QUESTIONS ABOUT THE INTERCULTURAL DIMENSION OF THE EXPERT’S PSYCHOLOGICAL EXAMINATION IN THE FRENCH LEGAL SYSTEM

Abstract

The author is a legal expert in the district court of Agen and a psychology professor in the Univensity of Toulouse le Mirail, where she coordinates a seminar on the intercultural a~spects of the expert’s psychological examination. In this article, she presents the case of a young Vietnamese who was raped by a friend of her parents. The intercultural dimension of the studied
clinical situation is twofold: it refens to the conflict between the culture of the examined penson and the culture of the society that will judge the crime, and also to the distance between the psychological approach and the legal world. Its purpose is to build a linkbetween law and desire, psychicism and culture. ~he questioning of the intercultural dimension of this intervention allows,
from the theoretical point of view, the analysis of psychic mechanisms that are specific to every situation of contact between cultures. From the methodological point of view, this work is inserted in the field of intercultural clinical psychology, according to which the cultural particularities of the examined subject are an integral part of his/her uniqueness. This approach will certainly alter the personality diagnosis. In addition, it will introduce a review ofthe interpretation of a projective test like RORSCHACH’s Psychodiagnosis. It is developed according to the three moments of an expert’s psychological examination: in the epistemological levei, when she analyses the functions
of the expert psychologist; during the proceedings, when the clinician meets the subject, elaborates his hypotheses and writes the report; finally, during the hearing, when the expert presents his conclusions in front of the members of the jury, participating in the debates. From the methodological point of view, the choice of asingle clinical case has the purpose of avoiding a typological simplification, respecting the multiplicity of situations.