Social Context and Defense Mechanisms Quiz

Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) in Forensic Settings

• CFT is an integrative psychotherapy rooted in evolutionary, developmental, and biopsychosocial models
• Developed for individuals with high levels of shame and self-criticism, complex mental health problems, and difficulty with cognitive-behavioural interventions

Antecedents and Motivations for Prosocial and Antisocial Behaviours

• Genetic variation impacts empathic caring and psychopathic traits
• Group identification (e.g. tribal 'wars') and potential personal benefits from harming others (e.g. undermining competitors)
• Early neglectful or abusive attachment experiences can impact preparedness to be harmful or helpful

Focusing on Compassion

• Switching the strategic and phenotypic orientation of individuals towards more empathic prosocial outcomes for themselves and others
• Care-focused motivational system that organises physiological, psychological, and social processes

Application in Forensic Settings

• CFT has been applied to various mental health problems, including depression, anger problems, PTSD, psychosis, and acquired brain injury
• Effective in forensic settings with a range of interventions, including recovery models and the Good Lives Model

Understanding Criminal Behaviour

• Roots of criminal behaviour: complex gene-environment interactions, early childhood trauma, depression, anger/impulse control, and shame problems
• CFT can help individuals recognise how evolved dispositions for criminal/antisocial acts relate to gene-environment interactions

Evolutionary Perspective

• Humans have evolved specific motives, emotions, and behavioural dispositions (phenotypes) for survival and reproduction
• CFT seeks to link evolved strategies with phenotypic development to change physiological infrastructures from which thoughts, motives, and behavioural dispositions arise### Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT)
• CFT is a motivation-focused therapy that utilizes evidence-based interventions to stimulate compassion motivation
• CFT helps individuals recognize how some of their evolved dispositions for criminal/antisocial acts relate to complex gene-environment interactions
• CFT is contextualized in an understanding of how evolution has shaped the human mind for specific motives, emotions, and behavioral dispositions (phenotypes)

Criminal Behavior and Evolution

• riminal behavior is more likely to emerge in threatening environments, where individuals tone down concern for others
• Evolutionary strategies for survival, advancement, and reproduction don't always follow moral rules
• The way our brain matures, such as the development of the frontal cortex, emotion regulation, empathic and caring motivation, are significantly influenced by social relationships and social contexts

Social Context and Moral Behavior

• Social contexts create the conditions for moral and immoral behavior
• Humans can be very prosocial and helpful, but they can also be indifferent, neglectful, harmful, cruel, and sadistic
• Social relationships and social contexts shape the development of the body and mind
• Social mentality compassion includes interactional dynamics: compassion for others, compassion from others, and compassion for self

Compassion and Empathy

• Compassion is rooted in evolved care-focused motivation and contextualized by the fact that the human mind is organized around competing motivational systems
• Empathy involves emotional contagion and perspective-taking competencies
• Empathy can be overwhelmed by emotional contagion without perspective-taking, or cold and exploitative without emotional connection
• Callousness is common to many aspects of criminal behavior, disregard for the feelings and well-being of others

Shame, Guilt, and Compassion

• Competencies for shame and guilt are different in terms of their behavioral, cognitive focus, and play out very differently in perpetrators' responses to their harmful acts
• Shame tends to support justification, denial, and avoidance, while guilt involves sorrow, sadness, remorse, empathic engagement, and genuine desires to help the injured party recover

Emotion Regulation and CFT

• CFT focuses on three basic functions of emotions: detecting and responding to threats, detecting and responding to signals of resources and rewards, and detecting and responding to situations indicating safeness
• CFT helps clients understand how these different systems are working for them, their histories, and triggers
• Compassion-focused exercises stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system and facilitate 'rest and digest'

Conclusion

• CFT considers criminal behavior within the human context and recognizes that to some degree, what we call criminality is based on the recognition that humans can behave badly and harmfully when free to do so
• CFT seeks to de-shame people while stimulating responsibility-taking and uses a range of evidence-based practices designed to stimulate particular physiological systems that create the platform for psychological change