The Behavior of Law and Psychiatry

Abstract

Both law and psychiatry continue to be the privileged and pivotal divide by and through which decisions are made regarding mentally ill defendants. The present article conceptually explores the overlapping effects of medicolegal decision making. Under consideration is the guilty-but-mentally-ill (GBMI) verdict and how knowledge is both constructed and articulated in the forensic courtroom context. Utilization of a Lacanian postmodern framework demonstrates how discourse, desire, and subjectivity are important themes in the sense-making process. The article concludes by speculating on how such organizing principles in law and psychiatry, as manifested in the GBMI verdict, function as a form of violence in language or punishment through speech.