Dr. Keith Ablow in the news son

When Dr. Keith Ablow met the man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller, he saw a courtly figure with neatly combed hair and an air of dreamy erudition. Rockefeller looked oddly at ease in his orange prison jumpsuit, spinning tales about sailing on his private boat and horseback riding as a boy. Over the course of several days, they sat for 12 hours in the cinderblock room. “And eventually,’’ Ablow says, “he told me the truth.’’

“Truth’’ is a word that Ablow - forensic psychiatrist, author, and television personality - uses liberally. “I have an inherent desire to get to the truth,’’ he says. “Whenever the truth has more of a voice in the judicial process, that’s a good thing. I encourage a dogged pursuit of personal truth.’’ His self-help book, published in 2007, is titled “Living the Truth.’’

The truth about Rockefeller, Ablow says, was the reason the man spent his life duping the world with invented personas: His father had abused him throughout his childhood. In court, Ablow asserted that Rockefeller had a psychiatric disorder stemming from his traumatic past.

The jury disagreed. Rockefeller was found guilty of parental kidnapping. But Ablow was undiscouraged. After all, Ablow - who has testified in defense of some of the country’s most notorious criminals and written a series of mystery thrillers about a forensic psychiatrist wrestling with his own demons - built his career on plumbing the shadowy depths of the human psyche. And he knows that kindling empathy for con artists, rapists, and murderers isn’t easy.

“Prosecutors sometimes tell me, ‘You think of this as a thriller rather than a real legal case,’ ’’ says Ablow, 47. “Now that I’ve had a talk show, people say, ‘Is this just grandstanding for you?’ But I like to think of the work I’ve done in the media as an opportunity to convey ideas I care deeply about to a lot of people.’’

“The Dr. Keith Ablow Show,’’ a syndicated talk show that debuted in 2006, lasted one season. “It became easier to gloss over people’s problems and provide kissy solutions, and it ended up looking like all other talk shows that have come and gone,’’ said Andy Regal, who was a senior producer for the program. Today, Ablow frequently speaks on Fox News about topics ranging from serial killers to Mischa Barton’s mental state. He recently appeared on Howard Stern’s show to conduct on-air therapy with a self-described alien abductee.

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