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.