The Matter of Forensic Psychiatry: A Historical Enquiry

Abstract

Since antiquity, some men have not been considered accountable for their actions when they transgressed the law, and were exempted from legal penalties, or given lesser ones. Why? The rationale for legal exemption has varied over time. So have the labels assigned to such lawbreakers, and even the personnel involved in the labelling process. For centuries, settling the question of deviant mental states of relevance to the court seemed relatively unproblematic. It was thought that personal acquaintance would easily discover such states of mind and the court could then be notified. It was not until the nineteenth century that western society felt a need to regulate this problematique. As a result, or as a precondition for this process of settling the question of legal accountability, the matter came to be construed in part as a medical problem. Physicians, and later psychiatrists, came to be regarded as possessing specific knowledge in this area which qualified them to judge a person's legal accountability. Personal knowledge of the deranged defendant was supplanted by professional knowledge of sanity and insanity as the basis for authority on the matter of accountability.This essay seeks to investigate how the question of legal accountability became transformed into a matter of medical authority, based on the case of Norway. The study involves an understanding of the relationship between forensic psychiatry and its disciplinary neighbours, jurisprudence, medicine and theology, and sensitivity to the language employed, the shifting terms used, and the changing meanings of those same terms.

Characteristics of mentally ill offenders from 100 psychiatric court reports

“…There are increasing rates of violence, substance abuse and other psychiatric disorders that are of legal importance. Consequently, Western society felt a need to regulate and answer the question of what deviant mental states are of relevance to the court [ 1 ]. Although Arab countries were among the first in the world to establish mental health hospitals (in Baghdad in the year 705 AD, Cairo in 800 and in Damascus in 1270 [ 2 ]), currently most Arab countries have no mental health acts [ 3 ], no certified training in forensic psychiatry, there is little research if any in forensic psychiatry and forensic psychiatric services are poorly organised [ 3 , 4 ].…”

Professional dynamics of the forensic evaluation of mental states in eighteenth-century Denmark-Norway

“…The history of the insanity defence can be traced back to ancient Greek and Roman law (Watson, 2011: 72) and implies a long tradition of evaluating mental states in a forensic context. As legal insanity originally, and generally, encompassed manifest insanity, the judges’ decisions did not privilege medical opinions over lay observations when evaluating the mental state of the offender (Skålevåg, 2006: 49; Waaben, 1997: 22; Watson, 2011: 80). However, medicine began to merge with legal discourse on criminal responsibility via the specifically Renaissance-era medical concept of ‘melancholy’ (Watson, 2011: 80).…”

“…By suggesting the significance of pastoral-medical teamwork in the evaluation of mental states for the development of forensic psychiatry, this article elaborates on existing depictions of the history of forensic psychiatry and the insanity defence in Denmark (Waaben, 1997) and provides a basis for understanding the Danish development of this field in a broader context (Westerink, 2014). 2 As a study of pre-medical forensic psychiatry, the article furthermore joins the pool of existing studies of the precedents to ‘the establishment and institutionalization of psychiatry as a special branch of medicine’ during the nineteenth century (Møllerhøj, 2008: 321; see also Skålevåg, 2006).…”

Madness and crime: Historical perspectives on forensic psychiatry

“…There is, however, a notable gap in the literature: the twentiethcentury development of forensic psychiatry and criminology, occupying the border-area of the medical and psychological sciences on the one hand and the administration of justice and penal regimes on the other, has received little systematic attention by scholars. The bulk of historical studies on forensic psychiatry and criminology concerns the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see for example Barras & Bernheim, 1990;Becker, 2002;Becker & Wetzell, 2006;Chauvaud, 2000;Chauvaud & Dumoulin, 2003;Colaizzi, 1989;Eigen, 1995Eigen, , 2003Eigen, , 2004Forshaw & Rollin, 1990;Foucault, 1975Foucault, , 1978aGibson, 2002;Goldstein, 1987Goldstein, , 1998Guarnieri, 1991;Guignard, 2006Guignard, , 2010Harding, 1993;Harris, 1989;Kaufmann, 1993;Mohr, 1997;Mucchielli, 1995;Nye, 1984;Prior, 2008;Renneville, 1999Renneville, , 2003Renneville, , 2006Robinson, 1996;Savoja, Godet, & Dubuis, 2008-2009Skalevag, 2006;Smith, 1981Smith, , 1985Smith, , 1988Smith, , 1989Ward, 1997Ward, , 1999Wetzell, 1996Wetzell, , 2000…”