Preface
Dr. Lorene Shyba and Dr. J. Thomas Dalby, editors Introduction Jim: Can you remember back that far? I can’t remember what happened yesterday. (He laughs) I can’t. How do you do it?
Plato: Oh, I had to go to a head-shrinker. Boy, he made me remember. —Rebel Without a Cause, (Ray 1955) As editors of this book we auditioned a great many titles before settling on Shrunk, but how better, we reckoned, to write about the worlds of mental health and the law than to find a word used to describe the act of shrinking heads, or trying to understand the workings of a disordered mind. From the legal side, criminal defence lawyers use this term after meeting clients for the first time and assessing the circumstances of the crime. C.D. Evans QC, for example, recalls from his experience defending accused murderers and violent offenders that “If the crime is bizarre or absurd, it is a wise precaution to get the client’s head shrunk.” In Tough Crimes: True Cases by Top Canadian Criminal Lawyers, the first book in this ‘True Cases’ series, we discovered that lawyers such as John Rosen had similar thoughts when first encountering Paul Bernardo’s disturbed mind, as did Joel Pink QC when unravelling the Antigonish Beech Hill murders. From the mental health side, psychologist Dr. Lawrence Ellerby entices us to enter his Shrunk story about a journey from deviance to rehabilitation by promising to share the “contributions we shrinks can make in this difficult and complex social problem.” And the informed general public, who make up a valued sector of our readership, might be of a mind to help out friends the way Plato, Sal Mineo’s character, did when explaining his new-found clarity of mind to James Dean’s character Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause, “Oh, I had to go see a head-shrinker.” After all, who is there among us who hasn’t been touched by mental illness among friends or family. When we first started working on Shrunk, our idea was to create an anthology that would interface between the legal, the medical, and the behavioural by focussing on cases where judges and juries have called upon mental health experts when faced with the mentally disordered criminally accused. We assembled a list of eminent forensic psychologists and psychiatrists who we thought might be motivated to help build a solution to the problem of understanding mental illness in the criminal justice system. We asked them to consider their own involvement and how being exposed to people with mental health disorders affected them personally. Among our questions were: What were the outcomes in terms of your personal reflections? Was there a case that altered your perspective on humanity? The original, previously unpublished stories that emerged from our invitations brilliantly illuminate a wide range of topics. These include Personality Disorders in the various Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) clusters, unlawful behaviour due to delusions and psychopathy, the criminal responsibility of accused persons, fitness of accused to stand trial, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), wrongful convictions, and treatment and social consequences. We are in awe of the intense effort shown by our authors to inject their hearts and souls into explaining their experiences. Our international contributors, Dr. Louise Olivier from South Africa, Dr. Jack White from Australia, and Dr. Sven Å. Christianson from Sweden revealed unique legal situations in their countries, as did Dr. Donald Dutton when describing a remarkable case in the United States. Their stories resonate with interesting terminology and turns of phrase that we edited only gently; in fact, we allowed individual voices to come through from all of our authors, whether Canadian or from countries beyond our borders. Within the editing process, we occasionally nudged writers to identify and focus on the heart of the story but we never had to ply their enthusiasm. Unlike any other book within the genre of True Crime, Shrunk presents the work of forensic professionals who have delved deeply, and with great commitment, into the disturbed human psyche. ‘Forensic.’ The word evokes images of crime scene tape or a cold corpse on the stainless steel autopsy table but its real meaning is much broader and simpler. Forensic is derived from Latin and literally means ‘in the forum’ or in modern terms ‘in the court’. The forum in ancient Rome was the centre of most social debates and although the legal structure of the Romans did not have the same structure as in modern times, it was understood that the forum was where problems were formally and finally settled. When the word is added as a qualifier for psychologists and psychiatrists, it denotes that the focus of the work has a legal purpose. As such, many of the expectations or assumptions that might be made of other medical and behavioural science professionals cannot always be applied to the forensic breed. Forensic experts have, as a primary client, the courts or, indirectly, society even above the needs of the individual or patient being seen. A ‘helping’ role is not always assumed for the individual being examined, and when this is done, it is so that they may not harm other members of our society. Most ‘patients’ do not come to forensic experts voluntarily but are often mandated to undergo assessments. And while forensic experts consider information