Paperback: "...some forms of psychotherapy can create false memories."
The Strange Case of Thomas Quick (2015) is the astonishing true story of the prisoner who posed as the worst serial killer in Swedish history.
In 1991, Sture Bergwall, a petty criminal and drug addict, botched an armed robbery so badly that he was deemed to be more in need of therapy than punishment. He was committed to Säter, Sweden's equivalent of Broadmoor, and began a course of psychotherapy and psychoactive drugs.
During the therapy, he began to recover memories so vicious and traumatic that he had repressed them: sickening scenes of childhood abuse, incest and torture, which led to a series of brutal murders in his adult years. He eventually confessed to raping, killing and even eating more than thirty victims. Embracing the process of self-discovery, he took on a new name: Thomas Quick. He was brought to trial and convicted of eight of the murders.
Stories generated at the intersection of law and human psychology are irresistible... But...even if one arrived at some insight into Quick's mind and his reasons for confessing, another even greater mystery would be waiting: the mentalities of Seppo Penttinen, Christer van der Kwast, Claes Borgström, Birgitta Ståhle and Sven Åke Christianson. How could they keep this circus up and running? They toured crime sites while Quick was as high as a kite and slurred his words, couldn't speak straight, and yet the man was supposed to remember, in detail, what happened fifteen years ago. If you want to talk about a psychological enigma - they're all enigmatic. And all of them are highly educated people. - Hannes Råstam (1955-2012), Swedish journalist.
In 2008, his confessions were proved to be entirely fabricated, and every single conviction was overturned. In this gripping book, Dan Josefsson uncovers the tangled web of deceptions and delusions that emerged within the Quick team. He reveals how a sick prisoner and mental patient, addled with prescription drugs and desperate for validation, allowed himself to become a case study for a sect-like group of therapists who practiced the controversial method of 'recovered' memory therapy. The group's leader, psychoanalyst Margit Norell, hoped that her vast study of Thomas Quick would make history.
The Strange Case of Thomas Quick is an important and disturbing story about how pseudoscientific therapy and the irrational belief system of a secretive group of otherwise intelligent people - the courts, the police and the psychiatric profession - caused the most spectacular miscarriage of justice in modern Swedish history. It is a masterclass in investigative journalism by one of Sweden's foremost investigative journalists.
The Strange Case of Thomas Quick is translated from the Swedish by Anna Paterson.
Dr Anna Paterson is an award-winning translator, a writer and former neuroscientist.
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