Criminal responsibility: an action language approach

Traditionally, the propositions of psychiatry are said to be in conflict with those of the law since psychiatry assumes a "psychic determinism" and the law assumes freedom of the will (Stone, 1978). An argument always arises over the insanity defense since it bridges psychiatry and the law. But one may hold that there is nothing intrinsic to psychiatry which requires causally stated propositions. By formulating psychiatric propositions in a different form, specifically by adopting the action language of Roy Schafer (1976a), there need be no incompatibility between psychiatric and legal statements about criminal responsibility.