A Life Devoted to Crime

This autobiography traces my professional and, to a lesser extent, personal life through my career as a forensic and correctional psychologist. As an only child living in the country and later attending boarding schools from the fifth grade through high school, I learned to be self-reliant and independent. These traits led me to join an archaeological expedition to Oaxaca when I was 18, which fostered my interest in anthropology and then psychology at Amherst. I survived the clinical training program at the University of California at Berkeley and while still in graduate school obtained a staff position at the Alameda County Probation Department Guidance Clinic where I began my interrelated research paths on clinical assessment and the dynamics of aggression, paths I continued as an assistant professor at the University of Texas (1964-1967) and as an associate to full professor at the Florida State University (1967-2003). My major research contributions have been the (a) delineation of the overcontrolled and undercontrolled assaultive syndromes; (b) development of the MMPI-2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen,Kaemmer, 1989) Overcontrolled Hostility (O-H) Scale; (c) formulation of the "Algebra of Aggression," a theoretical framework for evaluating and understanding aggressive behavior; (d) exploration of how gender roles interact with dominance in leadership assumption; (e) empirical demonstration of the adverse effects of population density on adjustment in correctional institutions; and (f) development and validation of a classification system for adult criminal offenders based on the MMPI-2.