Customer Reviews

The Psychology of Stalking: Clinical and Forensic Perspectives

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

This was one of the first published compilations of research articles on stalking. It includes such classics as the article by Zona and Lane (of the LAPD threat management unit) on the typology of stalking. As in many areas of active research, the book is already somewhat dated. Because stalking laws had only been recently passed at the time the papers were written, the discussion of stalking laws is limited mostly to discussing some of the cases that prompted the laws. Similarly, because there were relatively few documented cases at the time, the discussion of stalking statistics is quite preliminary. There are many more thorough recent studies (See, for example, the excellent NIJ research by Tjaden and Thoennes.) The primary strength of the book is its comprehensive selection of early papers. I would highly recommend it for a student in the field who should be familiar with this work. The book is NOT meant to be a sourcebook for case management. In particular, there are no specifics on threat assessment and only a single case study of intervention techniques. For people who work with stalkers or stalking cases, I would strongly recommend the "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker, who authored the MOSAIC system. Books on psychopathology (such as "Without Conscience: the Disturbing World of Psychopaths Among Us") are also excellent background.

The mixed reviews so far are split between victims wanting something that reflects their experience and academics wanting the most up-to-date research findings. This book is not really to aid victims as much as it is to bolster the understanding of those who might be trying to serve their needs and assess their level of danger. It is academic in tone and that is off-putting to some. But these articles were designed for presentation at the regular stalking conference in Los Angeles so the tone fits the venue. I found it very informative and helpful in threat assessment, understanding different types of stalkers and what works to deter them. Victims can best use the information designed to help psychologically deter stalkers by robbing them of their pay-off--attention. It also explains that intermittent response is most likely to INCREASE stalking activity--as in slot machine payoffs.

Great intro to stalking behavior and the signs, symptoms, and preventive measures one can take. I found this book informative, well-researched, and insightful. Certainly, a good resource for anyone interested in stalking, domestic violence, or general offender behavior.

Meloy's book provides a thorough analysis of stalking from the top researchers and practitioners in the field. It presents a variety of theoretical conceptualizations on this crime from several different professions (e.g. psychology, criminal justice, private security). This book is comprehensive and well organized. In a field that is often over-run with "pop-psychology" and "true crime" novels, this books provides a truely academic resource for persons who research stalking or work in the threat assessment field. It is a MUST BUY for all professionals concerned with the crime of stalking.

great book. good look from a psychological standpoint. Very imformative. He ties together information on threats, stalking and assassination.

I am a licensed psychotherapist with a personal and professional interest in 'multiple stalking' cases, in which a perpetrator organizes other individuals, likely strangers to the victim, to stalk and harass a feared or hated target individual, often over the internet.

This is a basic, beginning book, written in 1998 and way behind in filling the need, considering the proliferation of actual crimes originating on the internet especially those in which a single website recruits or incites multiple individuals, usually strangers, as stalkers against one individual. In addition, unfortunately, this well-meaning but limited book has likely set back law enforcement help for victims of multiple-stalker, internet-originating crimes by years:

In particular, the chapter on 'false victimization' is unnecessary and could well have been left out as it gives inexperienced, overburdened or uncaring law enforcement personnel, as they read the chapter about a variety of cases which at first sound like legitimate stalking cases but turn out to be false alarms, rationale to superimpose them upon all pleas to law enforcement for help, and justification to dismiss out of hand legitimate cases as illegitimate -- without investigation.

Other examples of little or no cyberstalking training (in the LAPD; there is no cyberstalking section though the law now mandates it): A lone law enforcement individual manning the phone at LAPD's 'cyberstalking' section has said, 'cyberstalking is threatening e-mails -- period!'(2001).(This misapprehension is not discredited in Meloy's book.)Another LAPD detective, a woman, said, 'Just don't go on line', and when she heard about skin-burning chemicals inserted in the victim's newspapers, 'Just stop taking the newspaper'. Another detective, when hearing about a rationally-described but complicated case of internet-originated stalking and harassment insisted that the victim go into a psychiatric facility for a three-day hold in order to 'determine what is going on' -- this is without the first attempt at interview or investigation. Other detectives, more restrained, have explained that they need 'proof' before even beginning an investigation and gathering proof,leaving the victim in a helpless, catch-22 situation (and, being put off by the multiple-stalker nature of the crime as described refused to look at the evidence at hand).

