Token and taboo: behavior modification, token economies, and the law.

Not surprisingly, legal concepts from the prisoners' rights movement have begun to spill over into the area of the rights of the institutionalized mentally ill. Since the mental patient movement is free of the law and order backlash that restrains the legal battles of prisoners, it may evoke considerable sympathy from the public, the legislatures, and the courts. Commentators and authorities have recently directed attention to important pro cedural problems in the administration of psychiatric justice1 and to the legal issues presented by various methods of therapy. Legal restrictions on a hospital's right to subject unwilling patients to electroconvulsive therapy2 and psychosurgery3 are develop ing rapidly, and close scrutiny is now being given to "aversive" techniques of behavior modification and control4 ? such as procedures for suppressing transvestism by administering painful electric shocks to the patient while dressed in women's clothing, and procedures for controlling alcoholism or narcotics addiction by arranging medically for severe nausea or even temporary paralysis (including respiratory arrest) to follow