The Psychology Of Murder A Study In Criminal Psychology PDF book by Andreas Bjerre

Andreas Bjerre’s work, “The Psychology of Murder" is an extremely fascinating book, which not only the expert but also whoever is interested in psychological or social questions may read with great profit. The subject has attracted many writers before Bjerre — philosophers, doctors, lawyers, and essayists. But Bjerre has approached the problem from an entirely new point of view. He has not contented himself with wide generalizations, or with the treatment of such second-hand material as criminal statistics, reports of trials, hospital and prison journals or other superficial data, however, obtained.He has devoted many years of his Ufe to the first-hand study in Swedish prisons in order by constant personal association with criminals to solve the riddles hidden away in the dark places of their psychic lives. The first fruit of these studies was published in 1907 in a treatise on the psychology o^ theft. But whereas that work presented more general observations on certain criminal types, in “ The Psychology of Murder ” the author has selected three entirely disparate individuals and has penetrated into depths and shadows of their lives unknown even to themselves.In the introduction to his work, the author has given an interesting account of his methods, which must be of great assistance to subsequent enquirers. This study, conducted with great thoroughness and profound psychological intuition, opens up new possibilities of research in a field that is of the utmost importance to our social life. But the author is not only a pre-eminent criminal psychologist; his work is stamped with considerable literary talent. He draws his criminal types with the artistic breadth and the reader follows his analysis of the course of action ith something of the tenseness which he experiences in the study of a drama by a master hand. In his own country, he has been compared with Dostojevski, and it has been said by experts that in the gift of penetration into the psychic life of criminals he far surpasses that master.Andreas Bjerre was born in March 1879. in Gothenburg. After having passed the examination for the degree of B.A. at Upsala in 1900, he continued his studies in Paris and Lund, where he took the degree of Bachelor of Laws.He then prosecuted his studies at Berlin, Oslo, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, and began his psycho-criminological observations in Sweden’s largest central prison at Langholmen in Stockholm. In 1909 he took the degree of Master of Laws and submitted a treatise on “ The Conception of Wrongfulness in Causes of Defamation ” for his doctorate in law. After having continued his studies in the prison, he was in 1919 appointed Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Dorpat, and in 1921 to the chair of legal philosophy. He was compelled by bad health, however, to resign his chair at the end of the spring term in 1925, and on November 22nd of the same year, he died at Tyringe in Sweden.Author:Andreas BjerrePublication Date: 1927