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Authors: Gavin de Becker
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they fell under someone’s malevolent control, before they refused the gift of fear. Often they will say about some particular detail, “I realize this now, but I didn’t know it then.” Of course, if it is in their heads now, so was it then. What they mean is that they only now accept the significance. This has taught me that the intuitive process works, though often not as well as its principal competitor, the denial process.
With denial, the details we need for the best predictions float silently by us like life preservers, but while the man overboard may enjoy the comfortable belief that he is still in his stateroom, there is soon a price to pay for his daydream. I know a lot about this; I spent half my childhood and half my adulthood practicing prediction while perfecting denial.
▪ CHAPTER THREE ▪
THE ACADEMY OF PREDICTION
“I am capable of what every other human is
capable of. This is one of the great
lessons of war and life.”
— Maya Angelou
Before I was thirteen, I saw a man shot, I saw another beaten and kicked to unconsciousness, I saw a friend struck near lethally in the face and head with a steel rod, I saw my mother become a heroin addict, I saw my sister beaten, and I was myself a veteran of beatings that had been going on for more than half my life. The stakes of my predictions back then were just as high as they are today—life and death—and I viewed it as my responsibility to be sure we all got through those years alive. We didn’t, and for a long while I viewed that as my responsibility too, but my point in telling you all this is not about me; it is about you. It is about you because, though triggered by different occurrences, you felt the exact same emotions that I felt. While some were painful and some were frightening, no experience of mine had any more impact on me than those of yours that had the greatest impact on you.
People sometimes say they cannot imagine what a given experience must have been like, but you can imagine every human feeling, and as you’ll see, it is that ability that makes you an expert at predicting what others will do.
You want to know how to spot violently inclined people, how to be safe in the presence of danger. Well, since you know all about human beings, this expedition begins and ends in familiar territory. You have been attending your academy for years and to pick up your diploma in predicting violence, there is just one truth you must accept: that there is no mystery of human behavior that cannot be solved inside your head or your heart.
Nicholas Humphrey of Cambridge University explains that evolution gave us introspection specifically so we could “model other human beings and therefore predict their behavior.” To succeed at this, we have to be what Humphrey calls “natural psychologists.” We have to know, he says, “what it’s like to be human.”
Way back when she was still anonymous, I assisted a young prosecutor named Marcia Clark on her brilliant prosecution of assassin Robert Bardo. Bardo had killed actress Rebecca Schaeffer, and Clark sent him to prison for life. When I interviewed him there, his relative normalcy took me out of the safe realm of US and THEM —experts and assassins—and into the world of our shared humanness. It may be unwelcome news, but you and I and Bardo have much more in common than we have in contrast.
Distinguished psychiatrist Karl Menninger has said, “I don’t believe in such a thing as the criminal mind. Everyone’s mind is criminal; we’re all capable of criminal fantasies and thoughts.” Two of history’s great minds went even further. In an extraordinary correspondence, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud explored the topic of human violence. Einstein’s letter concluded that “man has in him the need to hate and destroy.”
In his reply, Freud agreed “unreservedly,” adding that human instincts could be divided into two categories: “those which
With denial, the details we need for the best predictions float silently by us like life preservers, but while the man overboard may enjoy the comfortable belief that he is still in his stateroom, there is soon a price to pay for his daydream. I know a lot about this; I spent half my childhood and half my adulthood practicing prediction while perfecting denial.
▪ CHAPTER THREE ▪
THE ACADEMY OF PREDICTION
“I am capable of what every other human is
capable of. This is one of the great
lessons of war and life.”
— Maya Angelou
Before I was thirteen, I saw a man shot, I saw another beaten and kicked to unconsciousness, I saw a friend struck near lethally in the face and head with a steel rod, I saw my mother become a heroin addict, I saw my sister beaten, and I was myself a veteran of beatings that had been going on for more than half my life. The stakes of my predictions back then were just as high as they are today—life and death—and I viewed it as my responsibility to be sure we all got through those years alive. We didn’t, and for a long while I viewed that as my responsibility too, but my point in telling you all this is not about me; it is about you. It is about you because, though triggered by different occurrences, you felt the exact same emotions that I felt. While some were painful and some were frightening, no experience of mine had any more impact on me than those of yours that had the greatest impact on you.
People sometimes say they cannot imagine what a given experience must have been like, but you can imagine every human feeling, and as you’ll see, it is that ability that makes you an expert at predicting what others will do.
You want to know how to spot violently inclined people, how to be safe in the presence of danger. Well, since you know all about human beings, this expedition begins and ends in familiar territory. You have been attending your academy for years and to pick up your diploma in predicting violence, there is just one truth you must accept: that there is no mystery of human behavior that cannot be solved inside your head or your heart.
Nicholas Humphrey of Cambridge University explains that evolution gave us introspection specifically so we could “model other human beings and therefore predict their behavior.” To succeed at this, we have to be what Humphrey calls “natural psychologists.” We have to know, he says, “what it’s like to be human.”
Way back when she was still anonymous, I assisted a young prosecutor named Marcia Clark on her brilliant prosecution of assassin Robert Bardo. Bardo had killed actress Rebecca Schaeffer, and Clark sent him to prison for life. When I interviewed him there, his relative normalcy took me out of the safe realm of US and THEM —experts and assassins—and into the world of our shared humanness. It may be unwelcome news, but you and I and Bardo have much more in common than we have in contrast.
Distinguished psychiatrist Karl Menninger has said, “I don’t believe in such a thing as the criminal mind. Everyone’s mind is criminal; we’re all capable of criminal fantasies and thoughts.” Two of history’s great minds went even further. In an extraordinary correspondence, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud explored the topic of human violence. Einstein’s letter concluded that “man has in him the need to hate and destroy.”
In his reply, Freud agreed “unreservedly,” adding that human instincts could be divided into two categories: “those which
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