[The status of psychiatric expert: a controversy]

In this work the expert's status from the point of view of law, psychiatry, psychology, as well as his social, economical and financial position was discussed. The need of improvement of the expert's part in the lawsuit, and legal protection of his person were shown. The dissimilarity of the relation: the physician--the patient and the expert--the person under examination was discussed. The range of code idea "special knowledge" which, in the author's opinion, includes knowledge and clinical trial of psychiatrist, the know-how of the specificity of prison subculture, the possession of methods and conditions for investigation and competence to pronounce forensic and psychiatric opinion, were analysed. Conditioning of the expert's social position in Poland in comparison with experts from other countries and up-to-date state as well as the needs in the range of getting adequate salary for his work were described. In the author's opinion, the conditioning of the expert's status in Poland shown in this work, may influence the essential level of the expert's opinion. Therefore, the author suggests the following traits to be used in evaluation of experts and their work: competent-incompetent; complementary to knowledge-uncomplementary; critical towards opinion-of little criticism; diagnostically thoughtful-of little thoughtfulness; unemotional in his opinion (the person under examination)-emotional ("the opinions of the heart") and so on. The proposed rating scale may be used among other things for instruction of forensic experts.