PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEWS IN JURISPRUDENTIAL THEORIES RoBERT S.

REDMOUNT –

Jurisprudential inquiry proceeds upon certain assumptions about the nature of nan.
Psychological theorizing is an enterprise directed toward the critical examination of
assumptions such as these, and the formulation of hypotheses about human conduct. Yet
despite the patent interdependence of these disciplines, there has been little effort made to
correlate them. In this Article, Mr. Redmount, who is both a psychologist and a lawyer,
examines the psychological theories of certain jurisprudents, and the theories of law of
certain psychologists. Building upon this discussion, the author offers a set of systematized
hypotheses which center about the psychological dependency of the individual on his
environment. Mr. Redmount's prior writings have dealt with the application of psychological
principles to the nore practical courtroom aspects of law. It seems strange, at least to a
psychologically trained person, that theories relating to law give so little consideration to
psychological man. It is as though man were substantially an incident of law or that his
adaptation to conceptions of law is to be taken as a matter of course. Perhaps there is some
implicit notion concerning the nature of man that is built into the theorizing given to law, or
perhaps there is the feeling that man cannot be understood except as he is part of some larger
social process. It is, in fact, more reassuring to take man for granted because only in that way
can one most effectively exercise the gifts of thought. And legal theorists are thinking persons
wedded to thought as the mainspring of human action, regarding it as the legitimate source of
experience, motivation and control. There is much to be said for this point of view, and also
much that is left out. Theories of man in existing theories of law are hard to come by. They
occur infrequently-at least, they are not articulated very muchand, where they exist, they are
not developed.