Editing Feigned madness (section)

== Modern examples ==

===To avoid responsibility===
* [[Vincent Gigante]], [[American Mafia]] [[Boss (crime)|don]], was 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 nationalism|Japanese nationalist]], on trial for [[war crime]]s after [[World War II]].
* [[Garrett Brock Trapnell]], a professional thief and confidence man, frequently pretended to be affected by [[schizophrenia]] or [[dissociative identity disorder]] in order to be sent to mental institutions rather than prison for his crimes. This strategy eventually failed when he was brought to trial for [[aircraft hijacking]]. He was later the subject of a book by [[Eliot Asinof]], entitled ''The Fox Is Crazy Too''.

===To examine the system from the inside===
[[Investigative journalist]]s and psychologists have feigned madness to study [[psychiatric hospital]]s 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 project ''Okänd, kvinna 2009-349701'' to examine power structures in healthcare, the society's view of mental illness and the victimhood imposed on the patient.