Emotional crime From love to murder

HEINFRIED DUNCKER, Professor of Humanities at the University of Kassel, head physician at various forensic psychiatric hospitals and addictology units, expert court psychiatrist.

This book explains emotional crimes, acts that veer from a context of love and eroticism towards overt violence. The chosen approach moves away from exclusively intrapsychic, or psychoanalytic, models of analysis, to also take into account the interactions taking place between intrapsychic, interpersonal and institutional factors. It thus abandons the perspective focused on the crime itself. It is imperative to integrate the phase upstream of an emotional crime into the analysis, in order to determine under what conditions a subject's questioning suddenly provokes violent or even murderous behavior, and, conversely, what factors have little or no effect on the couple's stability. This concept also moves away from a purely legal perspective. It is closely linked to the formation of successful intersubjectivity in love relationships. These reflections will enable specialists in couples in conflict situations to better grasp the situations in which there is a predisposition to act out, in order to prevent violent developments.