There are now many published accounts of individuals who have been targeted by people who want them dead or distracted (or, in some cases, discredited, as victims are often disbelieved when there are no witnesses and the harassment takes forms which leave little in the way of evidence)and who use the internet to accomplish such a crime without their risking being an actual part of it. One was of a woman who, working for Housing and Urban Development, had tried to integrate an all-white neighborhood. A white-supremicist set up a website and put her and her 18-year old daughter's personal information on it, inciting others to go after them. They had to move from house to house, state to state; each time the website updated their new, 'secret' information. (Finally, HUD sued this operator on the woman's behalf and won; it is unclear if he has stopped his mischief.) Another is of an editor of a progressive Jewish publication which has criticized Israel for being too hard on the Palestinians; he had death threats and had his address, phones, family names, published on a radical fundamentalist Israeli website, inciting strangers to make frequent death threats. Another victim, a grown woman, who confronted her paranoid and psychopathic father with the fact of her childhood sexual abuse by him later found herself a target of unknown people for years before finding out her father, who was afraid without reason of being incarcerated was behind it; she was forced to move from house to house, ending up incarcerated inside her own home due to the types of 'non-provable', 'high-tech' harassment techniques used by her father's cohorts (paid, or recruited over the internet)and cut off from other members of her family by her father's making sure everyone knew about his previously respected daughter's 'delusions of persecution'. --In this case, virtually every technique used, when spoken about, did sound like the delusions of a paranoid schizophrenic; such discrediting was the point of the crime, though the facts in this case were true.(Psychotherapists, take heed.)

Meloy doesn't mention multiple stalkers in his book, in fact, denigrates such stories by default and by being too vague in describing the differences between false and real cases (investigators 'had the feeling' the case was false), doing nothing to prevent law enforcement, with little more in the way of studies to go on, from concluding that more often than not a given case is 'self-harm' or simply a lie.

Psychotherapists: Many or most psychotherapists also have no choice, not hearing or knowing about the increasing multiple stalking cases (and being themselves too shocked at such stories and in denial -- as the society was about child abuse, wife-beating and one-person stalking for decades before acknowledging the seriousness and actuality of these crimes; and as we all were about the reality of terrorist threats to our nation though there was plenty of evidence for years apparently that these threats were real) they leap to the conclusion that their client is delusional. In fact, to be fair, most multiple-stalking cases are burgeoning exponentially, at the same rate as the internet, and all of this is new. (As Meloy, to his credit, attests, and he gives sound reasons why a person, who might not have been a criminal before the advent of the internet, might resort to deadly and terrorizing tactics when he thinks the internet will allow him impunity. p. 12)

There are now two cyberstalking laws in California (written after the book was written); one convicted a man (named Delapenta) who had set up a website in the name of a woman he had been turned down by for a date. He had published her name, address, phone, and ways to bypass her security system on this site; he said (as if he was she) 'she' wanted to be raped and to ignore any calls for help she might make -- that this was just part of 'her' game. The young woman was terrified at the calls and visits by strange men and remained so for at least a year after the perpetrator was caught (by her father spending weeks searching on line at first and then pretending to be a website visitor, and by two men who came to her door admitting what was going on; not by any police investigation).

