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Associate Director
Law & Psychiatry Service, Massachusetts General Hospital
Professor of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School
James Beck, who is trained both as a psychiatrist and psychologist, received his undergraduate education at Harvard College, his medical education at Harvard Medical School, his Ph.D. in psychology at Yale University, and his psychiatric residency at Massachusetts Mental Health Center. He is licensed as a physician and as a psychologist in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Dr. Beck has had a distinguished career as an academic psychiatrist, administrator, researcher, and forensic psychiatrist. He was a founding member, and later associate chair, of the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital. Dr. Beck was a staff psychiatrist and then Director of the Cambridge Court Clinic, evaluating competency, commitment for mental illness or substance abuse, criminal responsibility, and aid in sentencing. He recently served as Acting Chair of the Massachusetts Mental Health Center.
Dr. Beck has had an active forensic private practice since 1979 with a focus on tort cases, including psychiatric malpractice, and emotional damages in psychotherapist sexual misconduct, negligence, and accidents. He has a special interest in public sector psychiatry and violence, and is the author of a landmark monograph on the duty to protect third parties, published by the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Beck is primarily responsible for the development of an expert witness teaching exercise that jointly involves Harvard Law Students and mental health trainees from Harvard and University of Massachusetts training programs. Dr. Beck has also served as a consultant and expert witness, largely as a volunteer, in the defense of death penalty cases. |
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