Investigative and Forensic Interviewing: A Personality-focused Approach


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Investigative and Forensic Interviewing: A Personality-Focused Approach looks at the personality styles most commonly encountered in the criminal justice system and demonstrates how to use this insight to plan and conduct a productive interview. The book includes chapters on narcissistic, antisocial, psychopathic, borderline, inadequate/immature, paranoid, and schizotypal personalities. Written by forensic psychologists and former FBI investigators, each chapter begins with a vignette that displays the personality of an interviewee investigators might encounter in a forensic setting and then covers: Descriptions of how each personality style views him or herself and the world, and how these views lead to problematic behavior Ways to indirectly assess a subject through interviews with associated others, and through review of records Behaviors investigators are likely to encounter during the interview, and responses those behaviors may provoke Clues garnered from nonverbal behavior, including eye contact, facial expressions, and posture What type of questions to ask, and how to ask them Finally, each chapter applies all of this information to an actual interview based on the opening vignette. This book is not for diagnosing personality disorders, but rather exists to help forensic interviewers understand the core traits that influence people s responsiveness. This personality-focused approach is helpful for professionals in a variety of areas including police, attorneys, parole officers, mental health workers, and others who interview witnesses, suspects, and offenders throughout the criminal justice system.Investigative and Forensic Interviewing: A Personality-focused Approach Review
Like psychologists, law enforcement investigators receive training in how to conduct effective interviews. Indeed, the purpose of any interview is to obtain information about a subject that will be useful in planning a subsequent action. In the case of a clinical psychological interview, this is usually treatment; in the case of a forensic investigative interview, it may be arrest or prosecution. In either case, an essential part of conducting an effective interview is to gear it toward the psychological dynamics of the individual subject - in theory, at least.But you wouldn't know this from the plethora of courses, guides, and manuals, in both psychology and law enforcement, that take a rigid, one-way-fits-all approach to interview and investigation, as if suspects, witnesses, or patients were all carbon copies of one another. So it is refreshing to see an approach to interviewing that, while still following a basic validated protocol, consciously accommodates itself to the natural diversity of human personality. As a further boon to cross-communication between behavioral science and law enforcement personnel, this book, with some exceptions, uses the standard diagnostic categories of psychology and psychiatry, avoiding some of the idiosyncratic - and occasionally, frankly crackpot - typologies that proliferate unsupportedly in the law enforcement field.
The book takes a user-friendly approach in following a uniform structure for each chapter, consisting of a description of the relevant personality disorder, preparing for the interview, conducting the interview, and key "dos-and-don'ts" points. Each chapter also liberally employs conversational examples to illustrate key concepts, and includes a demonstrative case vignette. Separate chapters deal with the narcissistic personality, antisocial personality, psychopathic personality, borderline personality, inadequate/immature personality, paranoid personality, and schizotypal personality. Appendices include a glossary and a conceptual model of personality traits and disorders.
My only quibble is, why stop with personality disorders? I would have liked to see the authors describe investigative interviewing techniques for depressed subjects, psychotic subjects, chemically dependent subjects, and so on; perhaps this will be another book. In the meantime, the present volume's many cooks have managed to produce a tasty, digestible, and nourishing broth of useful knowledge that can enhance the productivity of clinical and forensic investigations alike.
- Laurence Miller, PhD, International Journal of Emergency Mental Health
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