MEDICAL VERSUS LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY

Among the various problems of human activities there is none more important than the relation of mental state to responsibility. The idea of human liberty and responsibility forms the basis of the penal system. This principle has been recognized by law as indispensable in order to assure the working of social discipline. The doctrine of liberty is old and in its crude form is accepted now, but modern science, based on accurate clinical and experimental methods, has helped to modify to a great extent the fundamental features of the old conception of liberty and responsibility. Mental medicine, through its more elaborate classifications and its continuously widening field of investigations, has revealed new pathologic manifestations and types which previously had not been suspected. Normal and pathologic psychology in its turn has availed itself of these discoveries and assisted in throwing light on the obscure problems of personality, memory, volition and