ABSTRACT
An inquiry into the formal recognition of forensic psychiatry as a medical subspecialty places heavy demands on historical reconstruction. It is not sucient to engage the history of forensic psychiatry simply as a subtext of the greater history of psychiatry. is approach has been taken by most of the standard histories of psychiatry (Alexander and Selesnick 1966; Zilboorg 1967; Ackerknecht 1968), which portray psychiatry either as foreordained by the inevitable march of science or as crusading against the inertia of entrenched superstition and ignorance. Medical specialties have generally evolved alongside the natural sciences, although psychiatry has not precisely followed this path making its history more dicult to reconstruct (Marx 1970, 595). e history of forensic psychiatry can be traced through the dual emergence of psychiatric and legal discourse and practice as these have mutually developed and intersected over the centuries. is chapter follows the history of that intersection through the ancient, medieval, and modem periods aer rst considering the nature of the complex intellectual problems involved in constructing such a history.
