Forensic psychiatry, its place and its promise.

Forensic psychiatrists have always experienced problems when testifying before the bar of justice-some burdensome, some answered relatively easily. Indeed their position in court was ill defined until Benjamin Rush ( 18 12) and Isaac Ray (1 838) placed psychiatry on a more credible basis. After Ray solidified the field testifying was largely in the hands of Superintendents of Insane Asylums from whom "alienists," often neurologists, evolved.' In earlier days, as in Rex v. Arnold (1724)~ public officials performed testimonial duty. In Arnold one Mr. Allen, a Commissioner of the Peace, examined the accused finding him "mad [with] tumult, confusion and wicked devices" (paranoia?). The prosecutor, Serj. Chesire, functioning as attorney, objected to Allen's testimony on the grounds that a "madman could receive instructions on how to behave mad." Two and a half centuries later Justice William Douglas ( 1 968) echoed this suspicion in a truck accident case.3 He warned against "psychiatric probing" in these words: