of hazards and guide you through risky situations.”
“Though we want to believe that violence is a matter of cause and effect, it is actually a process, a chain in which the violent outcome is only one link.”
“For men like this, rejection is a threat to the identity, the persona, to the entire self, and in this sense their crimes could be called murder in defense of
the self.”
Gavin de Becker
He had probably been watching her for a while. We aren’t sure but what we do know is that she was not his first victim.” With this creepy line The Gift of Fear begins. The book outlines real-life stories of people who became victims, or almost became victims, of vio- lence; in each case the person either listened to their intuition and survived, or did not and paid the consequences.
We normally think of fear as something bad, but de Becker tries to show how it is a gift that may protect us from harm. The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence is about getting into other people’s minds so that their actions do not come as a terrible surprise. Though this may be uncomfortable, particularly when it is the mind of a potential killer, it is better to do this than to find out the hard way.
Before he was 13 Gavin de Becker had seen more violence within his own home that most adults see in a lifetime. In order to survive, he had to become good at predicting what would happen next in frightening situations, and he made it his life’s work to formularize the violent mindset so that others could also see the signs. De Becker became an expert in assessing the risk of violence, charged with protecting high-profile celebrity, government, and corporate clients, and also something of a spokesperson on domestic violence.
De Becker is not a psychologist, but his book gives more insights into the nature of intuition, fear, and the violent mind than you are ever likely to read in a straight psychology text. As gripping as a good crime novel, The Gift of Fear may not just change your life—it could actually save it.
Intuitive security
In the modern world, de Becker observes, we have forgotten to rely on our instincts to look after ourselves. Most of us leave the issue of violence up to the police and criminal justice system, believing that they will protect us, but often by the time we involve the authorities it is too late. Alternatively, we believe that better technology will protect us from danger; the more alarms and high fences we have, the safer we feel.
But there is a more reliable source of protection: our intuition or gut feel- ing. Usually we have all the information we need to warn us of certain people
or situations; like other animals, we have an in-built warning system for danger. Dogs’ intuition is much vaunted, but de Becker argues that in fact human
beings have better intuition; the problem is that we are less prepared to trust it.
De Becker describes female victims of attacks who report: “Even though I knew what was happening leading up to the event was not quite right, I did not extract myself from it.” Somehow, the attacker who helped them with their bags or got into the lift with them was able to make these women go along with what he wanted. De Becker suggests that there is a “universal code of violence” that most of us can automatically sense, yet modern life often has the effect of deadening our sensitivity. We either don’t see the signals at all or we won’t admit them.
Paradoxically, de Becker proposes that “trusting intuition is the exact opposite of living in fear.” Real fear does not paralyze you, it energizes you, enabling you to do things you normally could not. In the first case he discusses, a woman had been trapped and raped in her own apartment. When her attacker said he was going into the kitchen, something told her to follow him on tiptoe, and when she did she saw him rifling through the drawers looking for a large knife—to kill her. She made a break for the front door and escaped. What is fascinating is her recollection of not being afraid. Real fear, because it involves our intuition, in fact is a positive feeling designed to save us.
A violent streak in everyone
De Becker debunks the idea that there is a “criminal mind” separating certain people from the rest of us. Most of us would say that we can never kill another person, but then you usually hear the caveat: “Unless I was having to protect a loved one.” We are all capable of criminal thoughts and even actions. Many murders are described as “inhuman,” but surely, de Becker observes, they can’t be anything but human. If one person is capable of a par- ticular act, under certain circumstances we may all be capable of that act. In his work, de Becker does not have the luxury of making distinctions like “human” and “monster.” Instead, he looks for whether a person may have the intent or ability to harm. He concludes, “the resource of violence is in every- one; all that changes is our view of the justification.”
A chain, not an isolated act
Why do people commit violence? De Becker boils it down to four elements:
❖ Justification—the person makes a judgment that they have been intentionally wronged.
❖ Alternatives—violence seems like the only way forward to seek redress or justice.
❖ Consequences—they decide they can live with the probable outcome of their violent act. For instance, a stalker may not mind going to jail as long he gets his victim.
❖ Ability—they have confidence in their ability to use their body or bullets or a bomb to achieve their ends.
De Becker’s team check through these “pre-incident indicators” when they have to predict the likelihood of violence from someone threatening a client. If we pay attention, he says, violence never “comes from nowhere.” It is actually not very common for people to “snap” before they commit murder. Generally, de Becker remarks, violence is as predictable “as water coming to a boil.”
What also helps in predicting violence is to understand it as a process, “in which the violent outcome is only one link.” While the police are looking for the motive, de Becker and his team are going deeper to find the history of vio- lence or violent intent that usually precedes the act.
