Infanticide and Mental Illness: Theories and Practices involving Psychiatry and Justice (Italy, 19th-20th century)

Abstract

This article focuses on the use of the discourse of psychiatry in Italian legal system and in criminal courtrooms in infanticide’s cases at the turn of the 20th century. It thus considers the main concepts and theories deployed by psychiatrists in order to explain the criminal act of the mother killing her newborn baby as well as the reception of such knowledge by jurists. It emerges that even though references to medical-psychiatric knowledge, especially from European authors, were already part and parcel of the Italian legal discourse about infanticide in particular, Italian psychiatrists and physicians took very little interest in this topic and psychiatrists’ opinions ware granted little weight in infanticide trials. Nevertheless the excuse of mental illness was more and more used in Italian courtrooms from the beginning of the 20th century onwards and this appears as a kind of compromise between law and consolidating psychiatry.

Keywords

• infanticide
• psychiatry
• justice
• medical experts
• Italy