ABSTRACT
The formal recognition of forensic psychiatry as a medical subspecialty places heavy demands on historical construction. It is not sufficient to engage the history of forensic psychiatry simply as a subtext of the greater history of psychiatry. This approach has been taken by most of the standard histories of psychiatry (Alexander and Selesnick 1966; Zilboorg 1967; Ackerknecht 1968), which either portray psychiatry as foreordained by the inevitable march of science or as crusading against the inertia of entrenched superstition and ignorance (see also Mora 1970 and Mora and Brand 1970). Medical specialties have generally evolved along with the development of the natural sciences, although psychiatry has not precisely followed this path; thus, ‘… the development of psychiatry has been more difficult to delineate’ (Marx 1970, p. 595).
