Pierre Schützenberger (1888–1973) : un aliéniste,expert dans l’affaire des sœurs Papin (Partie I)

In Le Mans on 2 February 1933: Christine and Lea Papin murdered savagely their patroness Mrs Léonie Lancelin and her daughter, Geneviève, at their home. A trial that excited the whole of France and defrayed the chronicle. Pierre Schützenberger (1888–1973) was the head doctor at the mental asylum of Le Mans. The day after the crime, he was appointed as psychiatric expert. As a few weeks later, he shall be assisted in this task by Victor Truelle (1871–1938) and Jacques Baruk (1872–1975). Every two was alienists. The first was a head doctor at Sainte-Anne hospital in Paris and the second at Saint-Gemmes-sur-Loire asylum near Anger. The experts took the clear position of the absolute responsability of the defendants. A correspondence between Schützenberger and the psychiatrist Louis Le Guillant (1900–1968) allows us, on the one hand, to go behind the scenes of this expertise, which was vigorously challenged during and after the trial and, on the other hand, to situate it in the context of the 1930s. There was not a possible psychological analysis for P. Schützenberger in this case. As illustrated his non-published conference on freudism that was held on 9th March 1933. When reading one of this we note that he was very sceptical by the introduction of Psychoanalysis, which appeared to him to be a backward step compared with the French Somatical School's use of biological notions in Psychopathology.     

Major mental disorders,gender, and criminological circumstances of homicide

ObjectiveTo examine the criminological circumstances of homicide in a group of French murderers with and without major mental disorders (MMD) stratified by the perpetrator's gender.MethodsSociodemographic, clinical, and criminological variables were collected from the psychiatric expert reports of 210 cases of homicide heard at the High Court of Angers, France. Murderers were categorized according to MMD diagnosis and gender.ResultsAmong 210 murderers, 17.6% (n = 37) had a MMD (20% of the female perpetrators). Logistic regression models showed that being a murderer with a MMD was associated with younger age (adjusted Odds Ratio OR = 1.03, P = 0.034), high school education (OR = 2.48, P = 0.036), previous use of psychiatric services (OR = 4.75, P = 0.003), alcohol intoxication (OR = 2.71, P = 0.027), and delusional state (OR = 3.96, P = 0.002) at the time of the homicide. Multiple correspondence analyses showed that female murderers with a MMD were more prone to have depression and to use drowning as a method than those without a MMD, and that male murderers with a MMD more often had a high school education and delusional beliefs at the time of the homicide than those without a MMD.ConclusionSpecific profiles of criminological circumstances of homicide could help to explore the risk of homicide in female and male patients with a MMD.     

Intimate partner violence against women in Spain: A medico-legal and criminological study

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant worldwide problem whose magnitude and risk factors vary across different settings and cultures. Nowadays, it is a priority to improve the knowledge on this issue in order to formulate better evidence-based policy responses. This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of non-fatal IPV against women in Spain. A retrospective analysis of IPV cases with a final judicial decision was carried out. The period under study extended from January 2005 to December 2012, with a total of 582 files included in the investigation. Most IPV victims were young adult women of Spanish origin, either married or single, with children, unemployed and with a low family income level. The majority of alleged perpetrators were young adults, employed, with a middle-low income level, a history of alcohol consumption/abuse, but no criminal records. Most victims had previous history of IPV, were engaged in a long-term relationship with their abuser and lived with him at the time of assault. The combination of psychological and physical abuse was the most frequent form of violence. The most common mechanisms of assault consisted in minor acts of physical violence, which resulted in mild injuries, most of them in the upper limbs and face. Nearly half of women sought medical care, but physician's injury report was only made in about a quarter of these cases, even though it is mandatory for health professionals. The majority of criminal proceedings were initiated by the victim's report and ended in conviction, most of them being considered occasional mistreatment. This study confirms the heterogeneity of the phenomenon of intimate partner violence. The importance of adopting standard IPV concepts and promoting the recognition and assessment of this form of violence amongst health care professionals, criminal investigators and forensic personnel is emphasized.     

