Shared beliefs and not delusions are behind most cases of targeted attacks.
This book will challenge forensic practitioners’ traditional diagnostic and forensic frameworks. It is also a very good read.
—Stephen J. Morse, J.D., Ph.D. Ferdinand Wakeman Hubbell Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania
Introducing the ARCH × Φ Model
About Tahir Rahman, MD
Dr. Tahir Rahman is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis, School of Medicine. He completed his psychiatry residency at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. A key educator on the prevention of extremism and targeted violence, he is co-author (with Dr. J. Reid Meloy) of Archetype Killers (American Psychological Association, 2025) and author of Extreme Overvalued Beliefs (Oxford University Press, 2024).
Dr. Rahman lectures nationally to medical students, psychiatric residents, law enforcement, and professional associations on behavioral threat assessment, radicalization, and violence prevention. Clinically, he primarily treats general adult patients in need of psychiatric services.
His academic work now focuses on ending targeted attacks—especially school shootings—by the end of this decade. He has served as an expert witness in numerous insanity and civil cases.
Outside of medicine, Dr. Rahman is an avid aviation and space enthusiast, historian, memorabilia collector, and dog owner. He has received awards for teaching excellence and clinical research.
This website is an independent platform and is not affiliated with any organization, company, or entity mentioned or referenced. All content, views, and opinions expressed on this site are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect the positions of any third-party organizations.
About Extreme Overvalued Beliefs
Riveting and surprising in its persuasive simplicity, Extreme Overvalued Beliefs (Oxford University Press) makes a profound argument that most violent targeted attacks are incorrectly classified as motivated by delusions or obsessions. Drawing on exceptionally clear and vivid details of crimes such as the JFK assassination, Oklahoma City bombing, as well as the Sandy Hook and Uvalde school shootings, the monograph illuminates three easily understood cognitive drivers of targeted attacks, arguing that we must embrace these in order to thwart future incendiary acts. Reprising the work of neuroscientist Carl Wernicke, Dr. Rahman elegantly separates culturally shared, relished, and extreme ideologies from delusional thinking. Extreme Overvalued Beliefs belongs in the libraries of mental health and legal professionals but will appeal to those yearning to learn more about mass violence, eating disorders, identity disturbance, and even suicides. We must begin to prevent these through cognitive dissonance or "pre-bunking" programs at schools.
No nation that tolerates gunfire in its schools can truly call itself free.
Psychiatry—and society at large—must embrace the concept of extreme overvalued beliefs: rigid, non-delusional convictions shared by others that can drive violent action. Recognizing and defining these beliefs with precision will strengthen criminal proceedings, improve our ability to identify perpetrators before they act, and deepen our understanding of how ideology fuels violence. Without this, the violent attacks we have come to expect with alarming regularity will persist unchecked.
Praise
No reader will finish Rahman’s book without appreciating the importance of his convincing thesis about extreme overvalued beliefs.
—Gerald Posner, New York Times bestselling author of Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK
This book provides the best analysis of the role that extreme overvalued beliefs play in assassinations, school shootings and mass murders.
—Phillip Resnick, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve University, School of Medicine
With his analysis of extreme overvalued beliefs, Dr. Rahman has made a substantial contribution to the field and secures his position as a preeminent clinical scientist.
—James L. Knoll, IV, M.D. Past President, American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
Case Study: JFK
Could the JFK attack have been thwarted? YES, with modern threat assessment tools.
On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald left the gold wedding band he had purchased in Minsk, Russia for his beautiful wife Marina in a cup on the dresser in his room—a symbol of his triggering event and also a last resort warning behavior.
Clinical and Forensic Dimensions
An extreme overvalued belief is a fixation that is shared by others in a person’s cultural, religious, or subcultural group. The belief is often relished, amplified, and defended by the possessor of the belief and should be differentiated from an obsession or a delusion. The belief grows more dominant over time, more refined and more resistant to challenge. The individual has an intense emotional commitment to the belief and may carry out violent behavior in its service.
"Human cognition is scaffolded by ancestral archetypes—deeply imprinted patterns of thought and behavior laid down in early development. These innate structures, shaped by evolution, act as cognitive templates, filtering experience and encoding identity long before conscious reflection begins." -Tahir Rahman, MD
Also by Tahir Rahman
We Came in Peace For All Mankind
The Untold Story of the Apollo 11 Silicon Disc
Upon returning from the moon, Neil Armstrong was asked by a journalist what we should do next, travel to Mars? He responded:
"Human character- this is the area we have made the least progress- learning more about the brain, about our behavior and the ways we relate to one another."
Dr. Rahman met Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 2008 to discuss how a tiny silicon disc tucked in Buzz's sleeve pocket took the messages of mankind to the moon. The disc will last on the moon for a thousand years.
