Abstract
Congratulations to Dr Bray for her thorough and helpful views on responsibility in borderline personality disorder [1]. Her paper is a valuable contribution to a most difficult topic.
However, a better example could have been chosen to illustrate the M'Naghten Rules. As correctly pointed out, these Rules state that a person was insane (and lacked intent) if he/she did not know the nature of his/her act, or that the act was considered to be wrong. The person who was psychotically depressed, who felt herself evil and deliberately committed a crime in order to attract punishment, will probably be dealt with leniently, on the grounds of the presence of mental illness. But this will not be through strict application of the M'Naghten Rules.
Such a person knew the nature of the act and that the act was considered to be wrong. After all, he/she has committed the act precisely because he/she knew that stealing was considered to be wrong, and would accordingly attract punishment. The fact that he/she was deluded about deserving punishment does not fit the M'Naghten Rules.
It is interesting that M'Naghten, who shot a man to death (the wrong man, as it happened), with the intention of killing him, would probably not have been able to make a defense using the Rules which bear his name.