years 1999 to 2005. By 1999 I had had 50 years of active community life: in schools and colleges, in volunteer communities like the Red Cross, the Lions Club, and the Baha'i Faith, and a type of wall-to-wall people-social-scene. I gradually reinvented myself as a writer and author in the years 1999 to 2005 and, in the next decade, I took on the roles of editor and researcher, online blogger and journalist, reader and scholar. My life-style was much more solitary and I liked it that way.

By the age of 60 I was watching more TV than I ever had in my life, an average of 2 hours/day. This was a lot for me more than TV than I had on a daily basis before the age of 55. My TV life began in 1951 with twenty-years off from 1957 to 1977 when I had no TV. By 2005 I had had 34 years of TV viewing under my belt. By 2020, when I will be 75, I will have had half a century of TV watching, approximately 30,000 hours, or 3.4 years.

After two to three decades of an anti-TV philosophy, a philosophy I acquired for several reasons from the 1950s through the 1980s, I am now a comfortable couch-potato, at least for two hours a day. The statistics on peoples' TV watching vary from about 2 hours/day to 7 hours/day in various developed countries depending on age and ethnicity, gender and employment. People like myself, the over 65s, tend to watch well over 5 hours every day--so say the stats.

Part 3:

In these years of my retirement, and now going through my 70s, I have developed a taste for the who-dun-its. I think it is the repetition and the familiar characters that are the significant factors in my viewing pleasure. It may, in fact, be part and parcel of my obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) which is a pattern of behaviour that, in my case, goes back to early childhood before the age of 5. Watching who-dun-its is, for me, like watching the news every day at 7 pm, with the voice-over and the little snatches of information about events of the day ending with the sport and the weather. It's all very familiar and comforting to my psyche, an electric-electronic ritual aesthetic, calm and relaxing after a busy day.

I've been on a cocktail of anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medication for several years now. I get 8 to 9 hours of sleep for 12 hours in bed every day. With 2 hours of TV and 2 to 4 hours in various domestic, family and social activities, I'm left with at least 6 to 8 hours to devote to my literary and intellectual pursuits.

Part 4:

Criminal Minds has attracted my interest for other reasons having to do with behaviour analysis. For over 50 years I have been studying human behaviour primarily through the social sciences but, more recently, through the window of the humanities and the several applied sciences relevant to the study of human activity.

Criminal Minds deals with criminal behaviour, but it is criminal behaviour, deviant behaviour as the sociologists call it, with mental illness often going hand-in-hand. While not all deviants are considered mentally ill, almost all mentally-ill persons are considered deviant in some respects since mental illness is not considered "normal". When studying deviance sociologists often study mental illness. There are three main frameworks found in the field of sociological theory which deal with mental health issues. Each of these frameworks, paradigms or theoretical approaches, regard mental illness a little differently; however they all look to the social systems in which mental illness is defined, identified, and treated.

Functionalists believe that by recognizing behavioural norms and values in a society, mental illness is quite simply a form of deviation from these norms. Symbolic interactionists, sociologists who espouse a second sociological theory, see mentally-ill persons not as "sick," but as victims of societal reactions to their behavior. Finally, conflict theorists, combined with labeling theorists, believe that the people in a society with the fewest resources are the most likely to be labeled mentally-ill. Women, racial minorities, and the poor all suffer higher rates of mental illness than groups with higher social and economic status. Research has consistently shown that middle and upper class people are more likely to receive some form of psychotherapy for their mental illness. Minorities and poorer individuals are more likely to only receive medication and physical rehabilitation, and not psychotherapy.1

Part 4.1:

Sociologists have two possible explanations for the link between social status and mental illness, says Ashley Crossman, a self-proclaimed expert in sociology.1 The first explanation emphasizes the stresses of being in a low-income group, being a racial minority, or being a woman in a sexist society. These groups experience stressors which contribute to higher rates of mental illness. Their harsher social environments are a threat to normal mental health. A second explanation argues that the same behavior that is labelled mentally- ill for some groups may be tolerated in other groups and so therefore not labelled as such.

