he was sure! So the time came for him to give evidence; after being cross-examined for only five minutes he changed his evidence, and admitted that the accused probably was not responsible. With that admission of course the prosecution case promptly collapsed. One of his pieces of evidence, I was told, was, “There is no such thing as will-power”. Now Lord Moran expresses the view in his Anatomy of Courage that will-power is courage; and though I am not sure if that can be accepted as a general proposition, I am sure there many situations where it is true. What is of interest is that the person, who expressed this view, had so little will-power compared to the man cross-examining him. It is not surprising that someone who runs down one of the cardinal human virtues should show that quality only in small measure himself.
This example typifies the impatience of the lawyer with the psychologist. Whilst much of he says may be true, so far as it goes, it is not the whole truth; yet his theory tears down the robust work-a-day world in which we all live, and his practice only reconstructs a house of cards in its place.
Nor does the public have much confidence in psychologists either. Partly I think the reason is that the man in the street likes to think there is an impassable gulf between himself and the man in the lunatic asylum, whereas in fact there is only a slippery slope. It is all too easy if one starts lying to oneself to go over the brink. So, to bolster his self-confidence, the man in the street is tempted to discredit the psychologist, who seems to threaten the foundations of that self-confidence. But I doubt if this is the whole story. The public's suspicion is that they are hopelessly and hideously wrong about something, even though they find it difficult to put their finger on it. I put my finger on the accusation that you cannot treat a man, neither his body nor his mind, as a machine, and expect to get away with it for long; because he isn't. It is true that much mental disturbance is due to chemical imbalance in the brain; but…