Bernat-Noël Tiffon, a recognised expert in legal and forensic medicine, President of the European Higher Council of Doctors and Honorary Doctors, Professor of Legal Psychology at Abat Oliba University and of Criminal Psychology and Gender and Domestic Violence at ESERP Digital Business School & Law School (University of Vic–Central University of Catalonia), and corresponding member of the Royal European Academy of Doctors (READ), is featured in the interview in the popular “La Contra” section of “La Vanguardia” published on 30 March on the occasion of the release of the work “The Tiffon Saga: from Romance-language Surgery to Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology. The Investigation of a Historical, Medical and Social Family Journey across Three Centuries” (J.M. Bosch Editor), in which he reviews a long and intense family career devoted to medicine and psychology. Likewise, the Empresas de Vanguardia channel of the same newspaper’s digital edition devoted an extensive feature to the forensic psychology expert on 1 April.
Dr. Bernat-Noël Tiffon
In an informal conversation with journalist Víctor Amela, the academician reviewed several current criminal cases in which he has acted as an expert witness, explaining the mistrust that some judges still show towards forensic psychology evidence. “It is a technical expert report that can influence the sentence, either by adjusting the prison term or by motivating committal to a psychiatric institution,” he explains about his reports. From there, the conversation turned to his family’s extensive medical trajectory. “The Tiffons have devoted themselves to medicine for six generations; I have documented this in this family investigation. I am the sixth. The fifth was Juan Tiffon, my father. The fourth, my grandfather, Santiago Tiffon Ramonet, a cardiologist and pulmonologist who practised in Mollet and Martorelles, had a street named after him while still alive! He was revered for saving many lives. As a child, I was impressed to see him at home always with patience waiting in the sitting room… wearing his lead apron to protect himself from the X-ray plates he took,” he recalls.
As a result of his research, Tiffon goes back to the third generation of this family saga of doctors, of whom he no longer has direct testimony: “Emilio Tiffon Vila, a medical pedicurist, with a practice on La Rambla de Santa Mònica, above the Cosmos, himself the son of Roque Napoleón Tiffon Cassant, who had obtained the title of Royal Household pedicure surgeon during the reign of Alfonso XII. He operated on corns… a trade inherited from the first Tiffon: Alexis Tiffon Barreau. He settled on La Rambla and put up this sign: ‘Napoleón’. He arrived from Narbonne, France, at the beginning of the 19th century. Son of a hairdresser from Rennes, he was a Romance-language doctor. A doctor who did not use Latin, only a Romance language. He cared for the feet of the people of Barcelona. He witnessed the inauguration of the Liceu, the demolition of the city walls, the construction of the Eixample…”.
In Empresas de Vanguardia, for his part, Tiffon discusses his professional career, this time with journalist Sara Casas. “When a lawyer hires me to prepare an expert report, what they are looking for is a technical explanation of a person’s mental state at the time of the events. If the prosecution is seeking, for example, ten years in prison, a well-grounded expert report can help to show that there are psychological factors justifying a reduction in the sentence. If I do not have sufficient clinical elements or indications to support an expert opinion, I prefer to withdraw from the case,” he explains.
Bernat-Noël Tiffon also promotes the Academy of Forensic Psychological Training, an online training centre aimed at equipping professionals in the fields of legal, forensic and criminological psychology, which offers its courses in partnership with the Lafayette University Institute, a centre associated with IMF European University Universitas Europaea-eUniv of the Principality of Andorra. Among his latest scientific activities, his participation in the Congress on Responsible Gaming, organised by the Catalan Centre Association for Social Addictions and held on 9 April at the Barcelona Maritime Museum, also stands out. Now in its 17th edition, the event addressed topics ranging from the profile of social addictions to the future of responsible gaming, with institutional, associative and business participation. The academic delivered the lecture “Psychopathology of Addictions and Forensic Consequences. Clinical and Criminological Analysis of Behavioural Addictions and Their Implications in the Judicial Sphere.”
Tiffon has taken part in criminological cases that belong to the contemporary history of Spanish crime reporting and have had wide social impact, has taught at Spanish and international universities, and is the author of more than 20 books on the subject, in addition to being a recognised communicator of academic forensic psychology as a lecturer, organiser and manager of leading events and conferences in these fields. He holds national accreditation as an expert psychologist in legal and forensic psychology from the General Council of Official Colleges of Psychologists, and is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, the Canadian Society of Forensic Science, the International Academy of Legal Medicine, the French Association of Criminology and the Mexican Society of Criminology.
