Criminology and Graphology in Mental Disorders
Dario Furnari*
University of exeter, UK
Submission: February 27, 2020; Published: March 04, 2020
*Corresponding author: Dario Furnari, University of exeter, UK
How to cite this article: Dario F. Criminology and Graphology in Mental Disorders. Palliat Med Care Int J. 2020; 3(3): 555612. DOI: 10.19080/PMCIJ.2020.03.555612
Opinion
Over the past twenty years, in the era of CSI, Criminal Minds, a new figure of psycho-detective has emerged, able to face the darkest and most inaccessible aspects of the criminal mind; or the criminologist who is a profound connoisseur of what is most horrible hiding in the human soul. For different reasons and on the basis of the most heterogeneous emotional scenarios, each of us has a series of ‘’ inner triggers ‘’ (emotional triggers) ready to fire when and if the triggering conditions occur. At the crime scene there is an important common denominator that emerges: killing basically represents a way to solve a problem; whether it is large or small, this problem is of little importance, because what matters is only the point of view of the murderer
We are all potential killers and we are all potential victims. Criminologists are those who study criminal behavior and they operate mainly in the penitentiary sector in Italy as a support to the judiciary, nor is it a delicate task to identify the most suitable methods for the execution of the sentence; then there is the so-called investigative criminologist who focuses mainly on the application of criminological cognitive tools, that is, the profiler criminologist capable of entering the criminal’s mind and understanding its functioning. Thus was born criminal profiling, an analysis technique through which a psycho-behavioral profile is developed, helping investigators to manage their list of suspects more effectively. The outcome of the profiling is a sort of portrait that contains biographical, psychological and behavioral information and information on a still unknown criminal figure. It costs six stages:
a) Profiling input: collection of all available information on the crime scene.
b) Decision process models: organization of the information collected.
c) Crime assess ment: reconstruction of the offender’s behavior.
d) Criminal profiling: typological elaboration of the suspect.
e) Investigation: phase in which a written report is drawn up which is then delivered to the investigators.
f) Apprehension: detection and capture.
Graphology and criminology
The relationship between graphology and criminology represents a very interesting relationship and places graphology among the numerous investigative disciplines capable of making a contribution to the crime scene. There are numerous cases brought to public opinion by the mass media that often create too spasmodic attention, especially for audience reasons, also reaching conclusions that sometimes overwhelm the work of the persons responsible for the investigations. Even graphology, as a discipline, does not escape certain forms of exploitation and spectacle which often prove to be harmful and which, in any case, give the discipline an incorrect position. Just browse the internet galaxy to find hasty analyzes of the protagonists of the most heinous crimes committed in recent times. Several cases are solved with risky analyzes and out of the right “context”. The term context in Morettian graphology has a very important meaning, because, practically, if the context changes, even the same graphological sign can acquire a totally different value.
This is the remarkable contribution that Morettti, a great protagonist of Italian graphology, has given to this discipline, capable of defining those “qualities that are individualizing. The graphological approach, which does not have the presumption of replacing any other study discipline, nor does it want to elaborate diagnosis of the competence of medicine, psychiatry or psychology, opens up a cognitive opportunity for the subject, through the study of his writing. The relationship between man and writing is profound and complex and the discipline that studies this link is inevitably complex, if not magical.
