Helen Morrison

Helen Morrison, M.D., is a forensic psychiatrist currently residing in Chicago, Illinois. She is best known for her efforts to understand the psychology of serial killers, and has personally interviewed about 80 of them.

The focus of her research has been to find common personality traits between serial killers. She has published about 125 academic papers and a book, My Life Among the Serial Killers : Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers.

Dr. Morrison's method of interviewing the killers, developed over thirty years, requires lengthy interviews; at least several hours in one sitting. The strategy is built on her belief that serial killers a adept at learning to mimic emotional human behavior, but that it is an act which they can only keep up for a limited amount of time. She typically interviews subjects over many years, long after their trials are over.

From such discussions, Morrison posits the following observations:

• Serial killers do not possess a concrete personality; rather, their minds tend to be a collection of disparate roles and facades they shift at will.
• While such killers are often charming in person, their charm wears off if one interrogates them for several hours without a break. This is caused by strain – because their charm and personality are artificial, they cannot keep it up forever.
• Once their personality constructs break down, serial killers fall into a bestial state. In this state, they lack any trace of humanity, and are nothing but urges and, occasionally, anger.
• Serial killers are able to avoid the moral consequences of their actions because their minds are too divided and disassociated to actually bring everything together.
• By examining additional cases from a cross-cultural and cross-historical sample, she claims that when serial killers receive enough psychiatric help (professional or otherwise) to fully comprehend their actions, they invariably commit suicide.

Although Morrison has discovered common traits shared by serial killers, she has been unable to discover any common psychological background. She finds no evidence to support profiling of serial killers by the FBI, which, she claims, is notoriously inaccurate. She has made successful predictions about several serial killers prior to arrest, but explains the reasoning behind her predictions as utterly simple, and not based on psychology.

Morrison's theory of serial killing is controversial, if novel; she believes that serial killers have a genetic impulse to kill. The problem, as critics note, is that she makes this leap without any biological evidence. Her reasoning goes like this: there's a nature vs. nurture debate over why people act certain ways. Since she could find no evidence that serial killers were nurtured in any particular manner, she concludes that there must be a natural – or genetic – explanation.

The implications of these theories are likewise controversial, and, ironically, come under attack from both liberals and conservatives.

Morrison believes that most serial killers are innocent by reason of insanity, since they can't comprehend the evilness of their actions. A genetic component to this argument furthers the legal argument, by claiming they are not responsible for their actions. In the United States, this would mean such people would have to be found not guilty by reason of insanity, then placed in a mental hospital.

Also, critics take issue with her characterization of the serial killers she interviewed. They claim she's implying that such people are not "true human beings," or may even lack a soul.

Morrison testified as a defense expert witness in the trial of John Wayne Gacy. Gacy's body was dedicated to science by his family, and his brain resides in Morrison's basement.