The nature of the alliance an anthropological look at the practice of forensic psychiatry

This anthropological research concerns the relationships between and among mental illness, criminality, medicine and the law, when each become, both separately and as one manifestation in the practice of forensic psychiatry, radically transformed by differing needs to assess responsibility and construct comprehensibility. The work of forensic psychiatry deals with these needs, and encompasses the professional, moral, and social concerns that inform these needs. This is an ethnographic look at the practice of criminal responsibility assessment.