This article suggests how false confessions can be extracted from hapless victims and how this is sometimes done by the interrogator seemingly down playing or minimizing the seeming importance of the crime. In my Influence in therapy and counseling article I suggest how therapists unwittingly influence clients and how some people, being naturally more charismatic than others are more likely to influence others because they ‘transmit’ emotion more easily and the nature of emotion is ‘infectious’.

This is why we are so keen to teach fledgling psychotherapists on our diploma course the nature of influence and suggestibility. We feel that any counselor, psychotherapist or people helper in whatever capacity (and of course people in the legal professions) need to understand how leading and influence occurs-partly so they can avoid abusing it through ignorance and also so they can use it for benefit.

I think that false confessions may be often produced in the legal system not necessarily because the interrogator is consciously trying to extract falsity but because the interrogator really doesn’t know how leading and influential they are being. People can ‘have an agenda’ held unconsciously and will produce behavior to support that agenda also done below the level of consciousness.

Mark