The narrative structure of psychiatric reports

Area of Science:

• Forensic Psychology
• Narrative Analysis
• Literary Theory

Background:

• Psychiatric expertise forms a crucial part of legal proceedings.
• Understanding the narrative structure of these reports is essential for interpreting their content.
• Roland Barthes' semiotic approach offers a framework for analyzing narrative construction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the narrative structure of psychiatric expertise.
• To apply Roland Barthes' five codes (hermeneutical, proairetic, semantic, symbolic, referential) to analyze expert reports.
• To explore the significance of lapsus calami (slips of the pen) within these narratives.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of nine psychiatric expertises.
• Application of Roland Barthes' five-code model from his work "S/Z".
• Identification and interpretation of narrative codes and writing errors.

Main Results:

• A significant presence of the symbolic code was interpreted as the elaboration of horror elicited by crime.
• The prevalence of the referential code suggested an incapacity to process these feelings, leading to defensive mechanisms.
• Lapsus calami were observed when experts encountered the horror of a crime, struggling to process it through symbolic or referential codes.

Conclusions:

• The narrative structure of psychiatric expertise reveals psychological processing of crime.
• Lapsus calami may indicate moments of profound difficulty in elaborating traumatic content.
• The study highlights challenges in ensuring the defendant's voice is adequately represented in expert texts.