The trial of Jean-Marc Reiser, who confessed, after many adventures, to the murder of student Sophie Le Tan will take place from June 27 to July 8, 2022 at the Bas-Rhin Assize Court, in Strasbourg. And this is an opportunity for us to discuss with the psychoanalyst Claude Halmos, the question of the interest aroused in the public by news items.
franceinfo: How do you think we can explain such an interest?
Claude Halmos: The interest of the public for news items is often criticized because, as they generally start from horrible facts, those who are interested in them are suspected of morbid voyeurism, and above all of contempt for the suffering of the victims. But it’s very simplistic because the public’s relationship to news items is much more complex than it seems. And above all, it involves several times.
The act that is at the start of the news item generally arouses normal reactions: fright, horror and compassion for the victim and his relatives. But very quickly, if the affair takes on dimensions that we would not have expected, a shift takes place and we change register: we leave little by little, without realizing it, that of reality, to switch in another, which is very close to fiction. And, from there, we can begin to follow the adventures of a suspect’s escape, and the police search, as if it were a film or a series, in no being more genuinely “connected” to the horror of reality.
And that explains the interest in news items?
One of the most important springs of interest in miscellaneous facts is certainly this dimension of fiction, which they can take on. But it is above all the fact that this dimension, quite extraordinary, generally arises from the most banal and ordinary reality. It is often emphasized: the suspect, who now lives adventures worthy of a novel, was for his neighbors a perfectly normal little man, without problems.
The news item is the idea of something extraordinary, possibly hidden behind the banality of everyday life, and therefore of a dimension of this everyday life which, by opening the door to the imagination, makes it much more exciting. Without provoking either fear (because horror is around the corner but at the same time, very far away) or guilt: one can dive into the worst fantasies, but the culprit is the other.
Isn’t there still a fascination for criminals?
In fact, the public is probably less fascinated by the criminal than by the questioning of what could explain his actions. And it is normal that this question fascinates: what makes a human being able to become a criminal? How to explain it? It’s a legitimate question. Science – as we know – has been asking this question for a long time and with various types of answers: are there beings who would be born criminals? Or is it due to the history they had?
News items are veritable mines of information and questions about human behavior. And that is why so many authors are interested in it.