Psychiatric interview and scapegoat in penitentiary institutes

Abstract

The psychiatric interview in jail, between mental health professionals (psychiatrist, criminologist, psychologist, social worker, ecc.) and patients often shows the tendency to identify the responsibility for his deprivation of freedom, or physical and psychological sufferings, with other people or groups. These people are called enemy by patient, and can be the objective of physical violence, as a scapegoat. In these enemies or scapegoats we can put also mental health professionals. The subject matter of the present article is to describe six dynamics that allow to study in detail the creation of the enemy made by patients in penitentiary institutes: 1) The acute creation of a real enemy for a real fact; 2) The progressive and self-serving creation of an enemy; 3) An aggressive manner to control an environment seen as violent and unrestrainable; 4) An opportunity to assault the symbols of the establishment; 5) The fulfilement of the possibility to judge or punish the others in spite of being punished or judged by them; 6) The attempt to thwart the inner aggressiveness of the group. The purpose of this study is to better the mental health operators professional skills through the knowledge of their emotions when they are seen as enemies, to avoid iatrogenic injures caused by unsuited emotional responses, to understand how to use the patient’s creation of an enemy as a way to make diagnosis in a deeper way, and to better the therapeutic intervention on the patient.