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University Daily Kansan
Monday, Oct. 22, 1962
Psychiatrist Protests Use of Sanity Hearings
NEW YORK — (UPI) — From a prominent academic psychiatrist comes a forthright protest against "the progressive psychiatrization of the American criminal law."
Dr. Thomas S. Szasz, professor of psychiatry, State University of New York, Syracuse, objected on both constitutional and scientific grounds. This "expanding use of psychiatric interventions" in court procedures can deprive defendants of their right to speedy trials, he said.
SCIENTIFICALLY it requires psychiatry to do what it can't do reliably, that is establish as "a scientific fact" in any given case that mental illness "is a disease like any other disease."
Yet under the auspices of courts and prosecuting attorneys "psychiatrists have shown great alacrity at meeting out life sentences in psychiatric institutions to people whom they consider deserving of this fate," Szasz continued.
He put forth his objection in the official organ of the American Psychiatric Association. It was prepared before former Gen. Edwin Walker was arrested on a charge of inciting to insurrection in Mississippi and then ordered by a court to undergo pre-trial psychiatric examination.
WHEN A CRIMINAL defendant seeks to mitigate his offense or to delay or postpone his trial on grounds of insanity he is acting within his right, Szasz said. But when prosecutors and judges order him to establish his sanity with court-appointed psychiatrists before he is tried, he's being deprived of his right to trial and his "right to be let alone."
Paving Experts to Meet
Paving contractors and engineers will assemble at KU Thursday and Friday for the sixth annual Kansas Asphalt Paving Conference.
All sessions will be technical except a dinner address by Frank E. X. Dance, assistant professor of speech and drama, and a discussion of the recent report on highway needs in Kansas, by Donald H. Park, resident engineer in Topeka for Roy Jorgenson & Associates, the firm commissioned to make the study.
PATRONIZE YOUR ADVERTISERS
--ing why historians must mistrust reconstructions of historical events founded on cartographic evidence alone.
This is "mind tapping." Szasz said, and "is an even more insidious invasion of privacy, and an even greater violation of the privilege against self-incrimination, than wire tapping."
But it can have special appeal to prosecutors and judges, he said. "For the prosecution, establishing the defendant's insanity instead of his guilt, may become an easy method of securing 'conviction' and 'imprisonment.' The defendant will be incarcerated in a psychiatric institution for an indefinite period — a sentence at least as severe and probably more so than would result from conviction and sentencing to a penitentiary.
"TO THE JUDGE, too, establishing the defendant's incapacity to stand trial may be tempting. It will save him the effort of conducting a trial that may be filled with distressing emotional and moral conflicts and dilemmas. Both he and the jury will be spared a taxing existential encounter, if only the defendant can be shown to be crazy."
In these court-ordered pretrial psychiatric examinations, "what constitutes mental illness is conveniently undefined. Its presence is ascertained by reference to the judgment of experts, in this case, psychiatrists. In this respect mental illness is like witchcraft, which was also never clearly defined but which experts had little difficulty in diagnosing.
"Given these circumstances I submit that government psychiatrists or so-called forensic psychiatrists — generally like ecclesiastic witchhunters—will easily find large numbers of mentally sick people. This will be especially true whenever the 'right' sorts of persons prefer the 'charge' of insanity. If this is doubted, we should only ask ourselves how long the witchhunter who never found witches would have lasted in his job?"
SUNSET
MOW SHOWING!
Tonight & Tues.
Opens 6:30 -- Show At 7:00
'New Europe' Is Discussion Topic
A report and panel discussion on "The New Europe" will be the topic of the first meeting of the Humanities Forum at 8:30 p.m. tomorrow in the Kansas Union.
Associate professors Jack Brooking, speech and drama; Donald McCoy, history; and George Worth, English, will report on and discuss France, Germany, and England. All three men have worked and studied in western Europe.
Hisao Otsuka, professor of economic history at the University of Tokyo, will discuss "Economic Development — Japan and the West."
The schedule for future meetings this semester will be; Nov. 6 — Ian Loram, professor of German, "Theater of Friendrich"; Dec. 4 — Eugene George, chairman of architecture, discussion on campus architecture; and Jan. 8 — David M. Vieht, associate professor of English, "The Earl of Rochester."
Japanese Authority To Speak at 4 p.m.
An authority on Japanese economics will speak at 4 p.m. today in Room 306 of the Kansas Union.
Prof. Otsuka participated in the second International Economic History Conference in France in August and is now visiting universities in the United States.
The freshman class steering committee of the KU-Y is planning to initiate a model senate, open to freshmen only. The program, similar to the model United Nations, will begin organization next week.
Model Senate Slated
It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.—Mencken
Christian endeavor is notoriously hard on female pulchritude.— Mencken
It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.—Voltaire
Mapmaking Developed With Printing, Englishman Asserts
The professional mapmaker grew up alongside the professional printer as a recognized craftsman at the turn of the 15th century, an English expert on map history said here Friday.
R. A. Skelton, superintendent of the map room of the British Museum in London, spoke on "Looking at an Early Map" at the 10th annual public lecture on books and bibliography held by the KU library.
SKELTON NOTED that in the 20 years after Bartholomew Diaz rounded Africa into the Indian Ocean in 1487, a burst of activity in oceanic voyaging gave Europeans access to new lands in the East and West.
He said, however, that 15th century map production was most prolific in Italy, while Portugal, Spain and England, the nations most actively engaged in oceanic discovery, left but a small cartographic record of their enterprises.
Two behavior patterns pervaded the work of early mapmakers, Skelton said. He explained that one was the willingness to admit geographical representations derived from hypothesis, conjecture or mere rumor.
The other pattern was inertia in the continued use of cartographic images long after they could have been corrected or removed in the light of experience.
SKELTON SAID the student of map history must assume the author had some reason for every detail in his map and uncover those reasons, separating "fact from fantasy, experience from illusion or guesswork."
An early map, he said, should not be read as a strict record of geological fact, because of immaturity of knowledge, judgment or expression on the part of the mapmaker.
Skelton cited case histories showing why historians must mistrust reconstructions of historical events founded on cartographic evidence alone.
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