Kenneth Bianchi, a man who has murdered many women, now claims that he has Multiple Personality Disorder. Can we possibly decide that it is reasonable to convict an individual of a crime if that individual suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder? This psychological malady, known as Multiple Personality Disorder, or sometimes as Multiple Dissociative Identity, is a mental illness in which a person develops two or more distinct identities that control the patient’s behavior. If an aberrant personality takes over, the individual no longer has control over one’s actions. The cause of this disorder is unknown; however, 97% of the patients with this disorder have been abused during childhood. Throughout time, the issue of a person having conflicting personalities inside, like Jekyll and Hyde, has been very controversial. Some authorities believe that this disorder does not exist, and some believe that it does. In a number of cases, criminals have used Multiple Personality Disorder as a defense for their criminal deviance. Should an individual who has committed a crime be sentenced to prison when he/she has no control over oneself? In my opinion an individual who commits a crime and suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder should be held responsible for his/her actions. As punishment, this convicted person should be sent to an asylum.
In many criminal cases it is hard to believe that the defendant has multiple personalities because the defendant could be trying to deceive the jury. Statistics have proven that people with Multiple Personality Disorder usually refer to other personalities as “I.” A perfect example is Kenneth Bianchi who was on trial for murder and convinced his attorney that he had multiple personalities inside. Bianchi had the jury almost convinced that Steve Walker, Bianchi’s other personality, was responsible for the murders. Bianchi’s defense showed the first sign of unraveling when he started to refer to Steve Walker as “he” instead of “I.” Dr. Marti Torne, an authority in hypnosis, tested Bianchi. According to Dr. Torne, a person suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder will house three or more personalities. Bianchi failed this hypnosis test because he only presented two personalities. After Bianchi’s testimony, Bianchi started to make up a new personality, named Billy. However, the jury remained suspicious, and eventually Kenneth Bianchi was found guilty. In effect, his defense, depending on a claim of Multiple Personality Disorder, was deemed unconvincing. Kenneth Bianchi almost got away with murder.
This paper will not bore with the definition of a profession. The United States Army is about more than words, it is about action. The action of over 238 years of tradition and service. The Army is a profession. A profession requires its members to adhere to prolonged training and learn specialized skills. A member of a profession must wholly commit himself and his skills to a calling which is entrusted by the public. A profession provides its members with intrinsic value which motivates beyond financial gain. The Army is a higher calling which demands all of these qualities and more.
Throughout the classic novel of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written by Mark Twain we see a lot of moral development with the main character Huckleberry Finn. Throughout the story Huck’s friendships greatly influence his moral identity. Throughout the series of events that unfold upon our main character, Huck Finn, we see huge moral leaps in the way he thinks that are influenced by that friendships he makes on his journey. He starts the book as a young minded individual with no sense morals other than what has been impressed onto him and ends up as a self empowering individual. Through the friendships he makes with Tom Sawyer, Jim, and the Duke and King we see big moral leaps with Huck.
When reflecting on his memories of the man he knew as Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway recalls the unique individual’s finest quality: “It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again” (Fitzgerald 2). Although Gatsby occasionally stepped off the straight and narrow, he never lost sight of his ultimate goal: Daisy’s love. Even when it seemed as though everything was working against him and that he would never regain his lost love, Gatsby kept going, knowing that the strength of his hope would see him through. His childlike determination, while ultimately his downfall, was what made Gatsby truly “great.”
The United States did not just ignore the problem between the blacks and the whites in America. First of all after the Civil war, the United States made it so states did not have the right to secede. They also concentrated on the wealthy people and the industry going on in the north. And for the African Americans, the United States abolished slavery and gave citizenship to blacks. But the country needed to be reconstructed. So there were two types of reconstruction. There was presidential reconstruction, and congressional reconstruction. Presidential reconstruction consisted of things like ratifying the 13th amendment which was to abolish slavery, pardoning the pledge of allegiance, the president pardoning for officials, provisional appointed governors, and state constitutional conventions. On the other hand the congressional reconstruction...
Mark Twain once described his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as “a struggle between a sound mind and a deformed conscience”. Throughout the novel, Huck wrestles with the disparity between his own developing morality and the twisted conscience of his society. In doing so, he becomes further distanced from society, both physically and mentally, eventually abandoning it in order to journey to the western frontier. By presenting the disgust of Huck, an outsider, at the state of society, Mark Twain is effectively able to critique the intolerance and hypocrisy of the Southern South. In doing so, Twain asserts that in order to exist as a truly moral being, one must escape from the chains of a diseased society.
In Laurence Armand French Ph.D. and Thomas J. Young Ph.D.’s article The False Memory Syndrome: Clinical/Legal Issues for the Prosecution talks about memory recall being an unreliable form of evidence in the Criminal Justice System. French and Young state that hypnosis and lie detector tests are a misconception because “the cognitive interpretations of the emotional/autonomic aspects of the central nervous (CNS) and peripheral nervous systems are not true indicators of reality,” (p. 38).
Personality disorders have always been viewed as a possible category for a psychological disorder. However, in the new edition of the DSM, it will be getting its own diagnostic category. In viewing personality disorder, one can only agree that it should have its own diagnostic category. The reason that these changes are being supported is because of the causation, diagnosis, and treatment of personality disorders.
