« 2008-07-07 | HomePage | 2008-07-11 »
Wednesday, 09 July 2008
Psychological damage of the law
I attended a workshop a few weeks ago which in essence was a presentation of the latest research on child sexual abuse. One of the things stated was that if an incident of abuse becomes a police matter then it is quite likely that the child will be psychologically worse off at the end of it. The process inevitably retraumatizes the child no matter how careful one is. I find it hard to think of a larger clash between an individual’s needs and society’s needs. It is psychologically better for the child not to get involved in the legal process and of course society (others) may suffer if they do not.
However I think one can expand this to all people and the psychology of the legal process. I saw it again on TV last night. A man had been murdered and the murderer had been found guilty. The press interviewed the victim’s mother and sister outside the court. They were venomous. The hatred and anger that was coming out of them was disarming and you could see the depth of it in their faces. The legal process is usually psychologically damaging to those who get involved in it such as these two women.
You don't want to end up with anger like this, or its "you loose".
When an event happens to you and you have a feeling the goal is to express the feeling as much as is needed and then drop the feeling. Feelings like anything else can become habitual. The more a person does, thinks or feels something the more habitual it will become. This is one way in which the legal process makes people worse of psychologically. The man had been murdered 2 years ago and those two women were still furiously angry. This means that the anger was very habitual to them now. It was by this time deeply ingrained in their personality and thus it would take considerable effort and time for them to drop the anger. Of course the longer they have the anger the more psychological deterioration they will experience.
My counsel would be to distance yourself psychologically from the legal process as it is a retraumatizing process. Those two women on TV are now worse off than before the trial. Their anger is now stimulated yet again and even more ingrained into the personality.
The other thing which is imperative is to not link your emotional state to the outcome of a trial. One has no control over the outcome of a trial and thus one does not want their psychological well being linked to it. Again it seems a distancing process would be most wise. To make the outcome of the trail as psychologically unimportant as one can.
Taking on the legal process.
Why attend the trial? You hear some people say they did it for their son. Well that is not true as the son is dead and knows nothing about it. If you were murdered would you want your loved ones to attend the trial knowing that it is likely that they would be retraumatized by it. I would not want mine to. Some say they attend the trial for final closure. That is not true either as one can do that in the counselling room. Why wait often years for the final closure and thus it becomes more and more ingrained in the personality and one is worse and worse off.
Weather it be a small thing like being cut off in the traffic or a big thing like attending the trial of your son’s murderer the psychological processes are the same. The more you hang onto the feelings the more psychological damage you do to your self. Trials are usually retraumatizing as the entire legal process can be. The more you get involved with it the more likely you will be worse off. Indeed with children there is strong scientific evidence to support this view.
If you have been traumatized once, why stick this in front of your face again when you don't have to?
Vengeance is a normal human emotion and is by and large an angry process. To use the legal process as a means to get your sense of revenge seems most unwise. That can readily be done in the counselling room where the likelihood of dropping the vengeful anger eventually is far greater. That is the best psychological outcome for any emotion one experiences - drop it.
Graffiti
19:15 Permalink | Comments (21) | Email this