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The twisted mind and motives of serial killers like Jack the Ripper is of enduring fascination to the general public as well as professional psychologists. Often they are driven by an escalating need to play out sadistic sexual fantasies, in which the suffering of their victim is a central component. Dr Wilson applies his experience as a criminal psychologist to an analysis of what profiling can achieve and where it can go wrong.
Despite fictional investigators like Cracker, who bring uncanny intuition and artful interrogation to extract confessions, the work of modern profilers uses cold science and previous research findings about types of killers and crime scenes to focus the search for the perpetrator. It is a logical approach, with nothing mystic or “psychic” about it.
Dr. Glenn Wilson has experience in forensic psychology spanning many years and has been involved in many high profile cases, such as helping to convict the Brighton Strangler and Fred West’s wife Rosemary, and the acquittal of Colin Stagg (who was wrongly charged for the Wimbledon Common murder).
Dr. Wilson has also been a scientific advisor and expert commentator for several TV series, such as Vic Reeves Investigates, Jack the Ripper (ITV), Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer (Investigation Discovery) and Stalkers Who Kill (CBS Reality).
Dr Glenn Wilson is one of Britain’s best-known psychologists, specialising in personality and sexual behaviour. He has been Visiting Professor at Gresham College London, as well as several American institutions, including Stanford University, University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Nevada, Reno. He is author of some 33 books, including Love and Instinct, Psychology for Performing Artists, Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation and Introducing Body Language and has published around 130 articles in scientific journals. He co-authored the Eysenck Personality Profiler and originated the digit-ratio as a marker of prenatal testosterone. Together with colleagues at the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences he produced a theory of the evolution of EEG brain oscillations and has shown how brain activity can be used to identify sexual preferences. As a criminal profiler and expert on sexual fantasies, he has been court witness in many high profile cases. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and makes frequent TV appearances in news and documentary programmes. Two recent series in which he appeared as expert commentator were Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer and Stalkers Who Kill.