If a homeless woman, for example, were to exhibit crazy, “deranged” behavior, she would be considered mentally-ill; whereas if a rich woman exhibited the same behavior, she might be seen as merely eccentric or charming. Women generally have higher rates of mental illness than men. Sociologists believe that this stems from the roles that women are forced to play in society. Poverty, unhappy marriages, physical and sexual abuse, the stresses of rearing children, and spending a lot of time doing housework all contribute to higher rates of mental illness for women.2

Part 5:

A recent research paper provided a conceptual overview of deviance and its implications for mental health and well-being. The study conceptualized and theorized deviance and mental health through sociological, biological, and psychological dimensions. All theories agreed that deviant behaviour begins in childhood and can manifest itself throughout the entire lifespan.

The deviation is from behaviour appropriate to the laws or norms and values of a particular society. This makes deviance to be relative, depending on the society and individual. Mental illness in general, and post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) in particular, so this paper argues, are affflictions that result in labelling deviants who are unable to cope. PTSD typically involves increased aggression and drug and alcohol abuse; it also involves anxiety, depression, insomnia, plus memory and cognitive impairments. PTSD is a type of mental disorder.

Part 5.1:

This paper recommends policymakers in collaboration with behavioural health specialists, like clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, should focus on developing and implementing preventive and reformative programmes of social learning. This can be done through role playing, behaviour modification, social support systems, and peer and group psychotherapy among other ways and means.3 -Ron Price with thanks to: 1Ashley Crossman, "Deviance and Mental Illness" at the online site: "about education"; 2Anthony Giddens, Introduction to Sociology, New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001; and M.L. Andersen, and H.F. Taylor, Sociology: The Essentials, Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2009; and 3A. Nalah, I. Bala1, & D. Leku, "A Conceptual Overview of Deviance and Its Implications for Mental Health: a Bio-Psychosocial Perspective, International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention, V.2, N. 12, December 2013.

Part 6:

Abnormal psychology is a branch of psychology that studies unusual patterns of behavior, emotion and thought. These patterns may or may not be understood as precipitating a mental disorder. There has traditionally been a divide between psychological and biological explanations. Clinical psychology is the applied field of psychology that seeks to assess, understand and treat psychological conditions in clinical practice. Psychopathology is a similar term to abnormal psychology, but the term carries with it the implication of an underlying pathology or disease process and, as such, is a term more commonly used in the medical specialty known as psychiatry.

Part 6.1:

There are several types of abnormality: (i) a statistical abnormality occurs when a certain behavior or characteristic is relevant to a low percentage of the population. However, this does not necessarily mean that such individuals are suffering from mental illness; for example, statistical abnormalities such as extreme wealth or attractiveness do not carry with them the imputation of mental-illness; (ii) a psychometric abnormality occurs when a certain behavior or characteristic differs from the population's normal dispersion; for example, having an IQ of 35 could be classified as abnormal, as the population average is 100. However, this does not specify a particular mental illness; (iii) deviant behavior is not always a sign of mental illness, as mental illness can occur without deviant behavior, and such behavior may occur in the absence of mental illness; and (iv) combinations. These abnormalities include distress, dysfunction, distorted psychological processes, inappropriate responses in given situations and causing or risking harm to oneself.

Part 6.2:

There are also two main approaches to the above abnormalities: (i) a somatogenic approach to abnormality sees abnormalities as a result of biological disorders in the brain. This approach has led to the development of radical biological treatments like a lobotomy; and (ii) a psychogenic approach sees abnormality as caused by psychological problems. There are three paradigms or theoretical fields that the psychogenic approach draws on: (a) psychoanalytic, (b) cathartic and/or hypnotic, and (c) humanistic psychology. All these treatments are derived from this psychogenic paradigm.1 -Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia, 7/3/'15.

The criminal mind which we see
from week to week examined by
profiling, an investigative tool
for investigators to predict the
characteristics of these unsubs.

