Title : Repeat arsonists and fire's addiction
Abstract:
Fire addiction is enough frequent. The attraction of making fire spring forth is multifaceted and can be found at all ages. We had even to realize a forensic expertise of a young boy, who was fascinated by lighters, by rubbing the knob for ignition, make the flame emerge and who set fire to papers in an office-hospital, where his parents were visiting a member of his family. I had also to take care of two young adolescents taken care of in a specialized center devoted to teenagers suffering of dysharmonic features of the personality's entangled with dissocial troubles,after they set fire to the director's car in retaliation. During social demonstrations, the number of cars burned is often impressive. Young squatters may set a fire before leaving the barn or the attic where they spent the night.It will be necessary to evoke the destructive impulse, of unconscious death.
-Finally, there is the pathological people, often young men, the arsonists, of whom we have already presented their psychiatric clinical observations ( ). They are renowned to their tendency to recidivate. They are sometimes arrested near the places of the fire, near forest or moors notably. They remain often close to the fire's place, looking for the devoring flames. They may sometimes experience/feel sexual arousal. They could be also beginner firefighters, auxiliaries and even volunteers.
-the smoking followers, in starting to smoke, rubbing the match or the lighter : the act of lighting a cigarette or a cigar or equivalent doesn't participate in part in an addictive repetition before and out, of course, the effects of nicotine.
-But above all, the narcissitic fragility relating to the Self, the identity vulnerability, the symbolic connotations of the one, who became famous by his incendiary act concerning the 3rd Wonder of the World, EPHESE's temple ! EROSTRATE, which should not have been his first provoked fire reflects, drived, leaded by a postural complex showing an overcompensation in an addictive mode of appearance, against a background of lack of self-esteem, like the addictive followers of « like ». The « pyromane », by his intra-psychique structuration having preoedipal foundations, which we will develop in the psychodynamic, topical and economic approach relating to his personnality features.
-He fits well with its repetitive tendency underlying the drive leveel within the framework of addicction ;
-More : if we consider the terminology, firing « faire feu » a weapon can become -notably among certainformerly cowboys-, a pratice close to the psycchopathology considered.
