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This book consists of a series of articles about mental abnormality and crime by thirteen outstanding English physicians and psychiatrists. It is one of a series of books devoted to the scientific study of crime and administration of the criminal law for the primary use of the Department of Criminal Science, Faculty of Law, Cambridge University. As stated by its editors, its purpose is to make for a closer collaboration between members of the medical and legal professions.
In view of the eminence of the contributors one would expect to have opened up new vistas in the field of criminology. Unfortunately this is not altogether the case. All the articles are scholarly, informative, well organized, well and clearly written, but only in a’ few of them can one learn the real meaning and significance of criminal behavior; what is behind the act of the criminal, why he acts as he does. One is for the most part confronted with the same old viewpoints on anti-social behavior, classifications, weighings of “partial” and “total” responsibility under the law, textbook descriptions of psychopathology, with a disregard for the dynamic factors in the personality of the criminal himself. It is deplorable that so few of the contributors go into the basic problem of crime, the motivation of the criminal, especially since throughout the whole book there is a wealth of excellent clinical material which could be utilized and serve as illustrations for the reasons behind criminal behavior. As it stands now this material is used descriptively, emphasizing the pathology of the disease, rather than that of the individual. Such academic treatment has never been and will never be constructive, and, lacking as it does a whole-hearted spirit for the man behind the offense, it serves rather to bolster up our present system than to encourage much needed reforms, even if intentions of reform are present in the minds of the writers.
One is occasionally brought up short by a grossly erroneous statemen