Transaction analytical and psychoanalytical views on infanticide

Abstract

A paper is concerned primarily with the criminal offence of infanticide and explains this phenomenon by the findings of psychoanalysis and transactional analysis, a psychological paradigm based on psychoanalysis. The extensiveness of psychoanalytical and transactional analytical views on these problems enables suitable well-founded excursions into numerous related areas, such as the psycho(patho)logy of symbiosis in efforts at transactional analysis, and two-sided (contemporary) mother-child anxiety or "dramatic character", with frequently unimagined tragic consequences, especially from the point of view of psychoanalysis. The interweaving of the two psychological orientations provides insight into a broader perception of these topics, but cannot go into details due to the nature of things. However, it enables the foundations to be laid for further studies, the relevance of which cannot be denied either by psychologically oriented criminology or by criminal law. The legal provisions concerning the criminal offence of infanticide that are currently in force are in the author's view far from adequately regulated.