“Medea” in the Greek Courtroom: Contesting Insanity among Jurists, Psychiatrists and the Public

This article focuses on the case of the young American woman who killed herthree children in 1961 in Athens, attempted to commit suicide and was widely referred toas the “Medea of Kalamaki”. Its goal is to discuss the difficulties that psychiatrists facedin Greek courts to establish themselves as experts on matters pertaining to the mentalcondition of homicide offenders, and the constant calling into question of their expertiseby the judiciary and the press alike. At the same time, the article argues that in theparticular circumstances of 1960s Greece, press crime narratives brought forward a thirdfactor involved in the controversy between the judiciary and the psychiatrists, namely“public opinion”, testifying to an “enlarged publicity”. Jane Brown’s two trials attest tothe prevalence in both the judiciary and the press of the “Medea narrative” that refutedpsychiatric diagnoses of diminished or even a total lack of liability for her acts