What if antisocial personality is an illness?

نویسنده

  • B Bursten
چکیده

The Model Penal Code l drafted by the American Law Institute in 1962 contains the following paragraph: "As used in this Article the terms 'mental disease or defect' do not include an abnormality manifested only by repeated criminal or otherwise antisocial conduct." This paragraph was meant to exclude the designation of antisocial personality as an illness. which could result in a plea of insanity in criminal cases. The reasoning behind this exclusion was set out in an earlier draft of the Code~ and was adopted from the British view of psychopathy ,:1 which was "(psychopathy) is a statistical abnormality; that is to say. the psychopath differs from the normal person only quantitatively or in degree. not qualitatively; and the diagnosis of psychopathic personality does not carry with it any explanation of the causes of the abnormality." Essentially. since antisocial personality Was considered to be coextensive with social irresponsibility. it was felt that there would be a basic circularity in attempting to explain this irresponsible behavior hy a "diagnosis" that was itself based entirely on irresponsible behavior. This exclusionary paragraph was seriously challenged in the United States. In 1962. Overholser 4 argued that a moderate proportion of criminals may fall in the (sociopathic) group and some very decidedly do so. The notion that there is a "mental abnormality manifested only by repeated criminal or otherwise antisocial con-duct" is. however, unpsychiatric. There is no such entity, even though the proposed Model Penal Code of the American Law Institute purports to exclude persons with a diagnosis of sociopathic personality. There are many criminals who are not sociopaths. but the sociopath who comes into conflict with the law has numerous symptoms in addition to his antisocial behavior. and is decidedly a mentally sick man. Diamond'-' said that such exclusionary clauses did not "make any Psychiatric sense _ They are as arbitrary and capricious as excluding defendants with red hair or blue eyes or Negro blood from the benefit of the law of criminal responsibility. They define by legislative fiat what is and what is not a psychiatric condition." The Court in Currel1s. Ii while agreeing "fully" with the All exclu-sionary paragraph. did not adopt it. It maintained that the paragraph did not properly apply to sociopaths. because these people were mentally ill and therefore could reach the threshold of qualification for the insanity defense. Five years later. the Freemall 7 decision. while not ruling …

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عنوان ژورنال:
  • The Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law

دوره 10 2  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 1982