Meghan O’Flynn has spent the past decade writing thrilling crime novels notorious for their character development and shocking twists. But did you know that every book is sharply honed through her years as an equally notorious head-shrinker? (It’s a pet name.) The criminal (and non-criminal) mind is a fascinating and frightening place. Let’s get shrinky with it.

Breeding Psychopaths: The Future of Humanity

Breeding Psychopaths: The Future of Humanity

There are a number of traits that define psychopathy, and a wide continuum on which those traits can be expressed. In general, psychopaths are known for a lack of empathy, charm/charisma and serial killing, not exactly a stellar stereotype (just ask Poppy Pratt's...

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When Do Personality Traits Become Mental Illness?

When Do Personality Traits Become Mental Illness?

Depression may be adaptive in some regards, and there may even be an evolutionary basis for the attractiveness of moodiness (more on that in "The Sexiness of Sadness.") But this doesn’t mean that we accept these traits as a society. Instead, what Philip Fischer labels...

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It’s Good To Be Bad: The Psychological Benefit of Dark Humor

It’s Good To Be Bad: The Psychological Benefit of Dark Humor

A beautiful woman is standing on an overpass, ready to leap to her death. A strange man approaches her and says “If you’re going to kill yourself, would you like to have sex first? It might be a fun way to go out.” “No! That’s disgusting!” she screams. The man turns...

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What is a Psychopath? The Traits and Brains of Psychos

What is a Psychopath? The Traits and Brains of Psychos

“She showed him a picture of a frightened face and asked him to identify the emotion. He said he didn’t know what the emotion was, but it was the face that people pulled just before he killed them.” (The Psychopath Test) This is the idea we have in our head of...

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Pieces of Memory: Trauma, Fragments, and Flashbacks

Pieces of Memory: Trauma, Fragments, and Flashbacks

I sometimes have people ask me, “Hey, Meghan, how did you come up with that weird trauma response in Recall? Can people really lose parts of their memory but not others?” Uhhhh…YES. They definitely can. Sometimes the brain even fills in missing information with things...

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Risky Business: The Thing About Narcissism

Risky Business: The Thing About Narcissism

I love writing a good narcissist, and not just because they’re fun to kill (on PAPER, guys, geez). But narcissism is a word that gets thrown around a lot, often to describe those with high self-worth. That ain't it. As anyone who has been in a relationship with an...

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Victim Blaming and Why Women Stay

Victim Blaming and Why Women Stay

In the Ash Park series, Detective Petrosky sometimes comes across domestic violence situations (and responds none too kindly, as you might imagine). He's like my alter ego, doing the things I wish I could in life. I spent years running domestic violence groups with...

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Why Do Men Rape?

Why Do Men Rape?

First things first: UNDERSTANDING DOES NOT EQUAL ABSOLUTION. I am not in any way making excuses for rapists, nor do I believe that men should be punished less severely based on their histories. In my fiction novels, Detective Petrosky loves fantasizing about cutting...

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