Abstract
In order to live well together, we must have reasonable expectations about the conduct of others. Those expectations are grounded on proprieties of practice, adherence to which requires us to have moral and emotional capacities that enable responsiveness to others’ rights and needs. Capacities such as empathy, a sense of justice, care and concern, prudence, an interest in making and keeping promises, and, more generally, dispositions that connect us to others can prevent social anomie. Even the visceral capacity to feel disgust at scenes of brutality and suffering is essential to our sense of community. People who lack these capacities frighten us, and for good reasons: they are unpredictable, strange, threatening (Miller 1998). People who are labeled psychopathic, as described in the last chapter, generally present us with a difficult choice: to exclude them from our community or to render their threatening character harmless.
The philosophers say that life is a moral adventure and to choose a career in forensic psychiatry is to choose to increase the risks of that moral adventure.
Alan Stone
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Notes
- 1.
Kansas v. Hendricks, 521 U.S. 346 (19970), supra note 1.
- 2.
Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U.S. 880, 897 (1983).
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Douard, J., Schultz, P. (2013). Forensic Psychiatric Testimony: Ethical Issues. In: Monstrous Crimes and the Failure of Forensic Psychiatry. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 53. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5279-5_8
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