Unresolved mourning as psychopathology and underlying cause of some criminal and paracriminal behaviors

Unresolved mourning as psychopathology and underlying cause of some criminal and paracriminal behaviors

Notes

Various individual "stalking behaviors" can and should be viewed as manifestations of the disorders of attachment and separation (e.g. "unrequited love", or "obsessive love", which is, however, in want of some clarifications: what "true love" is not obsessive, and what is "love" anyway?)

Can the various officially sanctioned or private "surveillance behaviors" be viewed as "stalking" also? In principle, there is no difference between theses two types of behaviors, and, if anything, the "officially sanctioned stalking" is even much more intrusive, pervasive, powerful and potentially intimidating.
But the main features are the same: excessive and most of the time unwanted attention, warrantied or not.

It would be only logical and consistent with the values of modern Western cultures to classify these both types of behaviors (individual and group), regardless of their origins and directions as the offenses against privacy, if they exceed certain social and legal limits; the issue is to define these limits in both sufficiently stringent and sufficiently flexible ways.

References and Links

Psychoanalytic criminology - From Wikipedia 

Unresolved mourning - Google Search

stalking - Google Search

Stalking - From Wikipedia 

 

Definitions

The difficulties associated with precisely defining this term (or defining it at all) are well documented.^[2]

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Gender studies of stalkers

According to one study, women often target other women, whereas men generally stalk women only.^[10][11] However, a January 2009 report from the Department of Justice in the United States reports that "Males were as likely to report being stalked by a male as a female offender. 43% of male stalking victims stated that the offender was female, while 41% of male victims stated that the offender was another male. Female victims of stalking were significantly more likely to be stalked by a male (67%) rather than a female (24%) offender." This report provides considerable data by gender and race about both stalking and harassment.^[12] The data for this report were obtained via the 2006 Supplemental Victimization Survey (SVS), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the U.S. Department of Justice.^[13]
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Types of stalkers
Psychologists often group individuals who stalk into two categories: psychotic and nonpsychotic.^[14] Stalkers may have pre-existing psychotic disorders such as delusional disorder, schizoaffective disorder, or schizophrenia. Most stalkers are nonpsychotic and may exhibit disorders or neuroses such as major depression, adjustment disorder, or substance dependence, as well as a variety of Axis II personality disorders (such as antisocial, borderline, dependent, narcissistic, or paranoid). Some of the symptoms of "obsessing" over a person is part of obsessive compulsive personality disorder. The nonpsychotic stalkers' pursuit of victims can be influenced by various psychological factors, including anger, hostility, projection of blame, obsession, dependency, minimization, denial, and jealousy. Conversely, as is more commonly the case, the stalker has no antipathic feelings towards the victim, but simply a longing that cannot be fulfilled due to deficiencies either in their personality or their society's norms.^[15]
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One of the uncertainties in understanding the origins of stalking is that the concept is now widely understood in terms of specific behaviors^[18] which are found to be offensive and/or illegal. As discussed above, these specific (apparently stalking) behaviors may have multiple motivations.

In addition, the personality characteristics that are often discussed as antecedent to stalking may also produce behavior that is not stalking as conventionally defined. Some research suggests there is a spectrum of what might be called "obsessed following behavior." People who complain obsessively and for years, about a perceived wrong or wrong-doer, when no one else can perceive the injury—and people who cannot or will not "let go" of a person or a place or an idea—comprise a wider group of persons that may be problematic in ways that seem similar to stalking. Some of these people get extruded from their organizations—they may get hospitalized or fired or let go if their behavior is defined in terms of illegal stalking, but many others do good or even excellent work in their organizations and appear to have just one focus of tenacious obsession.^[19] 

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