Emotional reactions to the interview with the murderer

Abstract

The most frequent emotional reactions of an interlocutor (criminologist, psychiatrist, magistrate, etc.) to the interview with a murderer are here described from a clinical qualitative point of view. The work deals in particular with the emotional reactions of the interlocutor about: a) violent behaviour; b) mental psychopathology; c) absence of mental psychopathology; d) murderer's defensive mechanism; e) the transformation of the victim's image; f) the interpersonal relationship between the murderer and the interlocutor; g) the use of the interview in different contexts (judicial, psychiatrical, custodial, ecc.). The knowledge of these emotive reactions could be useful for a better understanding (by all the institutional figures that have contacts with murderers) of criminal-genesis and criminal-dynamics and for the improvement of the quality of evalutation and treatment, as well as for a correct forensis interpretation of clinical cases.