that patients provide, this information is not accepted at face value; other data is often sought from multiple sources in due diligence. Very often confidentiality is not offered to patients as forensic experts give opinions in the public forum of the court system, in both written reports and oral testimony. These opinions are often repeated in the popular press, although not always accurately or comprehensively. Thus, in this book our contributors can freely give commentary on their public statements about specific cases, although several of our authors explicitly did obtain consent from the subjects of their chapter as a matter of their professional courtesy. Most of the cases contained in this book identify the individuals at the centre of their story, as they are historically important cases. But when identity did not matter to the narrative, pseudonyms were employed. Forensic psychologists’ and psychiatrists’ roles in law can be as scientific commentators on mental health issues, evaluators of specific legal questions such as fitness for trial or criminal responsibility, or as advisors on appropriate sentencing/treatment alternatives. With some offenders, court-ordered treatment is necessary and this responsibility also falls to forensic mental health professionals. Many lay persons confuse psychologists and psychiatrists and in the forensic area there are more similarities than differences. Both professions have the legal authority to diagnose and treat mental disorders and both are involved in almost every component of the legal system. Psychiatrists are firstly physicians undertaking the same training as every other medical doctor and then gaining specialized training with mental disorders. They can prescribe medications if that is deemed appropriate for the care of patients. Psychologists are trained as behavioural scientists with a strong research base and then gain clinical experience in assessing individuals with specialized psychological tests and treating patients using behavioural methods. Coordinated involvement of both professions is common. Allied professionals such as social workers and psychiatric nurses also can play key roles in forensic work. One of the purposes of Shrunk is to let readers inside the work done by forensic mental health experts. Misunderstandings about ‘insanity’ cases abound among the general public. Legal systems like Canada’s, which are descended from English common law, use precedent as the guiding principle where older established legal judgements guide modern court decisions. For insanity verdicts, a single case from London in 1843 has had continuing world-wide impact in courts. The case of The Queen against Daniel McNaughton for the Wilful Murder of Mr. Drummond is arguably the most impactful of any in the history of forensic psychology and psychiatry (although these two professions did not formally exist at that time). A delusional man, Daniel McNaughton, shot the Secretary of the Prime Minister of England in the back in broad daylight in central London. The ensuing legal battle ended with a jury finding McNaughton not guilty by reason of insanity. The public was outraged and the press indicated that all one had to do to escape justice was to feign madness. Young Queen Victoria, who had already survived several assassination attempts by ‘mad’ men, suggested to her Prime Minister that guidance from the House of Lords was needed. This body in turn asked the twelve judges of Queen’s Bench to craft rules to be used in later insanity cases. The McNaughton rules survive to this day in little-changed form and pronounce that a person labouring under a mental disease that impairs their ability to distinguish right from wrong cannot be held legally responsible for their act—although this often meant long tenures in mental hospitals. Finally, while forensic experts can offer the courts expert ‘opinions’ they are just that—views which may or may not be used by the trier of fact (the judge or jury) in reaching legal judgements. Not every opinion offered turns for the benefit of the accused. Forensic experts also make it clear in the work that explanations of behaviour are never to be automatically converted to legal ‘excuses’. As seen in the various biographies of our contributors, they are an august group—leaders in their professions and most have multiple roles as clinicians, educators, and researchers. Many of our authors examined patients linked to the ultimate crime of homicide, but in everyday practice, psychologists and psychiatrists see patients charged with everything from shoplifting to exhibitionism to hit and run driving offences. While most of these stories have adults as the central character, adolescents also receive scrutiny and interventions. There are many writing styles, as well as themes, represented in the book; from the academic, as reflected by the work of Porter & Dilley, and Cooper & Kanipayor with their comprehensive references and footnotes, to the flights of metaphor and creative non-fiction in the work of Dr. David Dawson and criminal defence lawyer William Trudell. In whatever style told, sober as well as enlightened thoughts and reprimands are exposed. We feel that however one decides to read the book, starting front to back for legendary tales of criminal evil, back to front for glimpses of optimism, or inside out to begin with stories of our day, Shrunk is worthy of a close read.