There are many such stories which have been published, which make use of personal identity information on the internet, including photographs (in one known case, brazenly taken head-on of the victim by strangers with long-distance lenses in food stores, concerts, in an empty hotel lobby after a conference, across a children's playground of herself and her grandchild -- the stunned victim found that the photographers drove away in cars which had no license plates), to recruit and evoke stranger-stalkers to target one individual. Some sites might be 'dead pool' sites, which include gambling on the person's death date --this is an effective come-on as, unlike 'hate sites', 'players' have the impetus of winning money or earning it through individual assaults or 'attacks'. These may be like a computer game, but in which a real person has been chosen (likely by a known perpetrator, maybe a family member -- like the father who was afraid without cause that he, himself, would become incarcerated or abandoned if his abuse of his daugher came to light)to be the target in real life. Some of the sites may require illicitly shared software in order to 'play' and the website may not be findable by ordinary search techniques. A person playing this 'game' might get points for making one or more assaults of some kind on the victim, terrorizing her/him and possibly hastening his/her death by suicide or homicide. There was one such report (1997) of a Dungeons and Dragons game, originating on the internet but played out on the street, which resulted in the suicides of three terrified teenagers.

Clearly a new book needs to be written, and soon, incorporating all the now-known cases of multiple (stranger)stalkers elicited on the internet targeting a single individual as well as the continued gap in law enforcement between what needs to be known about how to investigate these cases (sophisticated cyber-training and sections in police departments devoted to such crimes) and how victims are being treated today. Likely legistatures need to vote money toward these sections and not just make new cybercrime laws.

This is a very readable book- even for laymen. Contains a volume of insights into stalking and is very up-to-date. Dr. Meloy continues to blaze new trails with this most recent book.

This is the witch doctor whose second-hand shrinking (he never actually met the patient) led to the imprisonment of Timothy Lee Masters for the murder of Peggy Hettrick, a crime we now know he did not commit. An innocent man went to prison for a decade because of the sexual fantasies of Jerk Reid Meloy who like Nostrodamus imagines his powers of perception to be so acute that he can solve murders by viewing the margin doodles of a normal fifteen year old boy.

Not once in this book, nor any other book, have Meloy's theories been substantiated using a standard double-blind scientific method. This is wacko academia at its worst: loud talking and unsubstantiated fantasy on the same level as palmistry or phrenology.

This book would have been a complete waste of time if I'd finished it, but I stopped the muddy wade abruptly at about 75% of the way. No human feeling, no insight, poor communication style. It's your worst college class between the covers of a book.

I am a licensed psychotherapist with a personal and professional interest in 'multiple stalking' cases, in which a perpetrator organizes other individuals, likely strangers to the victim, to stalk and harass a feared or hated target individual, often over the internet.

This is a basic, beginning book, written in 1998 and way behind in filling the need, considering the proliferation of actual crimes originating on the internet especially those in which a single website recruits or incites multiple individuals, usually strangers, as stalkers against one individual. In addition, unfortunately, this well-meaning but limited book has likely set back law enforcement help for victims of multiple-stalker, internet-originating crimes by years:

In particular, the chapter on 'false victimization' is unnecessary and could well have been left out as it gives inexperienced, overburdened or uncaring law enforcement personnel, as they read the chapter about a variety of cases which at first sound like legitimate stalking cases but turn out to be false alarms, rationale to superimpose them upon all pleas to law enforcement for help, and justification to dismiss out of hand legitimate cases as illegitimate -- without investigation.

Other examples of little or no cyberstalking training (in the LAPD; there is no cyberstalking section though the law now mandates it): A lone law enforcement individual manning the phone at LAPD's 'cyberstalking' section has said, 'cyberstalking is threatening e-mails -- period!' (2001)(This misapprehension is not discredited in Meloy's book.)Another LAPD detective, a woman, said, 'Just don't go on line' and when she heard about skin-burning chemicals inserted in the victim's newspapers, 'Just stop taking the newspaper'. Another detective, when hearing about a rationally-described but complicated case of internet-originated stalking and harassment insisted that the victim go into a psychiatric facility for a three-day hold in order to 'determine what is going on' -- this is without the first attempt at interview or investigation. Other detectives, more restrained, have explained that they need 'proof' before even beginning an investigation and gathering proof,leaving the victim in a helpless, catch-22 situation (and, being put off by the multiple-stalker nature of the crime as described refused to look at the evidence at hand). (...)