Notion Of Madness Research Articles

Caring for the Ordinary in Palestine: When Ongoing Occupation Becomes Maddening

ABSTRACT: This article offers a reading of contemporary life in Palestine that interrogates the braiding of hope and despair through an examination of expressions of optimism and madness in Palestinian everyday life. Whereas I neither aim to define what madness nor optimism could be taken to mean, I examine vernacular notions of how, when, and why the notion of madness is used in ordinary language, anchored in ethnographic fieldwork in occupied Palestine as well as conversations with Palestinian interlocutors over the last sixteen years. The aim being to explore the experiential and linguistic abyss between a collective feeling of Israel's occupation as a maddening force and, on the other hand, the accompanying call on part of the Palestinians to act as if it was not, the will to endure and resist being unwavering. Ultimately, I pursue the argument that the chasm between these two different pressures causes a feeling of skepticism due to the braided struggle of finding a language that can both acknowledge the occurrence of mental disorder as a consequence of the military occupation simultaneously as Palestinians carve out a space to sustain an ordinary in the wake of maddening oppression. Concludingly, I argue that gender is at the heart of how we might understand, even locate the refusal to end in Palestine—the maddening consequences intrinsic to such a refusal being the locus of my inquiry.

A STUDY IN THE LIGHT OF ANCIENT GREEK TRAGEDIES- “MADNESS” AS A TRAGIC ELEMENT

Since the beginning of time, madness has been ascribed to the sacred. This was also the case for the Ancient Greeks. They believed that their anthropomorphic deities were involved in all aspects of life. So they characterized madness as a condition sent by the gods. The connection between madness and the divine powers has also been the theme of Ancient Greek poetry. In Homer’s The Iliad, at the fiercest moment of the war, the enraged Hector wears the armor of Patroclus and there enters into him Ares the god of war, his limbs are filled with might. In The Odyssey, when the suitors of Penelope gather for dinner, Athena makes them laugh uncontrollably and then makes them cry. The theme of madness can also be seen in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Although insanity still is a divine punishment in those plays, there are other reasons for the madness of tragic heroes and heroines. Feelings of guilt, sense of responsibilty, sadness, shame, honor and arrogance may be mentioned among them. In the Sophoclean tragedy “Aias”, Aias goes mad and kills Greek cattle believing that it is the Greeks. After returning to his senses, he kills himself out of shame. In the Euripidean tragedy “Medeia”, after Iason’s betrayal, Medeia goes mad and takes vengeance on Iason by murdering Glauce, his new wife as well as her own children. Our aim in this study is to examine the notion of madness in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

Madness and psychiatry in K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams

ABSTRACT This article analyses K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2001) as a novel concerned with madness and psychiatric incarceration. It aims to reposition the scholarship on the novel, which has focused largely on the exploration of same-sex intimacy. The article argues that this emphasis not only undermines Duiker’s project of contesting essentialized identities but downplays his expansive sense of social justice. Connecting the text to the growing body of anti and critical psychiatric thinking, beginning with Michel Foucault, the article unpacks Duiker’s contemplation of psychiatry as an instrument of oppression. Madness is conceived as fluid, a spectrum and an experience more profound than the language of psychiatry can apprehend. The injustice suffered by the pathologized and incarcerated is linked to other forms of oppression through the author’s use of multiple focalizations. Drawing on Egyptian mythology, the novel contests psychiatric knowledge with the notion of madness as spiritual insight.

Caligula : malade mental ou fou de lucidité ? (Rostworowski et Camus)

Caligula: Mental illness or lucid madman? (Rostworowski and Camus) This article – focused on two plays about the Roman Emperor Caligula – has a double objective: firstly, it puts aside two dramatic versions of history of Caligula, and, secondly, it asks a question whether it is more legitimate to consider Caligula as a madman or as a mental patient. After introducing the playwrights Karol Hubert Rostworowski and Albert Camus, as well as the basic terminological concepts concerning the notion of madness and mental illness, the article analyses the symptoms of the illness and the madness included in the studied texts.

