Offenses motivated by erotic jealousy committed by mentally healthy people.

Abstract

Most often jealousy is treated as a complex mental phenomenon, which consists of changes in emotional state, in cognitive and behavioral spheres, caused by erotic infidelity of a partner or a feeling of insecurity caused by a rival. It is estimated that factors contributing to this are a combination of dynamic affiliative factors, personality traits as well as environmental and social factors. Jealousy can take a reactive, anxious or possessive forms. This paper aims to present multifactorial genesis of jealousy, which leads to aggressive behaviors, usually in a form of domestic violence, but also resulting in homicides. Factors contributing to the occurrence of aggressive behaviors include specific personality traits of perpetrators as well as external variables, often constant and growing conflicts with the environment, usually multiplied by strong negative emotions directly preceding aggressive attacks. Acts motivated by jealousy often cause juridical difficulties in forensic psychiatry, both in the scope of diagnosis, determination of sanity related to the accusation, as well as in validity of the use of security measures. Identification of the nature of different types of jealousy, their dimensions and various conditioning can contribute to apt judicial-psychiatric assessments.