#  "The Hamlet Syndrome" (with Henry F. Fradella) in Law, Culture, and the Humanities 

 





January 12, 2016

 

 

[The Hamlet Syndrome](http://lch.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/01/12/1743872115626076) (with Henry F. Fradella) in *Law, Culture, and the Humanities*, available online now; forthcoming in print. Thanks to my co-author, Hank Fradella, for an excellent collaboration.

Bringing together legal, literary, and cultural studies, this article builds from a close reading of madness in William Shakespeare’s play *Hamlet* to some psycho-social theories of malingering and the insanity defense in the modern United States. The basis of these theories is the notion that feigned madness – whether purposeful malingering or a failed insanity defense – often signifies actual madness of a lesser sort. When someone is found to be “faking it,” however, that discovery can result in a widespread assumption of mental health in the person on trial, an assumption that often turns out to be wrong.



 

 

 



 

 

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