What is Madness? by Darian Leader

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What is Madness? is Darian Leader's probing study of madness, sanity, and everything in between

What separates the sane from the mad? How hard or easy is it to tell them apart? And what if the difference is really between being mad and going mad?

In this landmark work Darian Leader undermines common conceptions of madness. Through case studies like the apparently 'normal' Harold Shipman, he shows that madness rarely conforms to standard models. What is Madness? explores the idea of quiet madness - that at times many of us live interior lives that are far from sane but allow us to function normally and unthreateningly - he argues that we must seek a new way to assess, treat and deal with those suffering mental health problems.

What is Madness? is Darian Leader's radically insightful and masterfully convincing exploration of a painful, complex but endlessly fascinating area of humanity.

See also

Darian Leader on the Marketing of Depression

His most recent books include: What is Madness?; The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression; Why Do Women Write More Letters Than They Post?; Promises Lovers Make When It Gets Late; Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops us from Seeing; Why Do People Get Ill?: Exploring the Mind-body Connection (with David Corfield); Strictly Bipolar; and Introducing Lacan: A Graphic Guide (with Judy Groves)

Mythology, Madness, and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism

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Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism explores some long neglected but crucial themes in German idealism. Markus Gabriel, one of the most exciting young voices in contemporary philosophy, and Slavoj Žižek, the celebrated contemporary philosopher and cultural critic, show how these themes impact on the problematic relations between being and appearance, reflection and the absolute, insight and ideology, contingency and necessity, subjectivity, truth, habit and freedom.

Engaging with three central figures of the German idealist movement, Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, Gabriel, and Žižek, who here shows himself to be one of the most erudite and important scholars of German idealism, ask how is it possible for Being to appear in reflection without falling back into traditional metaphysics. By applying idealistic theories of reflection and concrete subjectivity, including the problem of madness and everydayness in Hegel, this hugely important book aims to reinvigorate a philosophy of finitude and contingency, topics at the forefront of contemporary European philosophy.

The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness by R. D. Laing

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His groundbreaking exploration of the nature of madness, R.D. Laing's The Divided Self illuminated the nature mental illness, making the mysteries of the mind comprehensible to a lay audience. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Professor Anthony S. David.

First published in 1960, this watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing so revolutionized the way we perceive mental illness. Using case studies of patients he had worked with, psychiatrist R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is not a medical condition, but an outcome of the 'divided self', or the tension between the two personas within us: one our authentic, privatev identity, and the other the false, 'sane' self that we present to the world.

Laing's radical approach to insanity offered a rich existential analysis of personal alienation and made him a cult figure in the 1960s, yet his work was most significant for its humane attitude, which put the patient back at the centre of treatment.

R.D. Laing (1927-1989), one of the best-known psychiatrists of modern times, was born in Glasgow, Scotland. R.D. Laing's writings range from books on social theory to verse, as well as numerous articles and reviews in scientific journals and the popular press. His many publications include The Divided Self, Self and Others, Interpersonal Perception, The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, and Madness and Folly.

Madness: A Very Short Introduction

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Madness is something that frightens and fascinates us all. It is a word with which we are universally familiar, and a condition that haunts the human imagination. Through the centuries, in poetry and in prose, in drama and in the visual arts, its depredations are on display for all to see. A whole industry has grown up, devoted to its management and suppression. Madness profoundly disturbs our common sense assumptions; threatens the social order, both symbolically and practically; creates almost unbearable disruptions in the texture of daily living; and turns our experience and our expectations upside down. Lunacy, insanity, psychosis, mental illness - whatever term we prefer, its referents are disturbances of reason, the passions, and human action that frighten, create chaos, and yet sometimes amuse; that mark a gulf between the common sense reality most of us embrace, and the discordant version some humans appear to experience.

Social responses to madness, our interpretations of what madness is, and our notions of what is to be done about it have varied remarkably over the centuries. In this Very Short Introduction, Andrew Scull provides a provocative and entertaining examination of the social, cultural, medical, and artistic responses to mental disturbance across more than two millennia, concluding with some observations on the contemporary accounts of mental illness.

Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine

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The loss of reason, a sense of alienation from the commonsense world we all like to imagine we inhabit, the shattering emotional turmoil that seizes hold and won’t let go—these are some of the traits we associate with madness. Today, mental disturbance is most commonly viewed through a medical lens, but societies have also sought to make sense of it through religion or the supernatural, or by constructing psychological or social explanations in an effort to tame the demons of unreason. Madness in Civilization traces the long and complex history of this affliction and our attempts to treat it.

Beautifully illustrated throughout, Madness in Civilization takes readers from antiquity to today, painting a vivid and often harrowing portrait of the different ways that cultures around the world have interpreted and responded to the seemingly irrational, psychotic, and insane. From the Bible to Sigmund Freud, from exorcism to mesmerism, from Bedlam to Victorian asylums, from the theory of humors to modern pharmacology, the book explores the manifestations and meanings of madness, its challenges and consequences, and our varied responses to it. It also looks at how insanity has haunted the imaginations of artists and writers and describes the profound influence it has had on the arts, from drama, opera, and the novel to drawing, painting, and sculpture.

Written by one of the world’s preeminent historians of psychiatry, Madness in Civilization is a panoramic history of the human encounter with unreason.

See also

Madness And Civilization by Michel Foucault

What is Madness? by Darian Leader

Madness And Civilization by Michel Foucault

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In this classic account of madness, Michel Foucault demonstrates why his position as one of the most distinguished of European philosophers since the end of World War II is beyond doubt; his influence dominates contemporary thinking. Madness and Civilization is Foucault's first major text and is seminal to the study of his work, since his other books expand on themes established here: power and imprisonment are at the very heart of this study. Evoking shock, pity and fascination, this book aims to change the way the reader thinks about society and the nature of selfhood."

Michel Foucault, who wrote Madness and Civilization, saw in the ship of fools a symbol of the consciousness of sin and evil alive in the medieval mindset and imaginative landscapes of the Renaissance. Though this critical angle conflates myth, allegory and history, scholars such as Jose Barchilion have found Foucault's words on the subject very insightful. In his introduction to Madness and Civilization, Barchilon writes of the Ship of Fools as if it were an example of actual societal practice:

"Renaissance men developed a delightful, yet horrible way of dealing with their mad denizens: they were put on a ship and entrusted to mariners because folly, water, and sea, as everyone then 'knew', had an affinity for each other. Thus, 'Ship of Fools' crisscrossed the sea and canals of Europe with their comic and pathetic cargo of souls. Some of them found pleasure and even a cure in the changing surroundings, in the isolation of being cast off, while others withdrew further, became worse, or died alone and away from their families. The cities and villages which had thus rid themselves of their crazed and crazy, could now take pleasure in watching the exciting sideshow when a ship full of foreign lunatics would dock at their harbors."

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Introducing Foucault: A Graphic Guide 

Lacan on Madness: Madness, Yes You Can’t (2015)

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This new collection of essays by distinguished international scholars and clinicians will revolutionize your understanding of madness. Essential for those on both sides of the couch eager to make sense of the plethora of theories about madness available today, Lacan on Madness: Madness, Yes You Can’t provides compelling and original perspectives following the work of Jacques Lacan.

Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler suggest new ways of working with phenomena often considered impermeable to clinical intervention or discarded as meaningless. This book offers a fresh view on a wide variety of manifestations and presentations of madness, featuring clinical case studies, new theoretical developments in psychosis, and critical appraisal of artistic expressions of insanity.

Lacan on Madness uncovers the logics of insanity while opening new possibilities of treatment and cure. Intervening in current debates about normalcy and pathology, causation and prognosis, the authors propose effective modalities of treatment, and challenge popular ideas of what constitutes a cure offering a reassessment of the positive and creative potential of madness. Gherovici and Steinkoler’s book makes Lacanian ideas accessible by showing how they are both clinically and critically useful. It is invaluable reading for psychoanalysts, clinicians, academics, graduate students, and lay persons.

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis