L’aviolicide, un parricide de substitution ? À propos d’un cas clinique

Abstract

Aviolicide is a specific form of parricide, referring to the act of killing one's grandparents. It appears to be a rare event, although no precise data can be found about its occurrence, since it has not been often studied in medical literature. ObservationWe report the case of M. X, 31 years old, hospitalized in a high secure unit after killing both his paternal grandparents. This patient was born in Eastern Europe and raised by his grandparents in France. In his early twenties, he started consuming alcohol and drugs (mainly cannabis) and isolating from his relatives. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when hospitalized at the age of 24, after a psychotic episode, with delusions of persecution towards his grandparents, aggressiveness and agitation. The delusions got more and more intense in the next years, as the patient did not take his medication. One day, after 3 days of hesitation trying to resist delusional injonctions, triggered by a minor comment from his grandmother, he violently assaulted his grandparents and killed them. He did not run away from the crime scene and went back to his everyday activities right after the assault. DiscussionWhen compared to the socio-demographic and clinical profile of the few cases of aviolicide found in literature, M. X appears to have a lot in common with them. Indeed, many of his features have been previously described: the fact that his parents suffered from alcoholism; his migration; the fact that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia; addiction to cannabis and alcohol; a context of long lasting fight over money; the homicide happening at the victim's place; the extreme violence. Furthermore, most of the aviolicide cases happened in families where the grandparents had a parental role (after the parents died – as in M. X's case –, or the parents being symbolically absent), or were the result of the hatred towards the parents shifting to the grandparents. Based on this observation, we then compared M. X's profile and acting out to those found in the literature about parricide. We realized they were very similar, since M. X is a male in his early thirties, single, not working, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia several years ago and not taking his prescribed medication. As parricides often do, his acting out happened at the victims’ home, brutally triggered by a seemingly minor event, in a disorganized way, and the perpetrator does not try to run away. ConclusionThe similarities to parricide and the fact that the grandparents played a parent-like role on both a symbolical and legal level lead us to conclude that aviolicide has a similar psychopathology to parricide, and can be understood as a substitutive parricide. However, we have to underly the fact that this parricide/aviolicide profile is non specific. It is highly similar to the profile found in literature about dangerousness in schizophrenia. We end up stressing the major suicidal risk in the aftermath of such an act, as the delusion of persecution ceases after treatment and the patient starts realizing his act.