Philip D. Jaffe is a psychologist and professor at the University of psychocriminologie Geneva. He also worked in a high security psychiatric hospital affiliated with an institution of Massachusetts Prison Service. In this interview, he appreciates the business Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the light of clinical experience. The indictment of former IMF director for the American justice for attempted rape may be due to an inability to master, in the private sphere of the instincts that dominates in public.
FRANCE 24: If Dominique Strauss-Kahn had actually committed the acts he is accused, explain how such a passage to the act?
Philip D.Jaffe: If he did - and all I could say this will be subject to conditional - this shows that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is to thank you for a great while impulsivity is quite capable of behave normally in public. When left alone with a woman, he becomes a sort of "wild beast". Yet it has a sense of rules against an outsider, but only when it expresses a need for massive and sexualized domination.Some spoke of hyper-sexuality, I'm not sure we can go that far, but he seems to have a problem to control his impulses.
FRANCE 24: You've probably met during your career, cases of men whose intelligence, proven, could find themselves suddenly overwhelmed by impulses. How can we explain such phenomena?
PDJ: The very smart people can not get rid of their urges: they just happen to control the environment to avoid being unmasked. The intelligence does not move the drives - because it is two different mental records - but it moves the framework within which they operate.
Another analysis would be that for people who border on professional and social implosion, a part of reality becomes like a game by flirting with the limits, their intelligence eludes them. If you look at the case of DSK, as we are presented by the media, for example it is unlikely that a man of his intelligence was able to rush out of the hotel as it is supposed to have done. The phone call he gave to the hotel, which helped locate, prove some form of stupidity, as if his state of stress had prevented him from thinking.It is the fragility of the man who thinks of this.
When you look at the politicians who have been successful, they clearly have a sense of self unique. Conversely, for those who stumble, they say they did not have the stuff.
FRANCE 24: Are you telling us that the acts charged in DSK would be the result of a failed act and unconsciously, he would not be socialist candidate in the primaries - and potentially in the presidential election?
PDJ: I will not cross that line because it would not come here if he had no real ambition. One can imagine that he may have simply been afraid.It's like Nadal when the match! These moments require a full extension in relation to its own capabilities. And that's where the unbridled passions emerged.
What is surprising is that the intelligence of a public figure is also conducted to surround himself and willing to put up protective netting against his own instincts. It is surprising that when this man is about to reach the pinnacle of power, allowed to manage time and organize his time alone in New York!
Political suicide not consistent with the fact that DSK has never had inappropriate behavior in public. He knew what was allowed or not.The acting out - if proven - could be explained by a mixture of self-sabotage, lack of trial, and a sense of impunity.
FRANCE 24: Monitoring anti-suicide in which DSK is placed "with caution" in prison at Rikers Island is it a normal procedure or is there a real risk of suicide?
PDJ: It's a habit with high-value prisoners, especially since we do not know his mental state. DSK is probably in a "fluid", that is to say, it goes from moments when he is very combative with others where he is very depressed. His behavior impassive during the hearing where we can see the marble shows some control. But it takes very little time to switch.
This is an extraordinary reversal than being American in a cell, a tumble absolute and brutal. DSK is certainly treated with more respect than a criminal lambda, but the physical conditions are not the same. In prison, suffered humiliating medical examinations, it is treated as a criminal, isolated from his family and friends, you're scared, the feeling that everything was lost. Then mental states can vary every five minutes.
