Insanity and Legal Action Essay -- Law

Insanity and Legal Action Schopenhauers opening of furiousness as a defect of memory, while unquestionably dated, nonetheless retains operative intuitive appeal and is at least reconcilable with modern consciousnesss of psychical function and insanity.1 If accepted as a working speculation in conjunction with a more modern looking of the operation of the brain, the theory leads to a conception of insanity as a failure of grounds of consequences. In turn, this conception may help explain precisely wherefore the kooky are not considered responsible for their satisfys, and may suggest that the insane cannot be said to have acted at all. Modern cognitive theory suggests that memory is structured primarily around stories. Thus, rather than remembering a sequence of events, we impute to those events some causal structure that enables us to clear and therefore remember the events. Unfortunately, this usually results in significant distortion of the events in our memory as we fill in standard imagery in the place of actual occurrences.2 One conclusion that seems well supported by these observations is that our memory, as we usually think of it, is intimately bound up with our understanding of causation and consequences. Presumably, a defect of memory, which Schopenhauer claims is at the root of all insanity, could olibanum impair a natural sense of consequences. Conversely, a failure to understand consequences could easily result in just the kind of fragmented and unrecognizable memory that Schopenhauer discusses. The more standard categorizations of insanity, especially as described by Macniven, can be reconciled with this view. Macniven specifically attri preciselyes to manic-depressive psychosis a tenden... ...RESPONSIBILITY, in a higher place note 1, at 7585. 7 H.L.A. Hart, Ascription of Responsibility (1949), in FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY, supra note 1, at 143148.8 See, e.g., A.I. Melden, Action (1956), in FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY, supra note 1, at 149160. Melden proposes a conception of action that, like Harts, takes into account a broad set of mickle surrounding any physical movement or act of will. contrary Hart, Melden sees these circumstances not as a tool of judgment and ascription, but rather as inherently giving the action a grumpy meaning.9 See Barbara Wootton, Crime, Responsibility, and Prevention, in CRIME AND THE CRIMINAL LAW (1963). In the criminal context, Lady Woottons suggestions for combining the functions of mental institution and prison might promote greater mental health of prisoners with mental problems distant to their crimes.