Serial Killers: Psychiatry, Criminology, Responsibility

Francesca Biagi-Chai's book - a translation from the French of Le Cas Landru - tackles the issue of criminal responsibility in the case of serial killers, and other 'mad' people who are nonetheless deemed to be answerable before the law in most jurisdictions. The author, a Lacanian psychoanalyst and senior psychiatrist in France, with extensive experience working in institutional settings, analyses the logic informing the crimes of famous serial killers. Addressing the Landru case (which was the inspiration for Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux), as well as those of Pierre Riviere, Donato Bilancia, Harold Shipman and others such as Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, Biagi-Chai casts light on the confusion that pervades forensic psychiatry and criminal law as to the distinction between mental illness and 'madness'. Finally, she elaborates the consequences of her argument in a sustained critique of the insanity defence as it currently operates in France and elsewhere. The book includes a Preface by the renowned psychoanalyst, Jacques-Alain Miller. It also includes an introduction by the translators on the question of insanity before the law in the US and in the UK, which considers the pertinence of Biagi-Chai's argument for forensic psychiatry, for criminal law, and for the increasing contemporary focus on the assessment of dangerousness and risk-management strategies in crime control practices.

Francesca Biagi-Chai is a Psychiatrist in charge of a day care unit at the Paul Guiraud Hospital (Paris), psychoanalyst member of the cole de la Cause Freudienne and World Association of Psychoanalysis, lecturer at the Clinical Section of the Psychoanalysis Department (Paris 8) and the Istituto Freudiano di Roma. Vronique Voruz is Senior lecturer in Law and Criminology at the University of Leicester. She is also guest lecturer at the cole de Criminologie, Universit Catholique de Louvain-la-Nouve, psychoanalyst member of the World Association of Psychoanalysis, and joint editor of The Later lacan: An Introduction, 2007, Albany, NY: SUNY. Suzanne Yang is Visiting Instructor in Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She is a forensic psychiatrist with a research focus on violence risk assessment in adults and clinical interventions for violence prevention. Translated by Vronique Voruz with Philip Dravers