Feigned madness

Feigned madness a term used in popular culture to describe the assumption of a mental disorder for purposes of evasion or deceit, or to divert suspicion, perhaps in advance of an act of revenge.

Modern examples

To avoid responsibility

Vincent Gigante, American Mafia don, seen wandering the streets of Greenwich Village, Manhattan in his bathrobe and slippers, mumbling incoherently to himself, in what he later admitted was an elaborate act.
Allegedly, Shūmei Ōkawa, Japanese nationalist, on trial for war crimes after World War II.

To examine the system from the inside

Investigative journalists and psychologists have feigned madness to study psychiatric hospitals from within:

American muckraker Nellie Bly; see Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887)
The Rosenhan experiment in the 1970s also provides a comparison of life inside several mental hospitals.
The Swedish artist Anna Odell created the projec Okänd, kvinna 2009-349701 to examine power structures in healthcare, the society's view of mental illness and the victim hood pushed on the patient.

Historical examples

Lucius Junius Brutus, who feigned madness until the time when he was able to drive the people to insurrection— he more faked stupidity than insanity, causing the Tarquins to underestimate him as a threat.
Alhazen, who was ordered by the sixth Fatimid Caliph, al-Hakim, to regulate the flooding of the Nile; he later perceived the inanity of what he was attempting to do and, fearing for his life, feigned madness to avoid the Caliph's wrath, after which he was placed under house arrest until the Caliph's death.
King David, in 1 Samuel 21, feigns insanity to prevent the servants of Achis the king of Geth from recognizing him.

In fiction and mythology

Shakespeare's Hamlet, who feigns madness in order to speak freely and gain revenge,— possibly based on a real person; see Hamlet (legend),
Odysseus feigned madness by yoking a horse and an ox to his plow and sowing salt^[1] or plowing the beach.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Randle McMurphy feigns insanity in order to serve out his criminal sentence in a mental hospital rather than a prison.

References

^ the story does not appear in Homer, but was apparently mentioned in Sophocles' lost tragedy The Mad Ulysses: James George Frazer, ed., Apollodorus: The Library, II:176 footnote 2; Hyginus, Fabulae 95 mentions the mismatched animals but not the salt.

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[1] the story does not appear in Homer, but was apparently mentioned in Sophocles' lost tragedy The Mad Ulysses: James George Frazer, ed., Apollodorus: The Library, II:176 footnote 2; Hyginus, Fabulae 95 mentions the mismatched animals but not the salt.

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