116. Robert Forde. Insider/outsider a critical perspective on forensic psychology.

I was brought up in Belfast and London, and have since lived all around England, and for 10 years in West Berlin (five years before the Wall was opened and five years after). I went to university in the late 60s, and went to work as a prison psychologist in 1971, based in several different prisons, before going to the Home Office Research Unit in London in 1978. In 1980 I left the Home Office and became a househusband for a couple of years. I then spent a couple of years as an education welfare officer (chasing truants around the estates of Milton Keynes) before my late wife accepted the deputy headship of the forces secondary school in West Berlin in 1984. We stayed there until the withdrawal of British forces in 1994. I had ambitions to be a writer, and my first novel was published in the UK in 1990. I also became a feature writer for the army newspaper there. Unfortunately, my career as a novelist is still waiting to take off! I have, however, published several novels on Amazon Kindle (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Robert-Forde/e/B00C4BJQGW/ref=aufs_dp_fta_dsk).

 

After returning from Germany I had no job and no recent work experience in psychology, so my wife and I bought a B&B in North Devon, and ran it for three years. In 1998 I went back to university and did a Masters degree in health psychology, and began working for an old prison service colleague who now had his own consultancy. In 2001 he retired and wound up the business, and I went into business for myself, providing services to lawyers. Mostly, this consisted of expert witness work, providing reports on individuals for courts. Initially, quite a bit of this was in the family courts, and some in criminal cases. Following a court ruling, a great deal of work was generated in the parole field, and this subsequently became most of what I did. This continued until I retired in 2016.

 

In 2018 my book "Bad Psychology" was published (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Psychology-Forensic-Science-Behind-ebook/dp/B0713WJXFH/ref=sr_1_1?crid=SZ3S6Y44S9Q3&keywords=Bad+psychology&qid=1669024629&s=digital-text&sprefix=bad+psychology%2Cdigital-text%2C74&sr=1-1). This was pretty much my last professional work in psychology. My latest novel is the "The Psychopath’s Checklist", which is inspired by (rather than based on) some of the characters I've met, and also examines some of the criteria used to diagnose them!

 

I have two adult daughters and three grandsons. My late wife was diagnosed with cancer in 1999 and died in 2005. In 2010 I remarried, acquiring a stepson. Now happily retired, I am still writing novels, am a singer-guitarist and also sing with a sea shanty group called the Dorset Wrecks. As we are on the brink of moving to Sheffield, the latter will have to stop.