[The mind on the stage of justice: the formation of criminal psychology in the 19th century and its interdisciplinary research].

Criminal psychology emerges at the end of the 18th century as a new academic discipline in lectures and publications. It has recently been investigated by a considerable number of contributions from researchers of different academic backgrounds. In many respects criminal psychology can be seen as a predecessor of criminology. Its subject is the analysis of the origins of crime and its causes and determinants in the human mind. Criminal psychology embraced at that time philosophical, medical, legal and biological aspects. The latter increase in importance in the second half of the 19th century. The conditions of individual responsibility were generally codified in penal law, but had to be individually investigated in crucial cases through expertise in court. There a conflict emerged between medical experts and judges about their ability and competence to decide. At the end of the 19th century criminal psychology is used to fulfil the needs and interests of a criminal law which understands itself as increasingly utilitarian. Force and new instruments of treatment of offenders were legitimized by scientists who were very optimistic about their own epistemological abilities.