L’agression de la victime, une modalité de gestion de la conflictualité psychique et de restauration d’une continuité interne

Abstract

ObjectivesThis article deals about the psychical functions of victims in the psychical economy of the author of violent and sexual offences. We will show that for the subjects whom the dynamic of the aggression refers to a defensive reaction against identity and objectal anxiety, the recourse to the victim in the aggression, holds a function of internal continuity in facing the identity discontinuity. Subjects, materials and methodsThis article is based on penal expertises and researches about sexual and violent infractions. The subjects are authors of sexual or violent offences. The collection of the data is carried out by the Entretien d’Évaluation du Processus de Passage à l’Acte (EEPPA). Conceived in a chronological way refering to the periods preceding the infraction, the period of the infraction and the period after the infraction, the EEPPA reconstructing the course of the aggression, starting from the way in which the subject says having perceived, having lived and having behaved before, during and after the act. This analysis is completed with data issues from the penal files, and data relating to the history of life and the psychical operating mode of the subject (apprehended from the transnosographic psychodynamic point of view). ResultsIn bond with the identity or narcissistic and objectal vulnerabilities, we recorded in a numerous life trajectories, the importance of the environment of life and the psychical functions assured by the objects within this one, in order to maintain a psychical stability and to avoid the emergence of anxiety. The identity or narcissistic and objectal vulnerabilities related to the difficulties of separation and individuation, can induce operations in externality and psychic phenomena of export. These drawing an “intermediate space” of psychic working. This borrows to the internal and external worlds. It constitutes a psychic space of substitution to which the subject recourse, in order to export there and to regulate himself through out this space the psychical conflictuality (or a-conflictuality) that can’t elaborate in their internal world. The analysis of the situational contexts before the act, show that the aggression of the victim can be a means of facing the appearance of major anxiety. Two psychic functions of the victim in the act are presented and illustrated with clinical labels. The anti-depressive function and the function of regulation and maintenance of the control relational. ConclusionsThe aggression of the victim constitutes a defensive movement on the psychic level related to major anxiety at the psychological level. This psychic movement, which is given to see at the behavioral level with the act of aggression, lead to “the fainding” of the victim at the intersubjective level, when, paradoxically, at the same time the subject needs it at the intra-psychic level.