Notions of the Sublime: The Unquiet Mind in Tieck's Über Das Erhabene and Der Runenberg

I argue that aspects of Tieck’s essay-fragment Über das Erhabene can provide insights into the psychic aberrations experienced by Christian in Der Runenberg. By uniting the rhetorical sublime of Longinus with the aesthetic sublime of Burke and Kant (and additional theories of sublimity by Carl Grosse and Johann Georg Sulzer), Tieck reveals a broad knowledge of this important eighteenth-century aesthetic category. Additionally, selected passages from his unfinished Das Buch über Shakespeare (1794–) demonstrate his continued engagement with sublimity and madness. Given the approximate decade-long interval between his essay-fragment and Runenberg, I suggest William Lovell as a thematic midpoint and link in which Tieck begins to actualize Romantic notions of madness and sublimity implicit in many of his early writings. Turning to Runenberg, I concentrate on one taxonomy (‘Melancholie, Verrücktheit, Wahnsinn’) from Tieck’s essay-fragment and argue that Christian experiences neither a mobile inner journey nor a dynamic outer one, but rather an inner disconnectedness and fixation as a result of the self’s inadequacy and corruptibility in the face of nature and its experience of the sublime. The article concludes by contextualizing Tieck’s representation of melancholy and madness within eighteenth-century theoretical considerations of psychopathology, specifically by alluding to Kant’s essay Versuch über die Krankheiten des Kopfes.

Charles Dickens’ A Madman’s Manuscript : Madness and Its Aspects

With the rise and development of psychology and the clinics in the nineteenth century, many psychologists classify madness as a mental disorder or a mental illness. Dickens views madness as a mental illness. But, Dickens alludes to madness as a symbol of pride, power, and greatness in his short story, A Madman’s Manuscript . When the madman says: “It is a grand thing to be mad” (Dickens, 1997, p.14), he considers his madness as a powerful, dominant, and creative tool for achieving his aims and plans. Porter and Foucault give many historical and religious explanations regarding madness and its connection to power, dominance, and pride. For example, madness is seen as a “gift bringer” (Porter, 1987, p.60) that brings benefits and blessings for them; consequently, the madmen would have happiness, intelligence, and creativity. Furthermore, Porter explains the religious meaning of the idea “good madness” (Ibid., p.83) that has a strong association between God and the worshipper, unlike the “bad madness” (Ibid.) that is associated with Satan and evils. For the madman in A Madman’s Manuscript , his madness is considered as a bad one due to his predecessors’ wrongdoings and their sins; hence, he is insulting his race and their sins. Moreover, the idea of madness as power, greatness and pride in Dickens’ A Madman’s Manuscript makes the madman suffers differently from some aspects of madness, melancholia, monomania, schizophrenia, and hysteria. The madman suffers and because of his “sadness and the great fear” (Foucault, 1988, p.120), he becomes fully obsessed with melancholic notions and thoughts. For example, his wife’s dislike to him makes him melancholic and very depressed. Then he decides to kill her rather than to see her with someone else. The complete obsession with killing his spouse makes him monomaniac as well. In addition to the madman’s character as melancholic and monomaniac, he is schizophrenic. The reality distortions are a symptom of schizophrenia that the madman suffers from. The “internal heat” (Ibid., p.139) inside the body makes the madman acts hysterically when he sees the people celebrating on street, and he is not able to join them due to his insanity. Therefore, Dickens’ characterization of the madman in the story is so special and unique. Finally, A Madman’s Manuscript is an expressive short story that illustrates different notions of madness rather than its consideration as a mental disorder or illness.

Madness and Method: a Pastoral Theological Reflection

This article is a reflection on pastoral method in light of the metaphor of madness. I consider the notion of madness in terms of how it is represented in Western thought and take these representations as prisms to reflect on the attributes of pastoral methodology. More specifically, I use the notions of unreason, otherness, creativity, rage, and folly to think about the strengths of pastoral method.

