Psychoanalysis and Jurisprudence—On the Relevance of Psychoanalytic Theory to Law

Psychoanalysis endeavors to provide a systematic theory of human behavior. Law, both as a body of substantive decisions and as a process for decision making, has been created by man to regulate the behavior of man. Psychoanalysis seeks to understand the workings of the mind. Law is mind-of-man-made. There is in law, as psychoanalysis teaches that there is in individual man, a rich residue which each generation preserves from the past, modifies for the present, and leaves for the future. An initial, though tentative assumption that one discipline is relevant to the other seems therefore warranted. The congruence of their concern for man, his mind, his behavior, and his environment may justify this assertion of mutual relevance. But it does nothing to demarcate the potential limits of psychoanalysis as an aid to understanding the meaning and function of law. This essay explores some of the contributions psychoanalytic theory may make to jurisprudence and, perhaps more significantly, seeks to locate and examine the boundaries which mark the potential area of any such contribution.

Although law is stereotypically perceived as being concerned with an external and psychoanalysis with an internal image of man, each