Summary

Like all other psychic processes, emotional states and their regulative effect on human behaviour may be disturbed. This is also taken into account by the legislator by providing that the commission of an act in a provoked state constitutes a mitigating circumstance. However, it is difficult to find an equivalent in the terminology of contemporary scientific psychology for the term “provoked state”, traditionally used in the legal context. So far the term “physiological affect” has served as a bridge over the terminological gap. The term “physiological affect” is not, however, a correct designation of any psychic state in the terminology of scientific psychology. The International Classification of Diseases used by both clinical psychologists and psychiatrists does not record affect as a diagnosis. The distinction between physiological affect and pathological affect is also problematic as, from the perspective of clinical psychology and psychiatry, both are psychic states of the same origin and structure which only differ in the intensity of expression. Thus it would be advisable to evaluate emotional states within the framework of a complex psychological and psychiatric examination. The author argues that experts should not evaluate affect but should, instead, establish whether or not a neurotic disorder suffered by the person has limited his or her capacity of understanding and purposeful action.