Garbarino’s “Listening to Killers” Talk at Twelve video online

March 5, 2015

For twenty years James Garbarino has served as a psychological expert witness in criminal and civil cases involving issues of trauma, violence, and children. A former student of Urie Bronfenbrenner's, his approach is to consider the ways developmental processes are shaped by the human ecology in which they occur. On February 9 Garbarino delivered a BCTR Talk at Twelve based on his recent book, Listening to Killers: Lessons Learned from My Twenty Years as a Psychological Expert Witness in Murder Cases. In his talk he recounted specific stories from killers' lives and crimes, serving to demonstrate the ways that untreated early emotional and moral damage can create violent adults. Video from the talk, Listening to Killers: Bringing Developmental Psychology into the Courtroom in Murder Cases, is now available to view online on our YouTube channel, and is embedded below.

In a Cornell Chronicle story about this work and the talk, Garbarino noted,

Most killers should be understood as traumatized children who inhabit and control the minds, hearts and bodies of adult men.

James Garbarino is a Cornell professor emeritus of human development and the Maude C. Clarke Chair in Humanistic Psychology at Loyola University in Chicago.

Garbarino book goes inside the minds of murderers - Cornell Chronicle