Making sense of "senseless actions" in relation to criminal insanity.
Frontiers in psychiatry January 1, 2026 Søren Esben Rytter Heilskov, Julie Nordgaard, Unn Kristin Haukvik et al.
Delusions are often used as key evidence of psychosis in insanity assessments because they are verbalized and express faulty reality judgments. However, psychosis can also involve disturbances that are enacted rather than spoken. This paper revisits Klaus Conrad's concept of "senseless actions"—unintelligible behaviors seen in early schizophrenia—and illustrates its forensic relevance through a historical case study from Karl Wilmanns. These actions reflect a global disruption in how a person finds relevance, meaning, and constraint in the world, and may signal the transition from prodromal to manifest psychosis. The authors argue that evaluating such actions requires contextual and biographical information, and that the concept, though imperfect, can help identify reality disturbances overlooked in current forensic practice.