Finkel, N. J., & Parrott, W. G. (2006). Insanity I: The Prototypic, Yet Problematic, Excusing Condition. In N. J. Finkel & W. G. Parrott, Emotions and culpability: How the law is at odds with psychology, jurors, and itself (pp. 153-174). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/11475-009
Insanity anchors the extreme of one of our legal continua, for a successful insanity defense excuses the defendant as not blameworthy for the act. Insanity also represents the extreme on a psychological dimension, for any attempt at its explication requires that we plunge deeper into subjectivity than we have plumbed before: we must go beyond symptoms, and beyond those segmented parts of thoughts, emotions, and motives, to the very core and meaning of the self. Insanity, though, is a legal, not a psychological, concept, and although the insanity test has changed many times across some 280 years of Anglo-American insanity jurisprudence, these tests must rest on psychological facts and folk theories. The problem has been that many medicopsychological experts maintain that the Law's theories have not been grounded in the nature of human nature. Our analysis and explication of insanity extends over two chapters, for the issues and perspectives that entwine--legal, psychological, philosophical, and commonsense justice (CSJ)--are complex, confusing, and confounding. In this chapter, we must do a considerable amount of ground-clearing to remove what obscures, to expose what is central. By chapter's end, we will arrive at delusion--not as a symptom, but as a more fundamental splitting of the self--for this is the psychological place, we believe, wherein the essence of insanity lies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)