"Insanely" Confused

As we concluded One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, one question lingered in my mind: what constitutes insanity? From the beginning of the novel, I questioned the criteria the patients met that, in turn, led to their admission to the ward. It seemed to me that patients like Harding and Bromden, were restricted by lack of self-confidence, and that no real mental problems existed. Ironically, as the book continued, it seemed as though the patients, through their actions and interactions, demonstrated more sanity than most of the staff. Clearly Nurse Ratched seems irritable, negative and power-hungry and in those respects perhaps, less mentally healthy than the patients. Had I not been provided with the roles of the characters and instead had merely received descriptions of their actions, I feel as though I would have titled the violent and out of control Nurse Ratched as “insane,” and the clever and crafty McMurphy and Bromden as “sane.” As I researched many authors’ and psychologists’ “criteria” for insanity, I was stumped. The concept of “insanity” refers to a legal standard, not a medical one, implemented prior to the publication of the book and usually used in reference to “not guilty by reason of insanity" or NGRI. If it can be proven that at the time of the commission of an offense, the person did not know, as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, what he/she was doing or if he/she did know what he/she was doing he/she did not appreciate the wrongfulness of his/her acts that person can be found NGRI, or insane. Immediately my mind flashed back to McMurphy and Bromden, two “rebels” in the novel. McMurphy, always out to target and humiliate the Big Nurse, seemed fully conscious of his acts and planned them carefully and meticulously. No evidence for insanity in his inpatient behavior. Bromden, although hesitant at times to rebel in the ward, seems entirely aware of his decision to suffocate McMurphy, the repercussions for that act, as well as his decision to escape the ward. He appears “sane” according to the definition used by society at the time of the book’s publication as well. Then, who in the book is truly “insane”? I am beginning to feel clueless. 

Crazy and not crazy seem to look about the same