Jekyll On Trial

Why do we find multiple personality disorder (MPD) so fascinating? Perhaps because each of us is aware of a dividedness within ourselves: we often feel as if we are one person on the job, another with our families, another with our friends and lovers. We may fantasize that these inner discrepancies will someday break free, that within us lie other personalities - genius, lover, criminal - that will take us over and render us strangers to our very selves. What happens when such a transformation literally occurs, when an alter personality surfaces and commits some heinous deed?

At the outset of this review, you should know that I have a bias. This book was written by a law professor and a psychologist and I am a forensic psychiatrist. As a psychiatrist, my focus is on the biological and biochemical nature of mental illness. As a forensic psychiatrist I am focused on if not obsessed by the source of the subject of evaluation and the reason why he is in the evaluator's office. Neither of these issues are dealt with in this book.

In this adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," William L. Slout focuses on Jekyll's sublimation of his wantonness, and the hypocrisy of his unrestrained involvement in it. He loses control of his better self to the overpowering evil of his baser side. Herein lies the tragedy of the man and his times. A powerful modern version of this classic tale of horror. Illustrated with scenes from the first production of the play.

Everyone has a dark side. Dr Jekyll has discovered the ultimate drug. A chemical that can turn him into something else. Suddenly, he can unleash his deepest cruelties in the guise of the sinister Hyde. Transforming himself at will, he roams the streets of fog-bound London as his monstrous alter-ego. It seems he is master of his fate. It seems he is in complete control. But soon he will discover that his double life comes at a hideous price...

The book which put Stevenson's name in the mouth of the ' man in the street,' lifted him at a single bound to a place among men of the time and, by the still greater sensation which it created in America, led to the large income which soon afterwards he drew from the United States. The ear of a great public to whom his earlier writings were unknown was captured by this intense picture of the elements of good and evil in man's nature. It was hailed from pulpits and in the religious press as a great moral parable; though its moral quality, on close analysis, is seen to be more an illusion, due to the art of its writing, than the essence of the fable. Reduced to its simplest formula Jekyll and Hyde is a cry of terror at the potency for evil latent in the human soul. Such moral force as it has depends upon its assault on the nerves, not on its appeal to the heart. If not thus interpreted by the preachers of the time, it yet served the purpose of moving their hearers by the spectacle of the evil partner in the human ego, indulged in a moment ' when virtue slumbered,' coming in the end to destroy the good.

In Robert Louis Stevenson's influential novel of mad science and criminal inquiry, attorney Gabriel John Utterson comes to the aid of Dr. Henry Jekyll, an old friend, only to find himself dragged from a world of genial hospitality into London's foreboding night, which is shrouded in shadows and fog—and stalked by the deranged Edward Hyde. Utterson's quest for truth is not only a detective story laden with twists, but an intense meditation on man's inherently dualistic nature, written in a style that often combines disturbing violence with restrained language typical of the Victorian era.

The lawyer Mr Utterson is deeply disturbed by Dr Jekyll's new friend, Mr Hyde, to whom Dr Jekyll has bequeathed everything he owns. Rumour has it that Mr Hyde trampled a child in the street. Mr Utterson begins to have nightmares about this unusually ugly and unsympathetic man. Meanwhile, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde seem inseparable. Robert Louis Stevenson's novella »Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde« is unique among classics, with a title that has become a fixed expression in many languages. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON [1850–1894] was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. He is among the 30 most translated authors of all time and has been praised by Marcel Proust, Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, Ernest Hemingway, and Bertolt Brecht. Treasure Island is his most famous work, along with the gothic sci-fi novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde.

The privilege against self-incrimination is often represented in the case law of England and Wales as a principle of fundamental importance in the law of criminal procedure and evidence. A logical implication of recognising a privilege against self-incrimination should be that a person is not compellable, on pain of a criminal sanction, to provide information that could reasonably lead to, or increase the likelihood of, her or his prosecution for a criminal offence. Yet there are statutory provisions in England and Wales making it a criminal offence not to provide particular information that, if provided, could be used in a subsequent prosecution of the person providing it. This book examines the operation of the privilege against self-incrimination in criminal proceedings in England and Wales, paying particular attention to the influence of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998. Among the questions addressed are how the privilege might be justified, and whether its scope is clarified sufficiently in the relevant case law (does the privilege apply, for example, to pre-existing material?). Consideration is given where appropriate to the treatment of aspects of the privilege in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, the USA and elsewhere.