The inner reality of the black man and his criminal responsibility.

Psychiatrists and psychologists are often requested by the legal fraternity to report on the mental state of Black people accused of an alleged crime. The question raised in this paper is whether personnel trained in the Western tradition, applying Western categories of mental states, are able to overcome their ethnocentricity. When the interviewer and the person interviewed are from widely different cultural groups, the former should make every effort to enter the inner world of the latter.