Personality and Dangerousness: Genealogies of Antisocial Personality Disorder

by David McCallum

• ISBN13: 9780521008754
• ISBN10: 0521008751
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-10-22
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In the aftermath of the Port Arthur shootings, Dunblane or the schoolyard killings in America, communities try to come to terms with private and public trauma and there is a need to understand what kind of person can commit such terrible acts. The problem of how to understand dangerousness often centres on the role of the mental health and criminal justice systems and it is from the intersection of these two institutions that the categorisation of dangerous persons has emerged. David McCallum traces the history of the category of antisocial personality disorder and shows how it is linked to particular kinds of governing. He examines key legal and institutional developments in Australia, the UK and the US and also parallel developments within psychiatry and psychological medicine. Applying a social theoretical analysis to this material, McCallum challenges our assumptions about the formation and control concepts of dangerousness and personality.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	viii
Introduction	1	(6)
Law, psychiatry and the problem of disorder	7	(29)
Histories of psychiatry and the asylum	36	(22)
The borderland patient	58	(18)
Counting, eugenics, mental hygiene	76	(18)
The space for personality	94	(29)
Surfaces of emergence	123	(20)
Personality and dangerousness	143	(11)
Notes	154	(19)
Bibliography	173	(16)
Index	189