THE SHOW OF VIOLENCE

Following Dark Legend (Duell, Sloan & Pearce-1941) which was a study of matricide, these shorter studies here of the use of psychiatry as a determinant of a criminal's culpability illustrate the more general arguments of the opening and closing chapters. In these, psychiatrist Wertham shows many of the abuses of present-day psychiatric criminology; the maladministration of court and police procedure; the misinterpretation of evidence; the very spurious distinction between legal insanity and medical insanity (there is no ""medical"" insanity); and primarily that murder (one occurs every forty-five minutes) is only one manifestation of a sick society and is largely preventable. In the cases, drawn from his trial experience, there is much fascinating material, criminally, psycho-analytically, whether in that of a modern Medea who turned against her children; or Lavin who got away with murder three times; or Robert Irwin, Wertham's patient for many years, and the Gedeon model murders, etc. etc.... There should be a mixed market for this-which if clinical- is highly compelling reading at all times.