ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that important distinction must be drawn between the category disorder and the sub-categories disease and maladjustment. There are three main arguments for the identity theory and the physicalist–objective model view that crime is, or is due to, a form of mental disease. These are: the argument from linguistic usage, the argument from symptoms, and the argument from analogy. The analogy is nevertheless sufficient for the purpose of showing how one who is free from disease, or any number of other disorders, may still suffer from the disorder of maladjustment to his ostensible role and to his prevailing socio-cultural environment. Each of the types of mental disorder just distinguished has a recognisable analogue in the case of different machines of the same design or machines of different designs with similar functions. In contrast, where putative mental disorder and disease are involved 'order and health' have neither well-defined objective criteria nor even universally acceptable tacit norms.
