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One hundred and twenty criminal defendants referred to a state hospital forensic unit underwent extensive examinations for the purpose of arriving at psychiatric recommendations regarding competency to stand trial and criminal responsibility. Seventy variables were abstracted from these evaluations via use of a simple checklist. A series of discriminant function analyses utilizing these variables indicated that highly accurate predictions could be made regarding psychiatric recommendations with respect to both competency and responsibility. Factors most influential in determining these recommendations included mental status at the time of the offense, psychotic symptomatology, and DSM-III diagnoses.

MENNINGER MAN AGAINST HIMSELFOriginally published in New York, 1938 Freud's two best salesmen in America were Benjamin Spock (whose book Baby and ChiZd Care sold more copies than any other book except the Bible) and Karl A. Menninger, America's avuncular all-American Kansas family psychiatrist. In a way, both men were baby doctors: Spock was the trustworthy pediatrician-it was said that all one needed to raise a child was a baby and a copy of Spock-and Menninger, who explained to America how childhood complexes could bedevil adult lives and introduced to and fostered America's acceptance of the habit of thinking in psychodynamic terms.Man Against Himself begins felicitously-on the cover. The very name of the author, Karl A. Menninger, M.D., promises reliable advice and comfort for the soul (as we might expect from a country family doctor), and the well-chosen title is filled with intellectual implications. "Man against himself' implies at least the following: that an individual can be his or her own worst enemy; that we initiate behaviors that are inimical to our own best interests; that there is a range of these inimical behaviors, from saying the wrong thing to your Adapted from a review, by E. S. Shneidman, 1998, Contemporary Psychology, 43, 461-464. Adapted with permission.