The Gift of Fear includes a chapter on spousal violence, noting that most spousal murder does not happen in the heat of the moment. It is usually a pre- meditated decision, preceded by the husband stalking his wife and sparked by the wife’s rejection. For such men, being rejected is too great a threat to their sense of self and killing their partner seems the only way to restore their iden- tity. De Becker reveals an alarming fact: Three-quarters of spousal murders happen after the woman leaves the marriage.
Knowing how to pick a psychopath
The features of predatory criminals usually include:
❖ recklessness and bravado;
❖ single-mindedness;
❖ not being shocked at things that would appall other people;
❖ being weirdly calm in conflict;
❖ the need to be in control.
What is the best predictor of violent criminality? De Becker’s experience is that a troubled or abusive childhood is an important factor. In a study into serial killers, 100 percent were found to have suffered violence themselves, been humiliated, or simply neglected as children. Robert Bardo, who shot and killed actress Rebecca Shaeffer, was kept in his room as a child and fed like the fam- ily pet. He never learnt to be sociable. Such people form a warped view of the world—at the public’s expense.
Yet violent people can be very good at hiding the signals that they are psychopaths. They may studiously model normality so that they can at first appear to be “regular guys.” Warning signals include:
❖ They’re too nice.
❖ They talk too much and give us unnecessary details to distract us.
❖ They approach us, never the other way around.
❖ They typecast us or mildly insult us, in order to have us respond and engage with them.
❖ They use the technique of “forced teaming,” using the word “we” to make
them and their victim seem like they are all in the same boat.
❖ They find a way to help us so we feel in their debt (called “loan sharking”).
❖ They ignore or discount our “no.” Never let someone talk you out of a refusal, because then they know they are in charge.
We don’t have to lead paranoid lives—most of the things we worry about never happen—yet it is foolish to trust our home or office security system or the police absolutely. As it is people who harm, de Becker notes, it is people we must understand.
Inside the mind of the stalker
The Gift of Fear is riveting when de Becker is discussing public figures who are his clients and stalkers’ attempts to get close to them. At any one time, a famous singer or actor may have three or four people after them, sending mountains of letters or trying to get through security. Only a small number of these stalkers actually want to kill their target (the rest believe they are in
some kind of “relationship” with the star), but the common factor is a desper- ate hunger for recognition.
All of us want recognition, glory, significance to some extent, and in killing someone famous, stalkers themselves become famous. Mark Chapman and John Hinckley Jnr, for instance, are names forever linked with their tar- gets, John Lennon and Ronald Reagan. To such people assassination makes perfect sense; it is a shortcut to fame, and psychotic people do not really care whether the attention they gain is positive or negative.
The image of a crazed person going after a movie star or president cap- tures the public imagination, but de Becker wonders why are we so intrigued by celebrity stalkers, but are blasé about the fact that, in the US alone, a woman is killed by a husband or boyfriend every two hours. Incidentally, he has little faith in restraining orders, which he says only intensify the situation. Violent people thrive on engagement, and if they are unbalanced anyway, a restraining order will not guarantee safety.
Final comments
The Gift of Fear is a very American book, written within a cultural context of the rampant use of guns and a society that puts less emphasis than others on social cohesion. If you live in an English village or a Japanese city or even a quiet part of the United States, the book could seem a little paranoid. However, de Becker blames evening news reports for making his country seem a lot more dangerous than it actually is, noting that we have a much higher likelihood of dying from cancer or in a car accident than as a result of a vio- lent attack by a stranger.
Since the attack on New York’s World Trade Center in 2001 we have become obsessed with the possibility of random violence, but most attacks and homicides still occur in the home, and knowing the impending signs of violence may save you from harm. In terms of personal safety, de Becker says that men and women live in two different worlds. Oprah Winfrey told her television audience that The Gift of Fear “should be read by every woman in America.”
In writing The Gift of Fear, de Becker was influenced by three books in particular: FBI behavioral scientist Robert Ressler’s Whoever Fights Monsters; psychologist John Monahan’s Predicting Violent Behavior; and Robert D. Hare’s Without Conscience, which takes the reader into the minds of psy- chopaths. There is now a large literature on the psychology of violence, but de Becker’s book is still a great place to start.
Gavin de Becker
De Becker is considered a pioneer in the field of threat assessment and the pre- diction and management of violence. His firm provides consultation and protec- tion services to corporations, government agencies, and individuals. He headed the team that provided security for guests of President Reagan, and he has worked with the US Department of State on official visits of foreign leaders. He also developed the MOSAIC system for dealing with threats to US Supreme Court judges, senators, and congressman. De Becker has consulted on many legal cases, including the criminal and civil cases against O. J. Simpson.
He is a senior fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Public Affairs, and has co-chaired the Domestic Violence Council Advisory Board.
Other books include Protecting the Gift, on the safety of children, and
Fear Less: Real Truth About Risk, Safety and Security in a Time of Terrorism.
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