How Should Forensic Psychiatry Police Itself? Guidelines and Grievances: The AAPL Committee on Ethics

TLDR: The AAPL Committee on Ethics warmly welcomes Alan A. Stone, who has raised "serious questions about the basic legitimacy of forensic psychiatry", which was the lead article in this Bulletin.

Abstract: Into this long-running dispute as to whether psychiatrists should testify as experts in forensic matters, the AAPL Committee on Ethics warmly welcomes our esteemed colleague, Alan A. Stone. He has raised "serious questions about the basic legitimacy of forensic psychiatry.,,2 At the initial presentation of his paper (the lead article in this Bulletin), he touched a "sensitive nerve" as evidenced by the vehemence, and indeed, the anger in some of the questions and responses that ensued. To some in the audience, mostly practicing forensic psychiatrists, his talk apparently seemed like a nightmare, frightening in its unrelenting criticism. On the other hand, to many of us who had been pondering the issues Stone was raising, there was no doubt that for the time being, this was the statement of many of the fundamental ethical conflicts that inhere in the practice of forensic psychiatry. It was the awareness of such ethical conflicts that led the founders of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (AAPL) to create a Committee on Ethics in the original bylaws of the Academy in 1969. As Stone noted, Pollack and Rappeport, the first and third presidents of the Academy, had long pointed to serious ethical concerns. 3 Throughout the history of forensic psychiatry, it was well understood that functioning in the adversarial system of the legal process creates inescapable professional tensions and conflicts. To cite one example, Guttmacher and Weihofen in their classic 1952 textbook, Psychiatry and the Law, discuss the use of the "impartial expert" as a means of avoiding some of these tensions and conflicts. 4 Seven years later, but still a decade before the establishment of the Academy, Diamond in his seminal article, "The Fallacy of the Impartial Expert,"~ demurred, implying it is virtually impossible not to intrude one's personal values into a professional opinion: