The Wrongful Conviction of Oscar Pistorius: Science Transforms our Comprehension of Reeva Steenkamp’s Shocking Death
About this ebook
Olympian Oscar Pistorius’ spectacular assent to fame ground to a screeching halt in the wee hours of Valentine’s Day, 2013. Hearing a sound emanating from his bathroom, he grabbed his pistol and he stumbled to the washroom, screaming at the intruders to leave. Fearing someone was about to emerge to harm him and his girlfriend, Reeva, he fired four bullets into the bathroom. Soon he realized he had killed his lover. Horrified, he summoned the authorities. The investigating detective believed this was yet another case of an escalating argument where a man murdered his partner. World opinion is split. Some believe Oscar. Others are convinced he committed a despicable crime of passion.
Distinguished clinical psychologist Brent Willock brings an entirely new perspective to bear on these horrific events: that Oscar’s horrific actions occurred while he was in a state of paradoxical sleep, also known as parasomnia. Throughout this book, Willock uses scientific scrutiny and legal precedence to resolve the crucial anomalies surrounding the Oscar Pistorius trial. Willock also discusses how mental health experts and the defense team might have overlooked the hypothesis of parasomnia that could have exonerated Oscar.
Millions who followed the Blade Runner’s astonishing achievements, uplifted and inspired by his triumph over physical adversity, were crushed by his precipitous plunge from grace. They were baffled. Even Oscar himself, in a television interview shortly before his sentencing, achingly asked, “I always think, How did this possibly happen? How could this have happened?” At last, Willock’s elegant work responds to these poignant questions that have so plagued and pained Reeva’s family, friends, Oscar, and, indeed, the world.
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About the author
Brent Willock earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan. After several years on staff in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical Center, he relocated to Toronto to become Chief Psychologist at the university-affiliated C.M. Hincks Treatment Center. He was Adjunct Faculty, York University, Associate Faculty Member, School of Graduate Studies, University of Toronto, and taught at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Dr. Willock is the founding President of the local chapter of the American Psychological Association’s Division of Psychoanalysis, and of the Toronto Institute & Society for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He has contributed many chapters to books, published in prominent journals, and serves on the editorial boards for several journals and book series. For the Washington Psychoanalytic Foundation’s New Directions in Psychoanalytic Thinking Program, he is a Writing Mentor. He is author of Comparative-Integrative Psychoanalysis (finalist, Goethe Award), First Editor of Understanding and Coping with Failure; Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference; Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Passion; On Deaths and Endings (Gradiva Award), Taboo or Not Taboo? (Goethe Award), Loneliness and Longing (Goethe Award). Dr. Willock serves on the Board of the Canadian Institute for Child & Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psycho–therapy, the faculty of the Institute for the Advancement of Self Psychology, and the Advisory Board of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. His many contributions have been honored by the Ontario Psychological Association, the American Psychological Association, the Canadian Psychological Association, the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education, the University of Chicago, the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis.
