ABSTRACT
The lawyer naturally feels that the psychologist tends to find an excuse for the criminal act, and has to remind the psychologist that excuse is not justification. Psychiatry seems to be afraid that the law actively avoids any true psychological understanding of the transgressor because the law's business is to keep its punitive promises, and not to wax sentimental by way of scientific understandings. One of the interesting legal stories is the origin of the concept of Diminished Responsibility as told by Lord Keith in an address on Some Observations on Diminished Responsibility. The author has given this story in detail to show that even before psychiatry in the person of Isaac Ray of America protested against the McNaghten Rules, or Maudslev of England, law went out of its way to see that responsibility for criminal acts was rightly assessed. There are already States in which the McNaghten Rule has been modified by the admission of irresistible impulse.
