I feel like to analyse the court and psychological state of plaintiff and judges which can be extended to any general human being!!
Trial provides various opportunities for all participants to express unconscious
parent-oriented emotions that have been repressed since childhood. These emotions are
repressed in childhood primarily due to the fact that they are extremely ambivalent,
eliciting punishment from the Super-Ego. From a psychoanalytic view, the trial judge
can be viewed as a symbolic father figure, who may arouse in the litigants parentoriented feelings. If the judge is perceived as an unconscious symbolic father-substitute, the litigants may unconsciously displace their parent-oriented feelings onto him.
This may take the form of an unconscious wish to physically harm the judge, manifesting itself in conscious hostility toward the judge, particularly if he is ruling against one’s case. A trial judge who uses his discretion to limit a litigant’s chances of winning the case may be perceived as a father who sought to limit the child’s desire for having intimate relations with the mother, thereby evoking the child’s Oedipal feelings of hatred.
As Shoenfeld asserts:
Persons who may serve as unconscious parent symbols (kings, judges,
employers and so on) often have displaced onto them repressed parentoriented
feelings that have remained in the unconscious since early childhood; and because . . .
a child’s early feelings towards his parents usually range from primitive love to savage hatred, the repressed emotions of early childhood displaced onto parent substitutes are frequently not only affectionate and loving but also angry and hostile . . . . It is conceivable that judges and the courts on which they sit may well constitute the law’s most important unconscious parent symbols.
In a sense, a child’s parents are his first judges, constructing the family “tribunal” wherein the father’s “law” adjudicates whether the child’s actions are right or wrong, and mandates appropriate rewards and punishments. If someone had experienced frequent “injustice” in the parental tribunal, then it is not inconceivable that he or she would later view all courts and laws as instruments of oppression designed to perpetuate injustice. Such a litigant would tend to displace feelings of hostility—originating from childhood— onto the judge and the court.
Likewise, someone who has experienced violent abuse during childhood may
later perceive all instruments of the law—the police, the judge, and the criminal law—as extensions of the unjust father figure who will forever pursue him to inflict further harm.
From this point of view, it is not surprising to observe an uncooperative attitude in
criminal defendants toward the criminal justice system. These ideas may shed light on
the proposition that an abusive family environment in childhood may be a significant
cause of adult criminality.
Furthermore, trial provides an atmosphere where not only litigants but also their
lawyers can displace family-oriented feelings onto the judge and opposing counsel. A
lawyer who identifies with his client, or at least empathizes with his client’s cause, will often perceive the other side’s counsel as a threat. This rivalry is not simply limited to the purpose of winning the case, for it may have its origins beyond the immediate court action.
The lawyer’s rivalry may be motivated by subconscious tendencies that have
been repressed in childhood, turning his case into a personal matter. Specifically, the opposition between each side’s counsel may have its underlying origin in a childhood experience of sibling rivalry that significantly influenced the development of the lawyer’s personality. In such a situation, the trial judge may be a symbolic parental figure for lawyers who subconsciously perceive each other as rival siblings reliving a childhood experience. The lawyers could project parental feelings onto the judge, and depending on which side he favored in the litigation, the projections could range from severe hostility to intense liking. Accordingly, sibling rivalry may be a valid explanation for why opposing counsel at times scream at each other and express hostility toward one another
in the courtroom:
A lawyer . . . may on an unconscious level equate the counsel who
opposes him with the brother or sister who once competed with him for
parental love during childhood. If so, then the likelihood is that angry and
hostile feelings of sibling rivalry concerning this brother or sister that he
may have repressed during childhood will be displaced onto the opposing
counsel; and as a result, he may provoke and actively engage in
undignified and unnecessary squabbles with this counsel.
In addition to litigants and their lawyers, the judge may also subconsciously
displace family-oriented emotions onto the trial participants. A trial judge who
subconsciously perceives a litigant or lawyer as a symbolic daughter or son would likely displace parental emotions onto the symbolic child-figure. Depending on how the judge views his or her own child and what sort of emotions he or she feels toward the child, the litigant or lawyer who symbolically represents the judge’s child would be subject to familial emotional reactions—ranging from intense like to dislike—from the judge.
These ideas could explain a situation where a judge seems to favor one of the litigants over the other, even though the disfavored party has a better argument. Thus, none of the trial participants is immune to the everlasting recreation of the Oedipal triangle, and the resulting emotional reactions generated therefrom.
Are you bored?!! So, I am guessing no one really reads this, except myself, SO, I enjoyed it:-)))
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