This offender, criminal profiling,
criminal personality profiling, or
criminological profiling, or this
behavioral profiling, also called
criminal investigative analysis;
geographic profiling is another
method to profile an offender.
The term came into my life in
the 1990s as I was just about
to retire after some 50 years of
student life, & paid-employment.

The television shows: Law & Order,
Profiler, Criminal Intent in the '90s,
the television series Criminal Minds,
the film The Silence of the Lambs all
lent many names to what the FBI now
calls: criminal investigative analysis!!

Ron Price
7/3/'15.

Thanks, Ron Price. You've certainly had an interesting career, and your personal experience has given you a great deal to say about mental illness. I work in a mental health center, though I'm not able, and even less willing, to call myself an expert in the field. I've also had enough trouble with my own gray matter to be pretty aware of the liabilities inherent in our having such complex brains.

The subset of mentally ill people whom society classes as deviant presents a particular problem, I think, because in normal diagnosing of mental health, the subjective distress of the person is a key to determining whether a medical label is deserved or not. Lots of opinions exist on what is normal, but if the person doesn't feel feel inordinately distressed by what others see as symptoms, and if she can function well enough, usually there isn't a need to single out the person for treatment. The exception is people whose symptoms present danger to others, which is really why deviance is labeled. It isn't okay if a pedophile feels comfortable in his own skin, or if a sociopath is at peace with himself. The scariest aspect of these types of personalities is that they often are fairly comfortable with their behavior and thinking. And it is some of these folks who raise the thorniest issues about mental illness in terms of culpability for crimes. So we question, can it be said in their defense be that they are mentally ill, or are they just bad people, with bad characters, who made bad choices?

This is just a thought about one of the several issues you brought up.

I enjoyed your post, DWill. As you say, "it isn't okay if a pedophile feels comfortable in his own skin, or if a sociopath is at peace with himself. The scariest aspect of these types of personalities is that they often are fairly comfortable with their behavior and thinking." Indeed, DWill, and as you go on to say: "it is some of these folks who raise the thorniest issues about mental illness in terms of culpability for crimes. So we question, can it be said in their defense be that they are mentally ill, or are they just bad people, with bad characters, who made bad choices?" I think we can say, as you conclude, that they are just bad people but, of course, society needs to have a clear standard on what is in fact bad. And those waters seem to be getting murkier and murkier....don't you think?-Ron

After seeing the biographical drama film, A Beautiful Mind, twice: on 15 October 2013 and 12 September 2015, respectively, I put the following sequence of three pieces of prose and poetry together. I stay on the theme, the thread theme, of mental health.
-Ron Price, Australia
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A BEAUTIFUL MIND

Part 1:

A Beautiful Mind is a 2001 American biographical drama film based on the life of John Nash, a Nobel Laureate in Economics. I watched the film last night, a dozen years after its opening and after it had grossed some 400 million dollars. I won’t give you chapter and verse on: who wrote the screenplay and the novel on which it was based, who directed and produced it, who acted in it, and what awards it enjoyed. You can read all about this film in cyberspace at several sites of which Wikipedia1 was my main source.
The story is also one I only sketch here, FYI. The film begins in the early years of a young prodigy named John Nash. Early in the film, Nash begins developing paranoid schizophrenia and endures delusional episodes while painfully watching the loss and burden his condition brings on his wife and friends.

Part 2:

Like historical fiction novels, biographical film and drama cherry-pick aspects from the real life of the person concerned and the society, the mise-en-scene, in which they lived. All biography and autobiography, genres I’ve been studying and writing-in for the last 30 years, cherry-pick. I remember after writing the first draft of my autobiography during the years 1984 to 1993, just after I turned 40, I found the result so boring I could hardly bare reading it, and so began the next twenty years of my personal cherry-picking. Cherry-picking is not, therefore, a pejorative term; everyone has to do it as they survey their lives and try to give some sense and sensibility, context and texture, to what is often a rag-and-bone shop of everyday, quotidian reality, however moving and engrossing a life may be.

