Sectorial automatism: a further development

This article deals with surprising delinquent behaviour of a limited kind--in time and nature. This delinquent behaviour manifests itself during actual life stress conditions where in the person's past there is evidence of psychotraumatization. The author offers an etiological theory concerning the medicine of behaviour and psychosomatics. The application of this theory to consider delinquency an important branch of behavioural sciences and medicine is concretized, updated and the evolution of the concept towards a sectorial approach becomes the main topic of the present work. A sector of faulty interaction between the individual with a psychotraumatic history and the environment is activated during life stress conditions, and may lead to behavioural or psychosomatic disturbances. Case histories are presented, concretizing the sectorial faulty behaviour following an impaired reality testing and impulse control in a vulnerable field of interaction with the environment. The legal implications are discussed, in the light of an inconsistent mens rea, offering at the same time a judicial psychiatric rehabilitation model. The advantages of this approach, which has been developed during the past seven years, are mentioned. A continuous interprofessional dialogue between judges and psychiatrists has made possible this rather enlightened attitude towards this special kind of delinquent behaviour promoting rehabilitation instead of unnecessary social ostracism or 'social death'.