Journal article
Tragic anecdotes make bad law
Contemporary psychology, v 37(6), pp 569-570
01 Jun 1992
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Reviews the book, Madness in the Streets: How Psychiatry and the Law Abandoned the Mentally Ill by Rael Jean Isaac and Virginia C. Armat (1990). This is an intriguing and maddening book. It is intriguing because it discusses some of the most important and complex public policy issues of our time. It raises the fundamental question of how society should resolve the primary moral conflict between self-determination and paternalism. The book is maddening because it is a fundamentally flawed and hyperbolic account of these issues that is often factually incorrect, biased in its analysis and conclusions, and highly dependent on anecdotal reports for its support. This book ts is worth reading for what it is--a strong polemical and inherently interesting indictment of civil liberties advocacy on behalf of autonomy and self-determination for the mentally ill. For a more temperate and neutral discussion of the issues, one will have to look elsewhere. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)
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Details
- Title
- Tragic anecdotes make bad law
- Creators
- Donald N Bersoff
- Publication Details
- Contemporary psychology, v 37(6), pp 569-570
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Thomas R. Kline School of Law
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:A1992HY15500037
- Other Identifier
- 991021874483204721
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- Web of Science research areas
- Psychology, Multidisciplinary