(Professor of Criminal Psychology, People's Public Security University of China, hereinafter referred to as Li): I handle cases at the grassroots level. When we come into contact with a suspect, we will make a basic judgment. It would be a joke if we took a mental patient to court. There are many standards for psychiatric appraisal, and the standard of empirical judgment is one of them. I also think that the court should have independent discretion, which is the most basic requirement of a society ruled by law. Many people mistakenly equate mental patients with people who are not criminally responsible, which leads them to interfere with court trials. This is wrong. If the court thinks that the parties are completely normal, there is nothing wrong with not making an appraisal.
Sun: Different disciplines have different definitions of mental illness. The medical definition of mental illness refers to mental dysfunction, which seriously interferes with normal life. Legally, it is called incapacity and limited capacity. The abnormal personality mentioned by Professor Li Meijin is also included in the research scope of psychiatry, but the abnormal personality often does not affect his legal responsibility. Personality refers to the overall psychological orientation of people in social life. Personality problems belong to the category of psychiatric research, but we can't put all personality problems into the category of mental illness.
Li: I want to talk about this problem from a psychological point of view. The spirit of psychiatry is actually human psychology. People's psychological composition includes cognition, emotion, consciousness and personality. Personality refers to the overall style of a person's psychological consciousness. The distinction of personality is reflected in the differences in needs, ideas, beliefs, intelligence, acquired environmental influence, personality, temperament and so on. When these different combinations are combined into a person, a special personality will be formed. In real life, it shows certain personality defects; Others are paranoid and extremely sensitive, for example, they always feel that they have no talent, or they are obsessed with a little thing. The characteristic of personality disorder is that its behavior makes people feel very different in interpersonal communication. Most of the crimes committed by such people are emotional crimes. For example, killing Ma Jiajue, a classmate of Yunnan University, is a passive crime after being attacked by others. His murder showed strong emotions, but it did not affect his legal responsibility.
Sun: There are two modes of psychiatric expertise in China. One is called disease presumption, which means that everyone is presumed to be sick unless there is conclusive evidence that this person is not sick. Psychiatrists often adopt this assumption. The problem brought by disease presumption is that the diagnosis of mental illness is magnified and all kinds of personality defects are included in the category of mental illness. At the same time, the presumption of disease is also easy to cause human rights violations. The other mode is disease-free presumption, that is, before making an appraisal, psychiatrists assume that the appraised person is not mentally ill, and then experts need to determine whether the appraised person is mentally ill through various symptoms.
Li: To analyze the psychology of criminals, it is very important to study their behavior. We can make psychological portraits through details such as how criminals enter the crime scene, how to commit crimes, behavior habits, and the law of committing crimes under normal circumstances, and then compare them with suspects. For example, criminals write on the wall after killing. Psychiatrists say it is not normal to write on the wall after killing. In fact, many criminals have this habit, which represents a character. Such people are arrogant and conceited. Therefore, in the psychoanalyst's view, this is normal, and it only represents some characteristics of some people.
Sun: The Chinese Medical Association has a psychiatric classification diagnostic standard called 3, and there is an international standard called 10. Psychiatric appraisal is based on subjective aspects of behavior, which can be divided into four types: the first is realistic motivation, that is, as long as it does not involve mental symptoms, everything is normal. The purpose of his behavior endangering society is to meet a normal social psychological need or material need, and such a person should bear criminal responsibility; The second kind is called pathological motivation, which refers to a pathological mental symptom with hallucination as the main factor. The third type is called unknown motivation, which means that there is no motive for no reason and no criminal responsibility, because he has lost the ability to identify and control his behavior subjectively. For example, epilepsy rage, commonly known as epilepsy; The fourth kind of motivation is called mixed motivation, which is a mixture of pathological motivation and realistic motivation.
Sun: The Chinese Medical Association has a standard called China Mental Disorders Classification Manual. After the diagnosis is made, the influence of the disease on behavior can be determined.
Li: Professor Sun talked about this standard from the perspective of psychiatry. I have another point: I think a good psychologist should at least know some psychology, especially criminal psychology. Mental illness has different sources, some are hereditary, some may be caused by some early experiences, and another is caused by pure psychological stimulation. The latter mental illness is completely curable, while the first two are incurable.
Sun: According to Article 18 of the Criminal Law, whether a person bears criminal responsibility depends first on whether he is mentally ill. Because there are indeed many puzzling situations in real life, such as superstition caused by subculture factors, such people are not mentally ill themselves and do not belong to the category of mental illness. There is also drunk behavior disorder and murder, which should bear legal responsibility.
Sun: First, the objective standard you mentioned exists, but this symptom must be characteristic. We do appraisal, focusing on people's behavior, to see if his mental state can really affect his behavior. For example, mental patients are different from normal people when they are angry and smash things. Mental patients smash things no matter how good or bad, no matter how expensive, while normal people often go easy on valuables when they get angry and smash things.
Second, the lack of identity also exists. There are many reasons for this evaluation. First, the law needs to determine the existence of certain circumstances after the death of the appraiser, such as testamentary capacity appraisal in civil cases; Second, because of criminal misjudgment, the appraiser has been executed. However, it should be noted that the identification of absence is definitely more difficult than that of direct identification, and it must be comprehensively analyzed based on relevant letters, diaries, circumstantial evidence of neighbors and introductions of relatives.
Li: Psychologically speaking, judging whether a person is mentally ill depends on his activity characteristics. The first is a person's reaction and interaction with the outside world, including several basic contents such as perception, memory and imagination. The second is emotion; The third is consciousness and will activities; The fourth is personality. Generally speaking, a person's mood, consciousness and personality abnormalities have nothing to do with this. Only when he has some basic cognitive problems can he be shown to be mentally abnormal. (often,)