394 Forensic Psychology
psychologists were regularly called as expert witness in such
proceedings. Until this period, in cases involving the ques-
tion of insanity, only licensed medical doctors were allowed
to testify as experts. Finally, in 1940 the Michigan Supreme
Court ruled in People v. Hawthornethat the trial court had
erred in refusing to qualify as an expert a well-credentialed
psychologist. The Court opined that a psychologist’s ability
to assess insanity should not be assumed to be inferior to that
of a medical doctor (Bartol & Bartol, 1999).
Early Enthusiasts for Applying Psychology to the Law:
Freud and Münsterberg
The early years of the twentieth century saw several signifi-
cant attempts to inject the young discipline of psychology into
the legal system. Two early leaders with very different per-
spectives, Sigmund Freud and Hugo Münsterberg (neither of
whom was shy about asserting the value and applicability of
his nascent field), argued that psychology, even in its present
early state, had important applications for the law. In a 1906
speech to Austrian judges, Freud (1906/1959) asserted that
knowledge of psychological processes was very important for
their jobs. Freud suggested that procedures adapted from psy-
choanalysis, especially the word-association technique, could
establish a “new method of investigation, the aim of which is
to compel the accused person himself to establish his own
guilt or innocence by objective signs” (p. 103). Freud sug-
gested further that “The task of the therapist...isthesame as
that of the examining magistrate. We have to uncover the hid-
den psychical material; and in order to do this we have in-
vented a number of detective devices, some of which it seems
that you gentlemen of the law are now about to copy from us”
(p. 108). Freud’s optimism about the eagerness with which
the law would embrace psychological principles and methods
was not borne out, however.
In the early years of the twentieth century, another strong
voice asserting that psychology was of great value for the law
was that of Hugo Münsterberg. Münsterberg, a Harvard pro-
fessor, had emigrated from Germany in 1892 at the invitation
of William James. He became president of the American Psy-
chological Association (APA) a decade later. Münsterberg
had an arrogant manner and often adopted a pugnacious,
somewhat sensationalized, self-promoting stand in his writ-
ings. In his controversial book, On the Witness Stand(1908),
which was actually a collection of previously published
magazine articles, Münsterberg argued in strong terms
that lawyers should pay close attention to psychology.
Münsterberg’s arguments that psychology had much to offer
the legal system, and the legal system’s generally negative
reaction to this assertion, illustrate the often acrimonious
debate between psychologists and the legal community that
continued intermittently for the rest of the century. He as-
serted that “the lawyer alone is obdurate” in failing to recog-
nize the importance of applied psychology.
Münsterberg’s assertions were so arrogant that they pro-
voked a scathing response from legal scholar John Wigmore
(1909), who created “transcripts” of a mythical libel trial in
which Professor Münsterberg was sued for libel by the legal
field for his assertions and was found guilty of claiming
more than he could offer. The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Mr. Tyro,
criticized the lack of relevant research publications available
(none had yet been published in English when Münsterberg’s
book was published), and noted that eminent European psy-
chologists such as Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Stern had
cautioned against overzealous application of psychological
findings. In 1906, Stern had written, “It is not yet time to
speak of the practical use of this method; neither too great
optimism nor too great skepticism is fitting. Thus far it has
not yet passed beyond the laboratory stage. An extensive
series of purely methodological work will be required before
it can be thought of for application to the larger field of
practice....It is still premature to discuss its forensic use”
(quoted in Wigmore, 1909, p. 414). Mr. Tyro accused Profes-
sor Münsterberg of committing “the whimsical mistake of
bearing testimony against our innocent profession...for ne-
glecting to use new and ‘exact’ methods which were and are
so little ‘exact’ and so incapable of forensic use that even
their well-wishers confess that thousands of experiments and
years of research will be required before they will be practi-
cable, if ever” (Wigmore, 1909, p. 415).
It should be noted that Wigmore criticized his own field as
well. In his article, the trial judge, after receiving the jury’s
verdict in favor of the plaintiffs, pointed out that “No country
in the world was probably so far behind in the scientific study
of the criminal law as affected by the contributory sciences of
sociology, anthropology, psychology, and medicine. In no
[other] country had the legal profession taken so little interest
in finding out or using what those other sciences were doing”
(p. 433). Mr. Tyro expressed the desire that “their whole pro-
fession would expect and hope to go forward hereafter with
the other profession [psychology] in joint endeavor to fruitful
ends. They would put aside mutual distrust and public fault-
finding.” He urged the “friendly and energetic alliance of
psychology and law, in the noble cause of justice” (p. 432).
After Wigmore’s devastating critique, American psychol-
ogists “left the law rather severely alone,” in the words of
Hutchins (1927, p. 678) two decades later. Many years later,
Bersoff (1999, p. 375) suggested that Münsterberg’s work
was so vilified by legal scholars “that it almost irreparably
damaged the nascent attempt to apply the behavioral sciences