The Concept of Anxiety
All of Kierkegaard's books have either a preface, dedication, or prayer at the beginning. This book includes a lengthy introduction. "The Concept of Anxiety" was published on exactly the same date as "Prefaces", June 17, 1844. Both books deal with Hegel’s idea of mediation. Mediation is a common thread throughout Kierkegaard’s works. His work up to this point was to show that faith was being mediated by knowledge. Here he takes up the questions of sin and guilt.
Hervey M. Cleckley
In 1952 Cleckley, along with Walter Bromberg a senior psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, published an article on the insanity defense. They suggested changing the wording of it to: "In your opinion, was the defendant suffering from disease of the mind and if so, was it sufficient to render him unaccountable under the law for the crime charged?" The concept of 'accountability' was intended as an alternative to a narrow definition of 'responsibility' under the M'Naghten rules which requires an absence of moral knowledge of right and wrong, in effect only covering psychosis (delusions, hallucinations). They argued that mental illness can involve any part of the mind and that the insanity test should focus on the extent to which the accused's mind overall, due to some inner pathology 'whether obvious or masked', was unable to operate in accord with the law. However, 10 years later, a chapter by Cleckley on "Psychiatry: Science, Art,
and Scientism" cautioned others against a common exaggeration of the abilities of psychiatry to diagnose or treat, including in regard to criminal responsibility. In that regard Cleckley expressed his agreement with a critique by Hakeem, yet Hakeem had quoted Cleckley's claims about psychopathy as an example of psychiatrists exaggerating how clear their diagnostic terms are to each other.