Alan Abraham Stone (August 15, 1929 – January 23, 2022) was an American psychiatrist who was the Touroff-Glueck Professor of Law and Psychiatry Emeritus at

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...

. His writing and teaching has focused on professional medical ethics, issues at the intersection of law and psychiatry, and the topic of violence in both law and in psychiatry. Stone served as president of the

American Psychiatric Association The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 39,200 members who are in ...

. He also served for a number of years as the

film critic Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: Academic criticism by film scholars, who study the composition of film theory and publish their findin ...

for the ''

Boston Review ''Boston Review'' is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form ...

''.

Biography

Stone was born on August 15, 1929, in

Boston, Massachusetts Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

, to Julius and Betty Stone. His parents were both from Jewish-Lithuanian families. Julius Stone was a lawyer, and later a judge. He graduated from

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...

in 1950, where he majored in psychology and played on the Varsity Football team. He studied at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and earned his

M.D. A Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated MD, from the Latin ) is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the ''MD'' denotes a professional degree of physician. This ge ...

from

Yale Medical School The Yale School of Medicine is the medical school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was founded in 1810 as the Medical Institution of Yale College and formally opened in 1813. It is the sixth-oldest m ...

in 1955. He pursued his joint interest in the intersection of law, psychology, and psychiatry first as a lecturer at

in 1969, and later through a joint appointment with

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is the third oldest medical school in the Un ...

in 1972. In 1978, he was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

. He later lectured at Stanford before returning to Harvard. Stone married Sue Smart, with whom he had three children, Karen, David, and Douglas. Karen died in 1988, and Sue died in 1996. He was later romantically involved with Laura Maslow-Armand, to the end of his life, though they never married. He died from laryngeal cancer on January 23, 2022, at his home, in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

, at the age of 92.

Work

Stone's work often explores the intersection between psychiatry, ethics, and law. He wrote about decisions in psychotherapy in managed care, and about psychiatric treatment of oppressed minorities such as the Falun Gong and Soviet Jews. In 2002, he asserted that it was time for psychiatry in the Western countries to reconsider accounts of political abuse of psychiatry in the USSR and in China. Stone believed that

Andrei Snezhnevsky Andrei Vladimirovich Snezhnevsky ( rus, Андре́й Влади́мирович Снежне́вский, p=sʲnʲɪˈʐnʲefskʲɪj; – 12 July 1987) was a Soviet psychiatrist whose name was lent to the unbridled broadening of the diagnostic ...

was wrongly condemned by critics. According to Stone, one of the first points made by Soviet psychiatrists condemned for unethical political abuse of psychiatry, was that the revolution is the greatest good for the greatest number, the greatest piece of social justice, and the greatest beneficence imaginable in the twentieth century. In the Western view, the ethical compass of Soviet psychiatrists began to wander when they acted in the service of this greatest beneficence. He was against the use of psychiatry as a political driver, and the use of psychiatric expert testimony. The only time he ever served as an expert psychiatric witness was in mock trials of Shakespeare's Hamlet conducted by United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. The trials were an exercise in the use of insanity defense, and Stone served as prosecution witness, showing that Hamlet was sane when he murdered Polonius.

Publications

Books *''Movies and the Moral Adventure of Life'' (2007) *''Law, Psychiatry, and Morality: Essays and Analysis'' (1984) *''The Abnormal Personality Through Literature'' (1966) Articles * The Ethical Boundaries of Forensic Psychiatry: A View from the Ivory Tower (1984) * A model state law on civil commitment of the mentally ill. (1983) * Law, science, and psychiatric malpractice: a response to Klerman's indictment of psychoanalytic psychiatry (1990)

References

External links

Page at Harvard Law School
an
stock photoStone's film reviews at RottenTomatoes
*Stone's publi
videos on C-SPAN
1994–1996 {{DEFAULTSORT:Stone, Alan A. 1929 births 2022 deaths Physicians from Massachusetts Writers from Boston 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews American psychiatrists American film critics Harvard Law School faculty Harvard University faculty Harvard University alumni Yale School of Medicine alumni Deaths from cancer in Massachusetts Deaths from laryngeal cancer in the United States