PSYCHIATRY AND THE COURTS

This article discusses the fundamental conflicts between taking place between modern psychiatry and the law. The primary conflict is that psychiatry deals with personalities and as such it is necessarily individualistic. Law, on the other hand, deals with generalizations. Psychiatry analyzes humanity into its amorphous elements, law synthesizes into complex, stereotyped, organic compounds. If psychiatry is ever to see at one with the law there must be a fuller recognition of these contrasting philosophies. Historically, probation was the first branch of the courts to direct the powerful searchlight of the law on the individual. The Juvenile Court movement at the beginning of the century was the wedge which introduced this study of the individual into the court room. Psychiatry came a decade later to reiterate with added emphasis this point of view, so that now it has become a fundamental axiom. Everywhere, liberal leaders of the judiciary are coming to recognize it. Because psychiatry and probation view the offenders as individuals, the public harbors the opinion that the fundamental function of these adjuncts to the court is the dispensing of mercy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)