NCJ Number
130170
Date Published
1989
Length
192 pages
Annotation
This book examines nearly 200 years in the history of homicidal insanity and describes how physicians and psychiatrists have diagnosed, explained, and restrained the dangerously insane.
Abstract
Homicidal insanity remains troublesome to both the psychiatric and legal professions, despite many scientific and social changes during the past 200 years. The current predominant opinion among psychiatrists is that no correlation exists between dangerousness and specific mental disorders. For many generations, however, psychiatrists have reported cases of insane homicide that are clinically similar. Although psychiatric theory has changed and psychiatric nosology has been inconsistent, the mental phenomena psychiatrists have identified in such cases remains the same. The author's central thesis is that as psychiatric theory has changed, psychiatrists have regarded these phenomena variously as symptoms of mental disease or the disease in itself. A secondary thesis is that psychiatrists have used these phenomena as predictors and markers in the practical matters of preventing insane homicide and testifying in courts to defend the irresponsible and expose the culpable. Even though scientific and philosophical disagreement has raised controversy for almost 200 years, no rational method exists to discriminate the dangerous from the harmless in cases of involuntary commitment or to distinguish insanity from crime in the courts. References, notes, and figures