Harvey Schlossberg (January 27, 1936 – May 21, 2021) was a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer, Freudian psychoanalyst, and the founder of modern crisis negotiation.
There, he performed emotional testing to assess the well-being of prospective and current colleagues in the NYPD, and was made director of psychological services in 1974.
He advocated containing a hostage situation to a restricted area, with police starting negotiations, keeping up communications with the hostage-takers, and gaining their trust in the hopes that they would change course and free their captives.
[1] He trained over 70,000 crisis negotiators globally, and his theories were eventually adopted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The documentary premiered at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, won the Metropolis Award at Doc NYC, and was selected by Dr. Carla Hayden as the Grand Prize Winner of the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film in October 2020.
[1][7] After leaving the NYPD in 1978, Schlossberg served as chief psychologist for the Rye Police Department from 1988 to 1994, as well as for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from 1990 to 1999.
[1][7] During his later years, he resided in Forest Hills, Queens, where he also kept a private practice and hung a portrait of Sigmund Freud in his office.