David Abrahamsen
David Abrahamsen (June 23, 1903 – May 20, 2002) was a Norwegian forensic psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and author who wrote analyses of Richard M. Nixon and David Berkowitz. He was born in Trondheim, Norway and trained in Europe. Abrahamsen came to the United States in 1940.
He became a student of criminal psychopathology while he was affiliated with prisons in New York and Illinois. He lectured at a number of important hospitals. Abrahamsen became interested in the Son of Sam murders, which began in 1976 and would proceed to document the life of David Berkowitz.[1]
Abrahamsen's paper, A Study of Lee Harvey Oswald: Psychological Capability of Murder, was published in the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, in October 1967. His book, Our Violent Society, came out in 1970, a Funk & Wagnalls' publication.[2]
Abrahamsen suspected Prince Albert Victor and James Kenneth Stephen worked as a collaborating team to commit the Jack the Ripper murders.[3] The book was criticized for providing no solid evidence.[4][5]
Publications
- The Psychology of Crime (1967)
- Our Violent Society (1970)
- The Murdering Mind (1973)
- The Mind of the Accused: A Psychiatrist in the Courtroom (1983)
- Confessions of Son of Sam (1985)
- Murder and Madness: Secret Life of Jack the Ripper (1994)
References
- ^ "Dr. David Abrahamsen, 98; Wrote About Son of Sam". The New York Times.
- ^ The Murdering Mind, David Abrahamsen, Harper & Row, 1973, 21.
- ^ "Murder and Madness: The Secret Life of Jack the Ripper". Publishers Weekly.
- ^ "Murder and Madness: The Secret Life of Jack the Ripper". Casebook.
- ^ Newton, Michael. (2013). The Texarkana Moonlight Murders: The Unsolved Case of the 1946 Phantom Killer. McFarland. p. 149 ISBN 978-0-7864-7325-0 "An odd hybrid theory, published by forensic psychiatrist David Abrahamsen in 1992, cast Eddie and Stephen as collaborating team killers... [However] Dr. Abrahamsen failed to produce any solid evidence connecting either suspect to the Ripper's crimes."