Orestes in Southern California: A Forensic Case of Matricide

Abstract

The author presents an unusual case study of matricide, one in which the perpetrator, a 33-year-old poet and actor, acted out the role of Orestes in real life. The biogenic basis of his mental illness, schizoaffective disorder, was exacerbated by a developmental trauma—the loss of his father to polio and of his mother to psychosis—as a toddler. The only psychotic avenue to his masculine identification and separation from his mother as an adult was murder.