The narrative structure of psychiatric reports

Verde, Alfredo; Angelini, Francesca; Boverini, Silvia; Margherita, Majorana

doi:10.1016/j.ijlp.2004.01.012

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Aspects of this idea are not alien to some narrative criminologists. For example, Verde et al (2006: 7) introduce Lacan’s concept of ‘the Real’ as that which is ‘beyond the domain of speech’ and ‘the world before the first man could name [it]’. But the implications of ‘the Real’ for selfhood are less clearly articulated.…”

Section: The ‘Experiencing Self’mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This focus does not constitute a kind of ‘imperialistic licence’ to privilege the unconscious self ‘over and above conscious motives’ (Forrester, 1991: 68). Furthermore, a small number of recent publications in narrative criminology have turned their attention to ‘stories unsaid’ and the ‘not said’ in their accounts (Fleetwood, 2016; Presser, 2016; Verde et al, 2006). For example, in their study of psychiatric reports, Verde et al (2006: 6) argue ‘every text contains a certain amount of the “unsaid”’.…”

Section: The ‘Unconscious Self’mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reimaging ‘the Self’ in Criminology: Transcendence, Unconscious States and the Limits of Narrative Criminology

Laws

2020

Theoretical Criminology

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Notions of ‘the self’ in criminology are rarely explored or defined, which is surprising given how pervasively the term is used. According to narrative criminology, the self is generated and moulded by the stories we tell; our identity emerges through narrative scripts and these stories motivate future action. But this understanding of selfhood is quite narrow. This article attempts to widen it by separating selfhood into three categories: ‘the reflexive self’ (the person we think we are); ‘the unconscious self’ (things we do not know that shape us); and ‘the experiencing self’ (the in-the-moment, living and breathing feeling of being alive). The article begins with a critical engagement with the field of narrative criminology which tends to address ‘the reflexive self’ somewhat in isolation. Then a number of findings in criminology, psychology and theology are presented which reveal alternative notions of selfhood. This includes engaging with theological accounts that can be described as transcendent or transpersonal. Second, psychoanalytic research notes how our behaviour is often motivated by unconscious processes that are hard to reconcile with traditional notions of selfhood. There is a call to bring these different ‘selves’ into dialogue and to draw cleaner distinctions between them. Increasing our understanding of selfhood helps us to think more clearly about key criminological debates, such as the causal mechanisms undergirding adaptation and desistance from crime.

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Section: The ‘Experiencing Self’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The ‘Unconscious Self’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reimaging ‘the Self’ in Criminology: Transcendence, Unconscious States and the Limits of Narrative Criminology

Laws

2020

Theoretical Criminology

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“…Jackson-Jakobs 2004, Maruna and Copes 2005, Jimerson and Oware 2006, Green et al 2006, Copes et al 2008, Sandberg 2009a). Most explicitly, Verde et al (2006; Verde and Nurra 2010) studied psychiatric reports as narrative products and criminal profiling as plotting activity. So when Presser coined the term narrative criminology in 2009, it might be seen as a third beginning.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The past, present, and future of narrative criminology: A review and an invitation

Sandberg¹,

Ugelvik²

2016

Crime, Media, Culture

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As J.W. Ironmonger's 2012 novel The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder opens, the protagonist Max is lying face up, dead, on his own front room dining table. On his 21 st birthday, Max decided to lock himself in his apartment, curtains drawn, to systematically map his entire brain's contents for his thesis work in philosophy at the University of Cambridge. The project was supposed to last three years. Three decades later, his fifty-one year old body is surrounded by his life's work: Shelves filled with 1600 books and folders, including 358 volumes of autobiographical monologue painstakingly recorded on note paper and bound in red leather (the so-called 'narrative volumes'). His 'Catalogue' also includes shelves after shelves of grey A4 lever-arch files (the 'day logs') recording experiences that strictly speaking should not have happened. When a leaky pipe, a blown light bulb or a heavy thunderstorm interrupted the project, Max had to record it for the sake of completion. This everyday "mess" should have been "controlled away" to leave Max's 21-year-old brain pure and pristine and untainted by ongoing events. Unfortunately, life had a habit of intruding on his ongoing storytelling project with new events, making the task never-ending. Max's life was spent trying to tell his own life's story without actually living it. Death has now made his catalogue complete. The story has ended. Or has it? What is the end of a story, and where does it begin? The sharing of stories is an important part of the human condition. People seem to have a fundamental drive to tell and listen to them. We use them to communicate and reproduce ingroup solidarity. They may provoke strong emotions. They may be simultaneously entertaining and educational; it is no coincidence that we tell children stories to help them understand and explore a chaotic world. One reason is that storytelling is a basic device for creating, providing and assigning meaning. Stories are good at making simple what is complicated. At the same time, some of the complexity is retained because stories by their very nature are ambiguous and openended. They are an important resource in everyday life and in times of celebration and difficulty; crucial for the way we live, and for the organisation of society. Even our very identity and sense of self is narratively constructed. We make sense of ourselves and our relationships with others by sharing stories and through our individual ongoing inner narrative. Stories are, simply put, at the core of what makes us who and what we are. Narrative criminology refers to the study of the role the telling and sharing of stories play in committing, upholding and effecting desistance from crime and other harmful acts. It is hard to say when the story of narrative criminology began. It is, perhaps, one of those stories that have several beginnings. One very early beginning can be traced back to ancient Athens. In Poetics, Aristotle (2013), the grandfather of all narrative analysis, laid out the founding principles of modern-day narratolo...

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“…It is therefore essential to reconstruct the entire personal history of both the murderer and the victim, how their relationship developed, the personality of both, and their unique experiences, and, finally, how the relationship, too often, became fossilized in the pathological condition that triggered the crime (Griffith, Stankovic, & Baranoski, 2010;Verde, Angelini, Boverini, & Majorana, 2006;Carabellese, Rocca, Candelli, & Catanesi, 2014). In conclusion, the peculiar dynamics of the mother-son relationship, as well as the unique personalities and life experiences of both and, naturally, the seriousness of the mental illness, are-in our opinion-the real key to cases of matricide.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Matricide by Mentally Disordered Sons

Catanesi

Rocca

Candelli

et al. 2014

Int J Offender Ther Comp Criminol

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Matricide is one of the rarest of reported murders and has always been considered one of the most abhorrent crimes. Psychiatric investigations as to why a son might murder his mother yield indications of a high rate of mental illness, primarily psychotic disorders, in perpetrators. In an attempt to gain an in-depth understanding of the role of the mother-son bond in the etiology of matricide by mentally disordered sons, this article presents a qualitative study of nine cases of matricide examined at two Italian Forensic Psychiatry Departments between 2005 and 2010 and retrospective analysis of forensic psychiatry reports on the offenders. Most matricides suffered from psychotic disorders, especially schizophrenia. Nevertheless, not all the perpetrators had psychotic symptoms at the time of the crime. A "pathologic" mother-son bond was found in all cases. However, mental illness is not the only variable related to matricide and, taken alone, is not enough to explain the crime. Several factors in the history of the mother and son need to be probed, especially how their relationship developed over the years. The peculiar dynamics of the mother-son relationship and the unique personalities and life experiences of both subjects are the real key to cases of matricide.

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The narrative structure of psychiatric reports

Cited by 10 publications

References 4 publications

Reimaging ‘the Self’ in Criminology: Transcendence, Unconscious States and the Limits of Narrative Criminology

Reimaging ‘the Self’ in Criminology: Transcendence, Unconscious States and the Limits of Narrative Criminology

The past, present, and future of narrative criminology: A review and an invitation

Matricide by Mentally Disordered Sons

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