The relation in perverse couples as a violence matrix: criminological considerations on a casuistry

Abstract

This work aims at studying the meaning of the alterations of personal relationships recognized as the origin of crimes committed within a couple in cases with abnormal affective and sexual relation, even prolonged in time. This type of relations can be better defined as “going to perversion”, rather than “perverse”, as in the affective and sexual dynamics paraphilia appears functional to the mainteinance of the relation itself. By “couple” it is meant an over-individual system characterized by a series of needs and dynamics implying different ways of functioning, so that the “couple” is very different from the sum of its parts. This implies an adequate affective investment and a sufficient emotional involvement between the partners, because such an exchange makes easier the expression of the intimacy and stability that has already been experienced by each of them in their relationship with their parents and has then been transferred in the adult relation with the other. So there is not “being” a couple, but rather “becoming” a couple, where the relation is of a kind that allows the growth of its members and their adaptation to the environment and its changes. In this perspective being “with” and “for” the other consists in giving value and sense to the personal and the other’s existence. In the disfunctional couple, the relation does not promote the wellbeing of its members. This couple works on the bases of misunderstandings, coertions and exploitations, so that it becomes pathogenic. It gets to crossroads: it becomes collusive (and is based on silence and unsaid) or accumulates aggressiveness and destructivness, sooner or later expressed through and with crimes. In these kinds of couples the relation is so various that it makes it necessary to define the difference between the concept of episodic perverse conduct (occasional defence strategy) and stable perverse structure; moreover, the difference between perversion (well structured deviation of sexual instinct, in which sexual act has nothing to do with a real alter-egoic communication) and perversity, in which the psychic object does not form or is formed only partially, and others do not have their own individuality. In these subjects (the so called perverse personalities), particularly destructive components are expressed, and the sexual act represents a corollary. In the so called perverse couples there is a consistency between the organization of individual personality and the paraphilic conduct; the perverse conduct is functional to the interpersonal relation, because this kind of relation allows partners to follow their unfinished functioning and psychic organization levels. One becomes instrument of the other and never becomes subject. In order to understand the criminogenesis and criminodynamics of violent conduct in the so called perverse couple, it is necessary to analyze not only the single subjects, but in particular the typology of their relation. We have examined seven couples in a period of nine years, which have come to observation for criminal behaviour emerged during separation. The relation had been about five years long and all couples revealed an apparently sufficient integration in the social tissue. They all displayed a paraphlic behaviour (mostly sadomasochism, but also wife-swappering, transvestism, exhibitionism, voyeurism). The type of couple was defined on the basis of the predominant behaviour model, although some of the couples have showed more paraphilic kinds of conduct. These types of behaviour, carried out by couples seeming well-estabilished on the family level and well integrated on the social level, are often interpreted, within the so called “new perversions”, as situations at the “borderline” between slavery and freedom, or as an antidote against boredom. The Authors, although refusing such a superficial interpretation, which turns out to be disclaimed by the cases in object, that point out a disorganized personality structure in both members of the couple, as well as an unfinished personal identity and an essential inability to affective investment, that prevent them from a true object relation. The paraphilic conduct, on one side, is correlated to the personality structure of the subjects, whereas, on the other side, it justifies interpersonal dynamics characterized by constant aggresivity and reification of the partner. In such highly dysfunctional couples the absence of an adequate object for investment recalls necessarily a personal identity that - on the psychoevolutive level - was formed without a real alter-egoic comparison. The inborn destructivness in these kinds of relationship refers to the lack of the “other”, conceived as both a “matrix” of the Self and the “limit” according to which the affective erotic relation is organized. The relational approach to paraphilia, especially if acted in the context of “going to” perversion couples, allows to identify premonitory signs and dynamics of inborn aggressivity of such relations. Furthermore, these relationships - after a growing tension and a conflict phase that destabilize the apparent balance and its corresponding egosintonic paraphilia - end up with the destruction of the couple itself. The denounced offences, such as personal injury, attempted murder, sexual violence, induction to prostitution, etc., are the most evident aspect of aggressiveness subtended to the interpersonal dynamics of the couple.