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Huck experiences many situations which require him to use his moral judgment. During the entire adventure, Huck is essentially in charge of the fate of Jim. Huck’s taught beliefs lead him down the wrong path in the beginning, but eventually –until Tom arrives- his newly developed morals guide him. Society believes that slaves should be treated as property, but Huck’s new beliefs tell him that Jim is a person; not property. Though Huck does not realize that his actions are more moral than those of his environment, he chooses to follow his instincts rather than to follow the rules. As shown in The Adventures of Huck Finn, as well as events of my own daily life, I believe that while external environment has a small impact on our beliefs and identities, every individual fully develops their own morals without regard to what their environment taught them.
“Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by an inability to form human attachment, aggressive narcissism, and antisocial behavior defined by a constellation of affective, interpersonal and behavioral characteristics, most of which society views as pejorative” [1]. Some of these characteristics include irresponsibility, grandiosity, cunning, deceitfulness, selective impulsivity, sexual promiscuity, lack of empathy, etc. People who are psychopathic display not only antisocial behavior but also emotional impairment such as the lack of guilt. They are able to prey on others using their charm, deceit, violence or any other methods that allow them to get what they want. A strong feature of most of the behavior exhibited by individuals with psychopathy is that it is mostly instrumental in nature. They are extremely goal-oriented with interests in acquiring wealth, sexual opportunities and increased status.
Before any external forces unleash their influence, a person is born into this world with a clean slate untouched by the prevailing attitudes that shape modern society. In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the character Huck is a boy who has grown up wild and for the most part free from the rules that govern the society in which he lives. Due to the unfortunate circumstances of an absent mother and a drunkard father, Huck has had the task of raising himself which has contributed to the development of his own moral code. Although there is plenty of violence and action abound in the novel, there is equal excitement to be had in the moral choices Huck encounters along his journey due to the potential danger in which his decisions consistently place him. In his novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain creates suspenseful and dramatic instances by emphasizing the internal moral struggle and danger sprung from the difficult choices his main character is forced to make.
Prior to taking this course, I generally believed that people were rightly in prison due to their actions. Now, I have become aware of the discrepancies and flaws within the Criminal Justice system. One of the biggest discrepancies aside from the imprisonment rate between black and white men, is mental illness. Something I wished we covered more in class. The conversation about mental illness is one that we are just recently beginning to have. For quite a while, mental illness was not something people talked about publicly. This conversation has a shorter history in American prisons. Throughout the semester I have read articles regarding the Criminal Justice system and mental illness in the United States. Below I will attempt to describe how the Criminal Justice system fails when they are encountered by people with mental illnesses.
Crime can be described combination between both behavior and mental factors. This will prove incredibly crucial in the definition of crime in relation to mental illness. Many of those that commit crimes are not convicted due to their illness so it is important to note, for the purpose of this analysis, that all illegal activity is considered crime, regardless of conviction (Monahan and Steadman 1983).
Mental health and the criminal justice system have long been intertwined. Analyzing and understanding the links between these two subjects demands for a person to go in to depth in the fields of criminology, sociology, psychology, and psychiatry, because there are many points of view on whether or not a person’s criminal behavior is due to their mental health. Some believe that an unstable mental state of mind can highly influence a person’s decision of committing criminal actions. Others believe that mental health and crime are not related and that linking them together is a form of discrimination because it insinuates that those in our society that suffer from poor mental health are most likely to become a criminal due to their misunderstood behavior not being considered a normality in society. In this report I will go into detail of what mental health and mental illness is, what the differentiates a normal and a mentally unstable criminal, give examples of criminal cases where the defendant’s state of mind was brought up, introduce theories surrounding why one would commit crimes due to their mental health, and lastly I will discuss how the criminal justice system has been modified to accommodate mental health issues.
A novel structured on the theme of morality, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain focuses on Huck Finn’s multifaceted growing up process. Huck, through his escapades and misfortunes is obliged to endure the agonizing process from childhood to adulthood where he attains self-knowledge and discovers his own identity. Throughout the journey down the Mississippi River, Jim, Ms. Watson’s runaway slave, accompanies Huck, and is later joined by two con men. It is during this journey that a great moral crisis in Huck’s life occurs where he must make a painful decision as to whether he is going to give Jim up to the slave hunters or notify Ms. Watson about Jim’s whereabouts and assist him to remain a free man. This is the turning point in his character where through deep introspection, he learned to think and reason morally for himself. He comes to his own conclusions, unaffected by the accepted, and often hypocritical, perceptions of Southern culture. Huck also deciphers the truth in the face of lies held by the antagonistic society with its evil nature.
Mental disorders have baffled psychiatrists, physicians, and the public since the beginning of time. Multiple personality disorder, also known as dissociative identity disorder, is a severe form of dissociation, a mental process which produces a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. Dissociation is characterized by the presence of two or more distinct personalities, or alters, that control a person’s behavior. “Nonetheless, some documented cases of MPD have noted patients having as many as one hundred alters” (“Multiple Personality Residential Treatment”). These different alters have their own age, sex, or race. Alters are alternative personalities, which are dissociated parts of the self that represent memories, emotions, and ways of relating to the person. They are able to function autonomously. The host is the original person, which is the one who is in charge of the body (“Dissociative Identity Disorder”). One can develop multiple personality disorder through various components, but luckily, there is a cure.