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observers (insofar as such emotional detachment is possible) in inheritance disputes, or whetherthey are straying beyond their legal remit in passing ‘judgement’ on the perceived rights andwrongs of the situation.The Impact of Neurodiversity and Emotionality on Clinical and LegalJudgements of Decision-Making CapacityRobin MacKenzie, University of Kent (r.mackenzie@kent.ac.uk)Medical decision-making by patients is respected as a lawful exercise of free will and agencyunless patients are found to lack “competence”. Yet, clinical measures of competence in medicaldecision-making typically assess only cognitive abilities. Emotionality is involved in decisionmakingand may affect how far patients’ decisions to accept or refuse medical treatment embodyfree will. Moreover, neurodivergence, or atypical neurological makeup, is often diagnosed asneurodegeneration, neurodysfunction, neural damage or neural difference and frequently leads todifficulties in considering the emotional aspects of decisions that standard tests do not measureor divulge. Neurodiversity activists assert that their neural differences are not pathologies to betreated or cured but are alternative ways of being which should be accepted as neuroequal.Nevertheless, who may claim to be neurodiverse is uncertain. I focus on atypical emotionality toconsider the limits of neurodiversity in relation to clinical and legal assessments of decisionmakingcapacity, particularly in relation to diagnoses of mental illness.94. Law and Representations of Social PathologiesTrauma in Kafka’s The Trial and Real Life Legal ExperiencesJoan I. Schwarz, University of Wisconsin at Whitewater (schwarzj@uww.edu)While the legal system in Kafka’s The Trial is often described as referring to no specific legalsystem, the system he portrays mirrors the inquisitorial system of law akin to German andAustrian criminal proceeding of the time. Kafka intentionally distorts anonymous bureaucratsinteracting with characters that lack a clear sense of direction; are unable to see beyondimmediate events; and do not discern any possibility of escape. His description of an inquisitorialsystem of law produces in the reader feelings of hopelessness, fear and trauma, and alienationand persecution, all with a sense of impending disaster. Kafka has written in his letters that “thebooks we need are the kind that act upon us as a misfortune, that make us suffer at the death ofsomeone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel like we are on the verge of suicide, orare lost in a forest remote from all human habitation – a book shall serve as an axe for the frozensea within us.” He further asserts that “we ought to read the books that wound and stab us. Weneed the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply.” Hence, “Kafkaesque” is a229