Affect is not just any emotional experience, but a very specific one. This is a strong emotional disturbance. For an emotion to become an affect, it must meet forensic and legal criteria. Emotionality increases. Regulation of behavior is reduced. Stages of affect: - preparatory, - affective explosion, - post-affective phase. A release occurs through energy mobilization. After an explosion, the body usually experiences a shortage of resources. Affect happens: 1. Pathological (the competence of psychiatry) - excludes sanity. 2. Psychological (physiological, cumulative) Affect occurs in 3 states: 1. An extreme, sudden, strong psychotraumatic effect on the part of the victim of affect (classical physiological affect) is the state of the last straw. Short circuit mechanism. 2. Staying in a long-term psychotraumatic situation (cumulative affect). Explosive character. 3. Spontaneous actualization of a traumatic circumstance. The examination determines: - whether or not there was an emotional state, which in its depth reached the level of affect, that is, it violated the nature of the perception of the situation and an adequate response. - whether the state was associated with the unlawful behavior of the victim; - the suddenness of the onset of the state (to what extent it spontaneously came to the bearer of the affect )For this purpose, a comprehensive psychological and psychiatric examination is carried out. Forensic psychiatric criteria for affect: Affect arises like an avalanche, an affective change in consciousness occurs, the field of perception narrows and it is impossible to reproduce everything in full, only fragments. There is a violation of regulation. There is no forecast or control over one’s own actions. The forecast of one’s own actions is violated, there is no forecast of long-term consequences, the future is broken in the present. Additional signs: - automatism - overcrowding of consciousness with images, connections with trauma (cumulative effect) - a feeling of unreality of actions (derealization). - the actions of the accused do not correspond to the value and semantic structure of the personality - speech disorders The psychologist finds out: - the depth of the state - what is it connected with? - did it arise suddenly? The psychologist does NOT find out: - the fact of the authenticity of the crime committed - the qualification of actions as guilty/not guilty - the reliability of the victim’s illegal / immoral behavior Materials were taken from a lecture at St. Petersburg State University, Faculty of Psychology, 2015.