ABSTRACT
The creator of a complicated delusional system, Charles J. Guiteau traveled from city to city, moved from project to project, descending “from charlatanry to petty fraud.” For the whole issue of insanity and criminal responsibility had little effect on Guiteau’s fate. For some people insanity has long been fashionable. In sheer quantitative terms the extent and cost of insanity need underlining. Psychiatrists became involved because of Ezra Pound’s stature as a poet and his use of the insanity plea. Unfortunately, the training of psychiatrists, lawyers, and political scientists—and perhaps, even more important, their daily experiences—are so different that little agreed-upon wisdom exists among them. Law has always been, along with history, one of the closest professional allies that political scientists can count on, yet both lawyers and historians have been rather more receptive to the implications of psychology for their own fields than is usually the case within political science.
