In this article, the author describes the recent domain of clinical psychologists who perform assessments for courts in the United States, and criticize the tendency of forensic assessments to reduce human events to capacities. Methods of assessing legal competence, such as in relation to psychiatric patients' decision-making capacities, are the subject of many recent papers on forensic psychology in the United States. Legal competence focuses on the individual's functional capacities, and legal practice values individualism. But the author questions this application in forensic psychological practice from the viewpoint of interpersonal relationships. It is only through
relation that capacities have developed, and the reality of social contexts should not be ignored. The
relation picture and the capacity picture complement each other in achievement of a full description of human events.
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