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30 T. Jefferson L. Rev. 487 (2007-2008)
The Justice Obsession Syndrome

handle is hein.journals/tjeflr30 and id is 491 raw text is: THE JUSTICE OBSESSION SYNDROME Christian Diesen* INTRODUCTION Personal defeats are always difficult to handle and for some people they are more difficult than for others. No matter the cause of the defeat, the psychological consequences can be devastating, depending on an individual's personal characteristics, experience, and social situation. Thoughts of revenge may emerge in certain people. Once that process starts, there is a risk, for some, of developing an obsession. Some 10- 15% of the general population regularly experiences paranoid thoughts,' but few people develop a severe mental disorder as a result of a personal defeat. When persecutory delusions are a symptom of psychosis, our focus is primarily on the illness and not on the origin.' The question this Article raises is whether there is a need to distinguish some personal judicial defeats from others. The roots of the resulting trauma are easy to detect after an individual has lost a court case. However, that does not justify distinguishing judicial conflict from any other source of social trauma. On the other hand, if the judicial system has a tendency to create fixated losers, the legal process should be analyzed from a mental-health perspective in order to discuss the possibility of preventing people from becoming victims of the system. * Professor of Procedural Law, J.D., Stockholm University. 1. Daniel Freeman, Suspicious Minds: The Psychology of Persecutory Delusions, 27 CLINICAL PSYCHOL. REV. 425, 430 (2007). 2. Richard P. Bentall, The Syndromes and Symptoms of Psychosis: Or Why You Can't Play 'Twenty Questions' with the Concept of Schizophrenia and Hope to Win, in RECONSTRUCTING SCHIZOFRENIA 23, 34 (Richard P. Bentall ed., 1990).

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