Psychological mechanisms of revenge and revenge ideations in family homicide: results from qualitative research of forensic assessment reports

Our aim was to find out which social and psychological factors characterize forensic psychiatric patients who have committed family homicide with revenge as a reason as compared to subjects who committed family homicide with other motives. Qualitative research was carried out on the basis of pre-trial forensic assessment reports of existing cases (N=20), divided between Revenge and No-Revenge cases. In case of revenge, violence was almost always a sort of settling of an interpersonal score. Psychotic symptomatology was absent in the Revenge cases, personality problems (particularly borderline and narcissistic traits) were common. Demoralization because of a decline of well-being seems to be an important factor pushing some persons with such vulnerabilities over the edge. Our expectation is that, at least in a certain proportion of (non-psychotic) patients, there will be more brooding on revenge than the psychotherapist suspects.