To make this film both more interesting, more entertaining and, as writers and film-makers know, more popular in the market-place a whole army of people, often called ‘the credits’, are involved. In addition, a certain poetic or literary license takes place, often unbeknownst to the casual reader or film-goer. Although this film was well received by critics, it has been criticized for its inaccurate portrayal of some aspects of Nash's life, especially his other family, his homosexuality, and a son born out of wedlock, and its treatment of paranoid schizophrenia. However, the filmmakers have stated that the film was not meant to be a literal representation.

Part 3:

The film begins in the late 1940s when John Forbes Nash, Jr.(1928-) arrives at Princeton university. Nash is an American mathematician whose works in game theory, differential geometry, and partial differential equations have provided insight into the forces that govern chance and events inside complex systems in daily life. His theories are used in market economics, computing, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, accounting, politics and military theory. The film ends in 1994 when Nash, then serving as a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton University, gets the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

In 2002, PBS produced a documentary about Nash titled A Brilliant Madness, which tells the story of this mathematical genius whose career was cut short by severe mental health problems. In his own words, he states:

″I spent times, of the order of five to eight months, in hospitals in New Jersey, always on an involuntary basis, and always attempting a legal argument for release. After I had been hospitalized long enough, I finally renounced my delusional hypotheses. I then reverted to thinking of myself as a human of more conventional circumstances; it was only then that I could return to my mathematical research. In these interludes of, as it were, enforced rationality, I did succeed in doing some respectable mathematical research.”

“Thus there came about the research for Le problème de Cauchy pour les equations différentielles d'un fluide général; the idea that Prof. Hironaka called "the Nash blowing-up transformation"; and those of Arc Structure of Singularities and Analyticity of Solutions of Implicit Function Problems with Analytic Data. After my return to the dream-like delusional hypotheses in the later 60's, I became a person of delusionally influenced thinking. My behaviour was relatively moderate, and thus tended to avoid hospitalization and the direct attention of psychiatrists.” -Ron Price with thanks to1Wikipedia, 15 October 2013.

TO A DEGREE: JOHN NASH, SCHIZOPHRENIA AND BPD

All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.--Swami Vivekananda

Part 1:

For many people, interaction with others provides most of what they require to find meaning and significance in life. It is the place where virtually everyone meets people, forms partnerships and marriage, raises children, and earns a living, among a host of other activities. For others, the ultimate and the most significant of meanings are obtained from other sources.

Creative activity is a particularly apt, indeed, highly rewarding way to express oneself. Creativity is an activity that is often solitary, although group creativity is just as, or even more, common in this modern age. The productions which result from creativity are often regarded as possessing value to society but, of course, not necessarily.

In my life, beginning as it did in the 1940s, solitariness has been unavoidable and essential in one way or another, and so has human interaction. After more than fifty years of extensive interaction (1949-1999), I had come to the point in my lifespan where my employment, my interaction with others, and my health were causing me to feel an immense weariness, a certain tedium vitae, to draw on an old Latin phrase. In the last year before I took an early retirement at the age of 55, I even had to take shots of testosterone to keep me going through my 15 hour days. Throughout the 1990s, as I headed into my final years of work as a teacher and lecturer, I increasingly felt the need for the solitary. I was moving, by sensible and insensible degrees, into a period in my life which I wanted to be characterized by a dominance of the solitary. I also wanted to write.

Part 2:

After some forty years, 1962 to 2002, of travelling-and-pioneering from place to place, and job to job, from one house to another, from one relationship to another, from deep and meaningful relationships to trivial, routine and difficult relationships, the time to finally stay in one place and, at the same time, to decrease the quantity of interaction with others seemed to have arrived. I was not entirely sure but, at the age of 55, I took a sea-change, moved to a little town where that human interaction would be minimal, and I could get off what had become life’s old treadmill for 60 to 80 hours a week. I could cease my work in life’s several salt mines, so to speak. I wanted--as I say--to write and, gradually in the decade from 1999 to 2009, when I went on an old-age pension, I reinvented myself as: a writer and author, poet and publisher, editor and researcher, reader and scholar, online blogger and journalist. As I write this in 2015, I now have millions of readers in cyberspace.

