I, Pierre Rivire, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother: A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century

Michel Foucault, author of Madness and Civilization and Discipline and Punish, collected the relevant documents of the case, including medical and legal testimony, police records. and Rivire's memoir. The Rivire case, he points out, occurred at a time when many professions were contending for status and power. Medical authority was challenging law, branches of government were vying. Foucault's reconstruction of the case is a brilliant exploration of the roots of our contemporary views of madness, justice, and crime.