Is Oscar Pistorius anxious or just angry? An analyst's view

This 'prince of the physical world' does not easily fit the description of an anxiety-ridden GAD sufferer

Oscar Pistorius on trial in Pretoria

NEARLY at the end of his murder trial, doubt is being cast on Paralympian Oscar Pistorius’s state of mental health. A forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Meryl Vorster, has diagnosed Pistorius with Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD).

Today, under pressure from prosecutor Gerrie Nel who wants to establish the truth about Pistorius’s sanity and whether his lawyers are using GAD as a “fall-back defence”, Judge Thokozile Masipa ruled that he should be admitted to a psychiatric hospital for independent assessment. Because the testing will take 30 days, and it will need to be scheduled, this could mean a lengthy break in the court case.

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is a Jungian analyst in private practice in London. She is former Chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council and a Training Analyst of the Society of Analytical Psychology, of the British Association of Psychotherapists, and of the London Centre for Psychotherapy. She is co-editor with Barbara Wharton of Sabina Spielrein: Forgotten Pioneer of Psychoanalysis, published by Routledge in 2003 and co-editor with Paul Williams, Jean Arundale and Jean Knox of Terrorism and War: Unconscious Dynamics of Political Violence, published by Karnac in 2002.