Psychodynamic aspects of violent criminal behaviour

Having examined the salient features of serious and "difficult" patients in light of modern psychodynamic knowledge, the author moves on to the study of offenders, outlining their fundamental traits and psychodynamic framework that produces the crime through the analysis of the most authoritative scientific contributions and by illustrating a significant "institutional" case. At least initially, the framework is quite similar to that of severe and violent patients in psychiatry. In other words, the criminal uses the same archaic defensive tools, well-known in psychoanalysis and widely used by psychotics and borderline cases: scission, negation, projection and, above all, projective identification. Projective identification follows on from the projection of the separative and toxic parts of the patient's personality in external containers (e. G. The care team), which are identified with the toxic ejectors, confirming the patient's assumption that they are actually dangerous objects to be distanced, as cartwrig has emphasised. According to kleinian theory, this archaic defence dates back to the the schizo-paranoid phase of early childhood, when the infant divides the mother into two parts: one good and one bad, one loving and a rejecting (the first is symbolically represented by the breast that gives milk, the second from the breast that is not immediately available, and therefore rejects). By projecting the bad parts externally, serious patients often produce irremediable separations in the care team, dividing, manipulating and controlling it, unless a psychotherapeutic intervention is carried out on the group as soon as possible. However, according to hyatt-williams, criminals do not limit themselves to the externalisation of divided parts and to the control of the containers, but rather they launch a direct and violent attack against them, destroying them or severely depriving them. As such, the container then becomes the victim of serious personal injuries, murder or rape. Clearly, something is obstructing the process of projective identification, and such a primitive form of defence can no longer fulfil the function for which first arose, i. E. The estrangement and distancing of psychotic anguish from the subject's mind. One hypothesis to explain this could be an excessive use thereof, with the emptying and self-destruction of the self resulting in an unmistakable void and an uncontrollable sense of anger, which can trigger hetero-aggressive behaviours and self-harm. Alternatively, it could be that the container of the projections is so strongly identified with the primary sadistic figure (caregivers) who was then distanced that it constitutes a dangerous re-issue, as in the case illustrated in the text: the case of z. At that point, the offender would move to action (the criminal acting out), pervaded by non-distanced psychotic anxieties, which could fragment them definitively or lead them to suicide if reintroduced, when they then destroy the container and contained. Finally, it may also be an innate, or precocious acquired, inability to understand the emotions of others, in addition to their own, of course (environmental failure in the first months of life in sec. Bion, or inability to recognise early emotions on the face of the mother, sec. Fonagy). This would result in a reification of the other, treated as an object, for whom the criminal cannot experience any positive feeling or pity. The studies by british neuroscientist Baron-Cohen's also develop in this direction, which was previously outlined by psychoanalysts are inspired by the object relations model. In fact, cohen group by using neuroimaging (rmnf) methods in severe character disorders such as anti-social behaviour, demonstrated the hypofunction of certain brain circuits involved in learning, processing and processing other people's emotions (lack of empathy, studied with appropriate test batteries, which can reach up to 0 degrees, sec. Cohen). However, understanding the psychodynamic framework that differentiates serious patients from criminals at a certain point, causing them to diverge, becomes crucial in general criminology and clinical management, particularly in the analysis of the criminogenesis and criminodynamics of the offence. As Yessika Yakely writes in her article, it is only through an analysis of these dynamics that we can produce forensic psychotherapists who not only care about the offender, but also the team that takes care of them in the various places of custody and/or care, using the same approach that has been applied in classical psychiatric institutions for some time, with group psychotherapy work carried out on the care team.