Dr Gwen Adshead: ‘Revenge is not an emotion we can afford’

Dr Gwen Adshead has spent more than three decades going into prisons and secure settings, including the infamous Broadmoor Hospital, working with people who have committed violent criminal offences. She talks to Tony Wilson about evil, justice and rehabilitation – and why revenge is not an emotion that humans can afford to indulge

There’s no denying that we live in a violent world. Our daily news feeds leave us in no doubt that people have an endless capacity to hurt one another. And we don’t need to spend too long examining our own behaviour to also recognise that we, too, can inflict pain on those around us.

Dr Gwen Adshead has spent her professional life understanding this tendency. Born in New Zealand, she moved to England aged 11. She pursued medicine as a profession, later focussing on psychiatry, and has years of experience working in hospitals and secure institutions with people whose violence has led them to carry out terrible crimes.

As a forensic psychotherapist of global renown, she has authored many papers and written books, including The Devil You Know: Stories of human cruelty and compassion (Faber & Faber). She was recently invited to deliver the BBC’s annual Reith Lecture series, opening a 4-part discussion about her experience of rehabilitating the criminally violent and the nature of evil.

Adshead describes herself as having a Christian upbringing, and attended schools where prayer was a daily part of life. The acceptance of mistakes and the offer of second chances is something that she says is paramount to how the Christian faith and her professional life interact. There but for the grace of God go all of us, she reminds me when we talk.