NCJ Number
70762
Journal
Revue de science criminelle et de droit penal compare Issue: 2 Dated: (April-June 1979) Pages: 381-397
Date Published
1979
Length
17 pages
Annotation
The interrogation-confession situation is interpreted from the standpoint of modern psychological views on ego levels, personality structure, and interaction with the environment.
Abstract
According to the theory of the personality expressed in Eric Berne's 'Games People Play,' the ego consists of three levels -- the parent, the adult, and the child. In the course of normal social interchange, the ego glides from one level to the other, depending on the outside stimuli and how they are received by the individual personality. Under stress, the ego functions in an adult fashion, acting under control and mastering the immediate situation. When the stress becomes intense, the subsystems of the personality may lose their differentiation, and the internal and external zones of the personality may become confused. In a face-to-face criminological situation, a number of forms of confession are possible, but the confession process is rarely determined by egocentrism alone. Other factors such as instability, aggressivity, and emotional indifference may contribute to the process. In the psychoanalytic situation tensions between body and psyche are relaxed, and cure is achieved through verbalization without pressure from the analyst. In the interrogation situation, the psychological apparatus is put in the vertical, resisting the present situation and the words of the interrogating individual. The interrogator works with words, interpreting the replies of the offender. The confession may in the interrogation situation become a sort of tragic object relation. Considering the confession process from the perspective of psychoanalytical metapsychology and studying the psychological state of the individual under interrogation promise to produce improved results. The drama of the face-to-face interrogation and revival of certain memories can produce changes in the structure of the personality of the accused similar to the changes brought about by the mechanisms of psychoanalysis. The interrogation process is, in fact, direct analysis in which the interrogator suggests scenarios and interprets actions. By approaching interrogation as maternal security figures rather than representatives of force and macho heroism, police may in the future be able to explore new possibilities of personal expansion and to remove interrogation situations from the level of the primary reaction. Several notes are supplied.