Attempting to correctly frame the approach with the graphological discipline right away is a way to grasp the reasons for a relationship that is most useful to the society in which we live, also because we are in a world in which all borders have become blurred and even the criminal or deviant subject has become more indefinite and difficult to perceive. It is difficult to establish a border between normality and abnormality. To speak of deviance and maladjustment presupposes to speak of adaptation, since it is clear that it is the context that renders problematic what in itself would not be. In writing we will never find the signs of crime, but a disintegrated context or a graphic mask that includes the signs of closure, fiction or psychic vulnerability. The graphological profile represents a contribution to enter the mind of the perpetrator of the crime and helps to make visible what is not always visible. Writing helps to get into the biological and acquired personality
One of the deepest causes of the crime is the pleasure that the subject feels in committing a criminal act. This pleasure implies physical and spiritual involvement, which justifies immoral and deviant actions in themselves. Handwriting analyzes the dark side, it can help to understand the reasons for forms of aggression behind social masks, which are almost perfect alibis. Graphology can help understand the limit between order and disorder, between harmony and chaos, between memory and oblivion. By helping us to do this, it helps to discover that violence is not only lodged within us, but it can also help us in that form of prevention whereby it is the encounter with the environment that can trigger the irreparable or can lead to salvation . A criminal personality is more present in an individual who is unable to integrate the potential he possesses and is unable to have a positive relationship with the environment in which he lives. There is a part of the self that acquires a negative dominance, feels pleasure in doing this and makes aggression a rule of life. Lying with respect to these situations, for certain subjects, can become a way to mask an even more difficult reality to accept. Aggression becomes a way to overcome frustration and give vent to long-held or hidden vital expressions. Often in the crime there is the recovery of a lost identity, the discovery that the other, the victim, is an object. At the same time, a person can have the germ of crime, that is, a predisposition to risk and maladaptation, but this does not imply that he cannot creatively channel his potential madness, dissolving any risk of antisociality. There is no precise relationship between crime and mental disorders, although the fact that there are more criminals among those with psychiatric disorders than those who do not have them is true. There may be situations of abuse, mistreatment, refusal, abandonment, but they are not sufficient to make an individual criminal. Aggression is triggered by a biochemistry that calls into question our chemical potential for adrenaline, serotonin, dopamine, testosterone that develop not only for genetic causes, but also as a consequence of the environmental situation. Environmental responsibility becomes a sociological function even before a psychological one; the deviant subject must be rendered harmless and limited in the damage it can produce, but in the same way it must be recovered. The perspective from which the mismatch must be looked at is such that recovery then becomes the fundamental aspect with which we must confront. Knowing a discipline that, especially with minors, can help us establish a fair relationship between you and me is a strong point for any judicial action that aims to re-educate. The re-educational action cannot be separated from the knowledge of that psycho-physical nature, of that “innate basis” which, although transforming and evolving, always remains such and is observable through writing. Graphology as a science, through a precise method, quantifiable and also measurable, has the originality of seeing individuality and also of analyzing history, readable through some particular graphic categories. If distinguishing the innate from the acquired is a problem in psychology, for graphology this aspect represents a strength. Writing, spontaneous movement activated by the brain, electrocenfalogram of the brain, specifies the organizational dynamics of the personality that changes based on the experiences and education received from the environment. Referring to the research work carried out by Isabella Zucchi, psychologist and graphologist, who has worked for a long time in the district prison of Pesaro the scholar, through direct observation of the handwriting of the prisoners, has found the following aspects with some frequency:
a. alterations of self-conception
b. difficulty in managing emotions
c. disordered impulsivity
d. insecurities
e. anxieties (not recognized by the subject)
f. mythomaniac tendencies
g. immaturity in emotional development
h. thought lacking objectivity in evaluating things
i. strong influence
j. suggestibility
k. unresolved conflicts with the father figure
l. emotional dependence on the mother
Neurobiology of aggression and violence
Psychopathological violence in criminals and intense aggression in fruit flies and rodents are studied with behavioral, neurobiological and genetic approaches that characterize the escalation of aggressiveness adaptive to violence. One of the objectives is to delineate the type of aggressive behavior and its escalation with greater precision, secondly, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the structures of the brain stem emerge as cardinal nodes of the limbic circuit to mediate aggressive escalation behavior. The neurochemical and molecular work focuses on the genes that allow invertebrate aggression in males and females and genes that are expressed or suppressed following aggressive experiences in mammals. The unsuccessful gene, immediate early genes in discrete serotonin neurons, or sex chromosome genes identify sexually differentiated mechanisms for aggression escalation. Male, but not female, fruit flies establish hierarchical relationships in fights and learn from previous fighting experiences. By manipulating either the unsuccessful or gene transformer in the brains of male or female flies, aggression patterns can be switched with males using female patterns and vice versa. Work with anti or SRY genes so far suggests that other genes on the X chromosomes may have a more critical role in female mouse aggression. New data from wild mice indicate regulatory influences on mesocortical serotonin circuits in very aggressive animals via autoreceptor assessments and via GABAergic and glutamatergic inputs. Imaging data lead to the hypothesis that the antisocial, violent and psychopathic behavior may be partly attributable to devaluations in some of the brain structures (dorsal and ventral PFC, amygdala and angular gyrus) that underlie moral cognition and emotion. Review, Journal of Neuroscience.
Conclusion
Psychological or psychiatric criminology must look beyond people who have reached the final stage of the legal process to understand the ‘criminal mind’. There is a filter like ‘suspect’, ‘arrested’, ‘accused’, ‘convicted’ for the final label of convict, prisoner inmate or criminal shows channeling effect. This means that only fewer and fewer individuals reach the next stage of the trial. criminal justice, which is called ‘the great pyramid of the legal order’ or ‘legal iceberg’.