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In writing this book the author had two main objectives: (1) To emphasize that in matters of law and psychiatry it is not enough to be correct or accurate, it is mandatory to fuse our legal and psychiatric functions with a morality that is practised and not merely given recognition; (2) to make the reader aware of the immensity of the problems involved in the conflict that exists between law and psychiatry. He contends that this conflict prevails because of the existence of an eternal struggle between the striving to punish and the yearning to understand and forgive within the same community of men, and more often than not, within the same person. The book largely deals with this theme as it operates in the framing of the law, in the dispensation of justice in court and in the implementation of punishment. He considers that the true and effective aim of punishment is to awaken, not stifle, the will to resocialization or reintegration or the reincorporation of social standards in the criminal. Using interesting case material he illustrates the discrepancy between this aim and the purpose punitive law achieves in its present form. The book presents an eloquent appeal for the greater utilization of psychological insight in the future, in order to create a rational penological system.
Dr. Zillboorg has a vast knowledge of his subject and has put a great deal of thought and moral indignation into the writing of this book. If one is to be critical at all, it would be about the fact that although he implicitly makes use of structural concepts, he tends to neglect them in his final assessment of the phenomena he describes. An illustrative example of this can be found in the chapter entitled 'Suggestions about Psychiatry and Psychiatrists' where he cogently and critically demonstrates that the court room procedure creates an atmosphere conducive to the generation of hostility between judge and psychiatric witness, prosecutor and defending counsel, one psychiatric witn