Back in the late 1990s I wanted, like Robert Redford, “to be a private man doing his own thing in a remote place.”2 Like Robert Redford, too, I had had trouble attaining this dominance of the solitary. Now, though, after nine years of retirement from: FT, PT and most volunteer work, 2007 to 2015, I have finally found that privacy, that remoteness and that solitary life.-Ron Price with thanks to: 1Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John Nash, Simon and Schuster, NY, 1998, p.15; 2Minty Clinch, Robert Redford, New English Library, London, 1989, p.3.

There were always lots of people around.
back then in ’49, in ‘59, & again, & again.
They were unavoidable, essential to my way
of life. I accepted them like the air; they’d
always been there. And it stayed that way,
in one way or another, until just the other day
when it became just me and my wife,1 a couple
of shopkeepers, my son and my step-daughter
dropping in, many good-byes to the Baha’is,
lunch or dinner with family or friends: the quiet
life at last, at long last, much the same as it had
once been long ago during those first memories.2

Getting closer to solitude, but never really
there, probably never really attainable, not
totally, for this commitment, this vision, is
all part of what Holley called: ‘this social
religion’ and social it is, with solitariness
only really desireable to a degree, a degree.3

Ron Price
26/6/’99 to 13/9/’15.

1 My son moved out of home about the same time that I had given-up all FT and PT work, about 2004 at the age of 60. My wife and I were alone for the first time in our marriage, with an empty nest, since our relationship had begun back in about April 1974. Between the first draft of this prose-poem in 1999, and its last in 2015, my son married and he and his wife had a daughter. One of my step-daughters also had a child, and these new arrangements brought grandchildren into our lives. My second step-daughter also became a greater part of our lives because she was and had been a nurse for 25 years and had a useful caring-role.

2 My first memory goes back to about 1947 or 1948 when I was an only child of older parents and my personal life was relatively solitary.

3 I have been associated with the Baha’i Faith now for over 60 years, and this world religion, and its highly social emphasis, brings me even now in touch with people on a daily basis in one way or another. I keep this interaction, as I now go through my 70s, to about one hour a day on average, not counting the time with my wife. In August 2015, with terminal cancer in my life, I have become even more solitary.

PREAMBLE:

The year before I retired from FT employment as a teacher and lecturer, Sylvia Nasar published, with Simon and Schuster, A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John Nash. This week I watched the film that was based on this book and its subsequent screenplay. I place the following prose-poem below and following, as it does, the above piece on the nature of the social-solitary continuum in my lifespan. I do this because the content of this prose-poem also draws on that same biography of John Nash.

Section 1:

A Beautiful Mind is a 2001 American biographical drama film based on the life of John Nash(1928- ). I have already discussed the film in some detail and will not repeat the details here. Early in the film, in 1959 in fact, Nash begins developing paranoid schizophrenia. That was a big year for me; I was 15 in 1959, and the home-run king in a little town in a region of Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe. That same year I also joined a Faith that claimed to be the latest of the Abrahamic religions.1

Nash went in and out of psychiatric hospitals until 1970, as I was planning to come to Australia from my home in Canada and to work in the city of Whyalla in the state of South Australia as a primary school teacher. The film ends with Nash receiving the Nobel Prize in 1994. By then I was looking forward to retirement from a 50 year student-and-employment life, 1949 to 1999.

Like most biographical drama, the film takes considerable literary or poetic license with the story. It is the same with historical fiction. If people want more accuracy in the lives of those about whom personal drama and bio-pics are made, they have to go to biography; even then biographers have a certain stance, a certain take, on the person concerned. That is why some critics of the genre say that a true biography can never be written.


