The Voluntary Act

The importance of the actus reus in the analysis of criminal behaviour has only gained ground in recent years. The defence that the act complained of was involuntary raises directly the question ‘What is meant by voluntary conduct?’ In its earliest formulations the general acceptance of the doctrine of free will led to a ready acceptance of voluntary as simply meaning being a product of an exercise of the free will. More recent investigations, and in particular those following the development of ego psychology, have shown that the mechanism precedent to the operation of the will is of considerable complexity. Perception, cognition and evaluation of data must each be considered in an analysis of voluntary behaviour, so that what may seem voluntary may well flow from a defective capacity in any or all of these functions. The relationship between defective psychic functions such as those described and the pervasive concept of ‘insanity’ in the criminal law, it is suggested, may have led to the neglect of a study of voluntarism since many cases of psychic malfunction have displayed psychotic symptoms. It is argued that the distinction between self-induced and other-induced as a basis for attaching responsibility in law, as is strongly suggested in the cases, is unsatisfactory. The merit of the recent discussions of the nature of voluntary conduct is that the limitations of a pre-Freudian theory of conscious behaviour enshrined in McNaughton will be recognized within the debate on the nature of voluntary and, more particularly, involuntary conduct.