Psychoanlysis and forensic psychiatry: a difficult integration

Abstract

This work aims to emphasize what should be the convergence between the analytical instrument and the forensic psychiaty and the contribution that psychoanalysis can provide in forensic evaluation. The contribution is partitioned into three parts that correspond to the three main issues discussed. The first issue relates to similarities between psychoanalysis and forensic psychiatry from a gnoseological point of view. If is possible to think of the analytical position as an instrument that allows you to build up the “story” of a person trying to not let drag from preconceived assumption or own beliefs, this is also valid in forensic psychiatry in wich is crucial to seek and record data in a falsifiability and verifiable point of view. What becomes fundamental in both fields, is the method whether is clinical or forensic, as a guarantee of the cognitive process and the “ systematic doubt” as a guarantee to the self-referentiability. The second main issue concerns the problem of the link between analytical position and the internal position of the expert during a forensic evaluation. There are two concepts depth here and that could be considered fundamental in both fields, that of “abstinence” and “optimal distance”. If abstinence for psychoanalysts is a well known concept, for the forensic evaluators is expressed as an ethical rule need to define its role in front of the Magistrate and those who have to evaluate. The expert is, in fact, in a difficult position different from that of the doctor with the patient. The concept of optimal distance implies, however, the need to find a “proper distance” between analyst and patient as between the forensic evaluator and who is evaluated. Obviously in forensic practice that neutrality is even more difficult by the emotional response, that can’t be eliminated, of the technician in front of the offender and the victim. The third issue as to do with the concept of real and reality with wich both analyst and the forensic psychiatrist have to compare. The expert is not called to account for the reality of the case, he can’t and should not, unlike the Magistrate, define the reality, the scope of inquiry of the expert is the clinical reality of the expertise not its historical reality. In this the forensic function and the analytical one profoundly differ as the reality of the analytic pair is usable only by that particular patient and analyst while, what is noted by the forensic evaluator must be certified and guaranteed by scientific laws of coverage.