ABSTRACT
There is no better way to introduce this chapter than to frame the often subtle ambiguity of the examiner’s forensic role with the sage advice of Murray Cohen and his colleagues over 35 years ago:
It is a perilous, narrow path between the requirements of social order and the expression of individual freedom. To balance order and liberty properly is a sociopolitical, not a clinical issue, and this must be done by society’s courts and legislatures. The clinician should neither be given nor attempt to usurp society’s right to determine the risks it is willing to take in resolving the conflict between safety and liberty.
(1978, p. 39)