Pierre Schützenberger (1888–1973) : un aliéniste,expert dans l’affaire des sœurs Papin (Partie II)

Originally from an ancient Protestant family of the Alsace area, that has produced renowned Scientists and Artists over the past centuries, the name of Pierre Schützenberger (1879–1973) remains associated with the case of the Papin sisters where he was appointed expert along with Victor Truelle (1871–1938) and Jacques Baruk (1872–1975). Appointed to the Seine Asylum competition in 1924, Schützenberger persued his career in various provincial Asylums or Psychiatric Hospitals: Pontorson (1925–1929), Le Mans (1933–1934), La Charité-sur-Loire (1930–1932), Blois (1935–1943), Moulin-Izeure (1944–1945). During the German occupation, he was sentenced and imprisoned in the military jails of Orléans and Blois for 45 days. He had hidden some sanitary equipment to the Germans. During the German occupation, he was considered as anti-German then he sentenced by national unworthiness (in September, 1945–in May, 1949) at the Liberation. Maurice Lecomte was his colleague at Blois’ Hospital. He has qualified him to be anti-Jewish. It was a false charge among others, which was only an alibi for a settling of accounts against Schützenberger. Charles Galperin is the living witness of his rescue of Jewish child during the German occupation by Schützenberger. In April 1946, he opened an independent medical practice for children with psychological and/or social disorders in Martangy near Nolay (1946–1948). Then, he moved to Vaureal (Val-d’Oise). From 1949 to 1957, he was doctor in the medical-psychological service for child and adolescent in the hospital of Ravenel (1949–1957) who has obtained a reduced sentence. Schützenberger was an expert in the courts and a member of the Clinical Society of Mental Health (1924), of the Le Mans Clinical Society (1933), of the Medical-Psychological Society (1934) and of the Forensic Society (1937). Schützenberger completed a few publications and annual moral and administrative reports. Schützenberger appears to us more like a Psychiatrist concerned with professional interests and institutional organisation than a clinical Psychiatrist.     

Intervenir dès les signalements : analyses victimologiques du protocole interpartenarial de lutte contre les situations de violence conjugale (France)

ObjectiveThe detection and socio-judicial or psychotherapeutic care for victims of domestic violence appears to be a difficult daily work for both victims and professionals. We analyzed an experimental protocol that presents the case of victims reporting first but refusing afterwards to file a complaint. Via the records of the first reports, we sought to determine the types of the demand of both victims and perpetrators and to find out how to help these vulnerable groups.Method and MaterialsOur research is conducted in collaboration with the service for victims and the police in the French department Indre and Loire. The 34 questionnaires submitted to the victims of the protocol and the different interviews with victims and institutions have been analyzed with quantitative (i) and qualitative clinical (ii) methods. (i) The statistical frequency analysis questions the generic portrait of victims and perpetrators on the one hand and the typological portrait of victimization process that these victims face (aspects of socio-demographic vulnerability process and physical, psychological and social influence) on the other. (ii) The qualitative results deepen the quantitative approach based on questionnaires by referring to the findings of the police and interviews with ADAVIP37. A discourse analysis allowed differentiation of six dimensions of victimization within the first reports.ResultsQuantitative statistical analyzes establish several types (of victims, perpetrators and victimization). From a typological point of view, victims are mostly mothers or women, 35 to 44 years old, living with their partner at the time. They report having experienced verbal abuse associated with other forms of violence (psychological, economic, physical, sexual), but felt not to be vulnerable and had no recourse to medical, social, civil or judicial help. The qualitative analyzes develop six dimensions with specific issues. The three portraits of victims perceived by the support services are clinical vignettes of a prototypical case of battered woman, reporting only slaps and refusing any action (i), a case of psychological hold denying the complaint but considering separation (ii), and a case of multiple victimization suffered during and after separation and wishing complaint (iii). These three cases illustrate profiles of victims in the long path leading to the legal complaint. Three other dimensions are more problematic for the intervener and concern: a case of legitimized violence by the victim who refuses than any further spouse (i), a particular gender case with an example of a male victim (ii), and a case of sexual victimization revealed only in a second time or report (iii).ConclusionConfronted with a vulnerable public who hesitates to report suffered violence, professionals will find in these analyses some indicators to facilitate the detection and adapt the treatment after the first reports of domestic violence.     

