Daniel N. Robinson
Wild Beasts and Idle Humours
The Insanity Defense from Antiquity to the Present
Harvard University Press 1996
Stron IX+299, format: 15x21,5 cm
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HOW DOES THE LAW regard and define mental incompetence, when faced with the problem of meting out justice? To what extent has the law relied on extra-legal authorities—be they religious or scientific—to frame its own categories of mental incompetence and madness? Wild Beasts and Idle Humours takes us on an illuminating journey through the changing historical landscape of human nature and offers an unprecedented look at the legal conceptions of insanity from the pre-classical Greek world to the present. Although actual trial records are either totally lacking or incomplete until the eighteenth century, there are other sources from which the insanity defenses can be constructed.
Daniel Robinson, a distinguished historian of psychology, has pored over centuries of written law, statements by legal commentators, summaries of crimes, and punishments, to glean from these sources an understanding of epochal views of responsibility and competence. From the Greek phrenesis to the Roman notions of furiosus and non compos mentis, from the seventeenth-century witch trials to today's interpretation of mens rea, Robinson takes us through the intricate history of how the insanity defense has been construed as a meeting point of the law and those professions that chart human behavior and conduct, namely, religion, medicine, and psychology. The result is a rare historical account of "insanity" within western civilization.
Wild Beasts and Idle Humours will be essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of thinking not merely about legal insanity but also about such core concepts as responsibility, fitness for the rule of law, competence to enter into contracts and covenants, the role of punishments, and the place of experts within the overall juridical context.
Daniel n. Robinson is Professor of Psychology and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University and Visiting Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Oxford.
Contents
Introduction 1
Furiosi 8
Immortal Souls, Mortal Cities 48
Possession and Witchcraft 74
Wild Beasts and Idle Humours 113
The Rise of Medical Jurisprudence 141
Jural Science and Social Science 183
Notes 255
Index 295
"Wild Beasts and Idle Humours is truly unique. It synthesizes material that I do not believe has ever been considered in this context, and links up the historical past with contemporaneous values and politics. Robinson effortlessly weaves religious history, literary history, medical history, and political history, and demonstrates how the insanity defense cannot be fully understood without consideration of all these sources." —Michael L. Perlin, New York Law School
"A detailed anthropology of legal insanity that draws upon multiple and rich historical sources from antiquity to the present. Wild Beasts and Idle Humours reads like the inner workings of a fascinating and disciplined narrative mind."
—Dr. Robert Kinscherff, Massachusetts General Hospital
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