A Life Devoted to Crime

Abstract

This autobiography traces my professional and, to a lesser extent, personal life through my career as a forensic and correctional psychologist. As an only child living in the country and later attending boarding schools from the fifth grade through high school, I learned to be self-reliant and independent. These traits led me to join an archaeological expedition to Oaxaca when I was 18, which fostered my interest in anthropology and then psychology at Amherst. I survived the clinical training program at the University of California at Berkeley and while still in graduate school obtained a staff position at the Alameda County Probation Department Guidance Clinic where I began my interrelated research paths on clinical assessment and the dynamics of aggression, paths I continued as an assistant professor at the University of Texas (1964–1967) and as an associate to full professor at the Florida State University (1967–2003). My major research contributions have been the (a) delineation of the overcontrolled and undercontrolled assaultive syndromes; (b) development of the MMPI–2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) Overcontrolled Hostility (O–H) Scale; (c) formulation of the “Algebra of Aggression,” a theoretical framework for evaluating and understanding aggressive behavior; (d) exploration of how gender roles interact with dominance in leadership assumption; (e) empirical demonstration of the adverse effects of population density on adjustment in correctional institutions; and (f) development and validation of a classification system for adult criminal offenders based on the MMPI–2.

Acknowledgments

Editor's Note: This article is the 27th in a series of invited essays to appear in the Journal of Personality Assessment. The Special Series is coedited by Stephen Strack and Bill N. Kinder.

Notes

¹ This assumption was also contrary to the prevailing thinking, which held that the violence of the response was a function of the net strength of instigation less inhibition.

² Since no one had attempted anything quite like this before, I had to create the methodology as well as the typology as I went along.