ABSTRACT
The psychiatric examination, diagnosis, treatment, and hospitalization of persons against their will—in and out of psychiatric, medical, and other institutions—form a rich web of social policies legitimized by tradition, sanctioned by science, and articulated by law. This chapter proposes a new social policy that respects and protects equally the ideas and interests of both the proponents and the opponents of involuntary psychiatric interventions. Enlisting the power of the state to prohibit psychiatric relations between consenting adults is, of course, just as inimical to the spirit of liberty as is enlisting it to impose psychiatric relations on unwilling patients. In the stronger version of the Psychiatric Will, a person would have to assert his desire to be the beneficiary of psychiatric coercion, should the need for it arise. Although the stronger version of the Psychiatric Will is theoretically more attractive, the long tradition of coercive paternalism may make the weaker version more immediately practical.