Section 2:

In 2002 PBS produced a documentary about Nash entitled A Brilliant Madness which tells the story of the mathematical genius whose career was cut short by severe mental health problems. I took a special interest in this film because I suffered, during my eight decades in the lifespan, from several mental health issues beginning with ‘a mild schizo-affective disorder’ and, then, bipolar 1 disorder, among other mental health problems. In the 400 page overview of my experience I mention several other mental health problems that I have had to deal with.3 -Ron Price with thanks to: 1The Baha’i Faith, 2Wikipedia, 16/10/’13, and 3Ron Price, 72 Years of A Chaos Narrative now located at several mental health sites.

Section 3:

Your visual hallucinations
were not on the spectrum
of my paranoid experience;
yours lasted much longer
than mine with or without
the medications; I only got
hit in two episodes, but ECTs
and medications sorted me out.

Problems with what is called
compliance were not as bad in
my case. I thought that the film
could have been more accurate
in its handling of the treatment
for paranoid schizophrenia; the
film’s use of the insulin shock
therapy frightened the pants off
of the millions in the population
who saw the film, gave psychiatry
yet another pejorative pubic-image,
and discouraged people with mental
health disorders: schizophrenia, BPD,
and other mental health sufferers from
taking medication….thus simplifying
what is a very complex health problem.

Ron Price
16/10/’13 to 13/9/’15.

STILL IN THE DARK

Part 1:

A Beautiful Mind was directed by Ron Howard, from a screenplay written by Akiva Goldsman. It was inspired by a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-nominated 1998 book of the same name by Sylvia Nasar. The film stars Russell Crowe, along with Ed Harris and Jennifer Connelly, among others, in supporting roles. The story begins in 1947, the early years of a young prodigy named John Nash and continues, episodically, through to the 1980s.

Nash is given a course of insulin shock therapy and eventually released. Frustrated with the side-effects of the antipsychotic medication he is taking, which make him lethargic and unresponsive, he secretly stops taking it. This causes a relapse and the manifestations of his paranoid schizophrenia returns.
Part 2:

The film opened in the United States cinemas on December 21, 2001. It went on to gross over $313 million worldwide and win four Academy Awards, for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress. It was also nominated for Best Actor, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup, and Best Original Score.

We may not leave the cinema with A level competence in game theory, but we do get a glimpse into what it feels like to be mad - and not know it. I had already had such a glimpse of this ‘madness’ back in 1968 and 1977 when I experienced “a mild schizo-affective state,” had eight shock treatments, and several different medications.
Part 3:

Sylvia Nasar, who wrote the 1998 biography that informs Akiva Goldsman's screenplay, begins her book by quoting Wordsworth about "a man forever voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone." The setting in the late 40s through to the 1980s calls to mind aspects of the Cold War, and changes in society from the 1950s to the 1980s. Nash observes: "Without his 'madness,' Zarathustra would necessarily have been only another of the millions or billions of human individuals who have lived and then been forgotten."1-Ron Price with thanks to Roger Ebert, 21/12/’01 at Roger Ebert.com.

My mind was filled with
paranoid ideas that were
hit on the head by ECTs,
drugs for neuropsychiatric
symptoms. I went on to live
a relatively normal life as the
meds got better and better, the
issues surrounding mental illness
continued to keep pundits as busy
as ever, and the public for the most
part in the dark in an increasingly
complex world with a tempest
unprecedented in its magnitude
sweeping the face of the earth, and
harrowing-up the souls of its inhabitants.
I went on to live a voyaging
through those strange seas
of thought that old William
wrote about so expansively
in his Prelude, & I wrote so
expansively in my Pioneerng
Over Five Epochs, or Four!!1

1 The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet's Mind; An Autobiographical Poem is an autobiographical conversation poem] in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. Intended as the introduction to the more philosophical Recluse, which Wordsworth never finished. The Prelude is an extremely personal and revealing work on the details of Wordsworth's life. Wordsworth began The Prelude in 1798 at the age of 28 and continued to work on it throughout his life.

My autobiographical prose-poem was begun by sensible and insensible degrees in the 1980s and 1990s. I have continued working on it in this 21st century.

Ron Price
13/9/’15.
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