« Le miroir de la haine ». La prise en charge pénitentiaire de la radicalisation : analyse clinique et criminologique de 112 personnes placées sous main de justice

The implementation of the anti-terrorism plan in the prison administration allowed the study of clinical and criminological settings of radicalized 112 people placed in open and secure custody. Analysis of their clinical profile and criminological helped to highlight the high rate of common crime (75% of subjects) as well as four special criminological profiles: ambitious offenders, criminal network converts, people in precarious situations, severely mentally ill. Finally, we observe commonalties in terms of psychic functioning: a psychopathological axis (identity conflict, anger, hatred) and vulnerability factors (mothers with somatic diseases, absent fathers, large family, low educational level, delinquent contacts, criminal records). A change in the expression of their radicalization has also been observed and discussed in the light of professional postures involved.     

Sexual homicide: Brief review of the literature and case report involving rape,genital mutilation and human arson

The objective of the current paper is to report a new case of sexual murder involving human arson and summarize the literature on the phenomenon of sexual homicide. The present case study is unprecedented in Greece and a rarity in international literature due to the fact that the victim suffered genital mutilation and incineration while still alive. The evaluation consisted of 176 articles; 53 were reviewed by the authors. The results revealed sparse, but significant, research findings. The authors discuss the limitations regarding research, incidence of the phenomenon, crime-scene patterns, offender characteristics (killing methods, motive inferences, sociodemographic data, classifications, psychopathology, modus operandi), and victim selection. The incidence of the phenomenon is unclear (1–4%) due to non-standardized criteria. It is an expression of displaced anger or sexual sadism and/or a way to elude detection (ancillary benefit). Most offenders (in their first kill) and victims were in their late 20s to early 30s and belong to Caucasian populations. Personal weapons were commonly used against women, strangulation is the prevalent killing method against children, and firearms against men. Most of the sexual homicide perpetrators are non-psychotic at the time of the attack, but experience personality pathology, primitive defenses, pathological object relations, and withdrawal into fantasy in order to deal with social isolation.     

From complex questionnaire and interviewing data to intelligent Bayesian network models for medical decision support

Objectives(1) To develop a rigorous and repeatable method for building effective Bayesian network (BN) models for medical decision support from complex, unstructured and incomplete patient questionnaires and interviews that inevitably contain examples of repetitive, redundant and contradictory responses; (2) To exploit expert knowledge in the BN development since further data acquisition is usually not possible; (3) To ensure the BN model can be used for interventional analysis; (4) To demonstrate why using data alone to learn the model structure and parameters is often unsatisfactory even when extensive data is available.MethodThe method is based on applying a range of recent BN developments targeted at helping experts build BNs given limited data. While most of the components of the method are based on established work, its novelty is that it provides a rigorous consolidated and generalised framework that addresses the whole life-cycle of BN model development. The method is based on two original and recent validated BN models in forensic psychiatry, known as DSVM-MSS and DSVM-P.ResultsWhen employed with the same datasets, the DSVM-MSS demonstrated competitive to superior predictive performance (AUC scores 0.708 and 0.797) against the state-of-the-art (AUC scores ranging from 0.527 to 0.705), and the DSVM-P demonstrated superior predictive performance (cross-validated AUC score of 0.78) against the state-of-the-art (AUC scores ranging from 0.665 to 0.717). More importantly, the resulting models go beyond improving predictive accuracy and into usefulness for risk management purposes through intervention, and enhanced decision support in terms of answering complex clinical questions that are based on unobserved evidence.ConclusionsThis development process is applicable to any application domain which involves large-scale decision analysis based on such complex information, rather than based on data with hard facts, and in conjunction with the incorporation of expert knowledge for decision support via intervention. The novelty extends to challenging the decision scientists to reason about building models based on what information is really required for inference, rather than based on what data is available and hence, forces decision scientists to use available data in a much smarter way.