To all who truly perform the mission of the psychologist or the psychiatrist or simply the expert of mental hygiene, the so-called analysis of the psychological profile and the behavior of the perpetrator who decapitated and walked around with the head of a woman (who is presented occasionally as a tourist, other times as the perpetrator’s girlfriend, others as his wife/ life partner) causes anger and alarm. This is because there is a blatand misinterpretation and bad use of all the terms, methodologies for the composition of a motive report, explanation and justification of the process which drives a person to committing a crime and the completely different process which leads a person to committing extreme crime such as this particular case.
In particular, a systematic but erroneous effort is made not to explain the reason and motive of this man to commit this crime with the attribution of his responsibilities in the explanation “he was in a state of amok/ he is a maniac/ he is crazy/ he has a clouded mind/ he has no logic”.
But every single true specialist of the science of psychology/ psychiatry knows the following basic axiom upon which the whole field is founded: everything has a reason and all the behaviors are fully logical, no matter how irrational they may seem, to the service of specific interests and motives as the person behaving so feels and understands, subjectively or objectively.
On the basis of the above truth, the true professional can aid the person understand the reasons of any of this person’s behavior or deal with them so that calm will ensue and full control of the person’s self so that this person will be able to make free choices.
In this particular case, this man is mentioned to be in a state of amok (which means being out of control, therefore unable to be controlled by others as well as his own self) which is contradictory and confounding with the reports of the calmness and control he had, even to a level that he was able to soothe bystanders that they were not in danger by himself and to form plans of evasion of policemen. Also, we were presented with the image of this man on a gurney in full sedation at least, but was reported that he put up a great resistance during his transfer to the hospital.
The displaying of the head does not show a person who is interested in just putting down the whatever resistance his girlfriend was putting up but a (at least at first impression) need to display/ threaten/ terrorize/ attract attention with his action. The fact that this man’s full name is not given to us immediately (since he was arrested red handed and is for sure the crime’s perpetrator) so that we will be able through the information around his life and identity to have a full image of who he is by ourselves and not by what is arbitrarily presented by the media does not allow us to make any substantiated estimations.
As professionals, therefore, we are obliged:
1. not to diagnose (either in essence or theoretically/ with reservations)
2. not to make generalizations for the entire population on the basis on just one case study the parameters of which are not clear and verified
3. for certain not make suggestions for the enforcement of measures on the general population on the basis of this one case and ‘the personal unfounded opinion’ of someone who wrongly uses a title of expert/ professional.
Any professional, especially of the medical and psychological/ psychiatric specializations, who acts in such a way should be ignored by laymen and be at least warned officially by the valid associations.