A Narrative Case Study ofHamletand the Cultural Construction of Western Individualism, Diagnosis, and Madness

There is no story in Western literature that epitomizes the dominant Western discourse of individualism as clearly, and its effects as boldly, as Shakespeare's Hamlet. “This above all: to thine own self be true” (I.iii.78) is the cornerstone of Western individualism and the discourse of the individual over the relational. Though Hamlet was written over 500 years ago, the theme of individualism parallels strongly with the present Western construction of madness in mental health. In this article, a narrative case study of Hamlet is presented as a creative vehicle to explain narrative therapy and to challenge the individualized notion of madness by decentering it, unpacking it, and making it visible (Derrida, 1997; White, 1991). It is proposed in Hamlet that self-subjugation related to individualizing discourse, coupled with corresponding discourses concerning duty, honor, and gender, influence Shakespeare's characters’ abilities to communicate and to polyvocally negotiate the meaning of events in their live...

Schizophrenia: Stigma and the Impact of Literature.

I was diagnosed with schizophrenia on February 21, 1995, I was 22 years old, and my reaction was initially a shock. Still, within the parameters of coping with such news, the word “mad” surfaced in my mind. It was not just the word; my mind actually did a complete reversion to my childhood, particularly to 2 stories: Alice in Wonderland and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. My focus was the mad hatter parties, in particular, the absurdity of unbirthdays and the trivialization of madness. I was pretty amazed that my initial reaction was to revert to Carroll’s works. I realized that the terminology used to refer to the “madness” in the novel was not as outdated as it may seem. The terms are easily transferable to modern day psychology. The question remained: how would a “mad hatter” or being “mad as a hare” be described in 21st century vocabulary? Back to my original inspirations Jekyll and Hyde and Alice in Wonderland, these instantiate the 2 main forms of modern ignorance regarding mental health. People still regard it as comical, or even dangerous. Those who read Carroll may not realize that they are making that kind of association, but they are; the 2 notions of madness are equally misleading. So why does this trivialization of madness matter? Certainly, there is an aspect of madness that may seem to some as interesting in lieu of the fact that they do not know what is really at stake. I, for one, realized after understanding my condition that my brain tended to feel responsible for the entire world around me; even issues that had nothing to do with me would prompt me to think that I was responsible. I felt that I had caused September 11. I was egocentric and, to a point, narcissistic without the pedantry; it was just the way my brain reacted. Surely my thoughts would have made amazing comedy sketches. Yet, there is so much more than just the irrational thinking: all thinking comes from a common source—what source were my thoughts coming from? Was it guilt? Was it masochism? Was it a fear of God, or a fear of myself? What was the problem with the Mad Hatter? What was his schema—that source of thoughts, that thought soup, that leaked his thought into such expressions to the world? What follows is the thought process I went through to understand the stigma.

Researching mental health: Pathology in a postmodern world

The invention of madness led to the professional practice of mental health that has as its main aims the identification and treatment of mental illness. Traditionally, notions of madness and sanity are polarised, with sanity being linked to functionality and madness being aligned with dysfunction. While such a dichotomy is always questionable, currrent studies of mental illness reflect the social dissolution of such stark categorization. Indeed, it could be argued that this divergence is sensible, given that behaviours which might typically be described as indicators of mental illness could be considered as reasonable protective mechanisms. Contemporary approaches to researching mental health problems focus on the 'madness of the other', with little attention being paid to the madness of research itself or, indeed, to the researcher's own madness. This paper argues that paying attention to the madness of those producing mental health research in the academy (or is it the asylum?) may offer insight into the devolution of madness. Further exploration in this direction may show how the research process itself could be facilitated and enriched by the rehabilitation of such madness.

Triste fim de Policarpo Quaresma, or the Sad End of Party Politics in Belle Époque Brazil

This paper examines Lima Barreto's 1911 novel, a polemic work attacking the moral and political vacuity of turn-of the-century Brazilian life. The piece aims to discover the cause of the protagonist's downfall through an examination of his political, agricultural, and military exploits within the context of contemporary Brazil; is Quaresma a political visionary, a Brazilian Don Quixote, or a dangerous nationalist madman? The notion of madness in the text can be seen in the light of modern theories of bipolar depression. This article links this interpretation to the author's own embryonic anarchist ideas, and suggests that his belief in the bankruptcy of party politics around the time of the dictatorship of Marshal Floriano Peixoto may have inspired left-wing aims of social reform.

Pirandello at the Movies: L’Herbier, Chenal, and the Late Mattia Pascal

Pirandello at the Movies: L’Herbier, Chenal, and the Late Mattia Pascal Alan Williams J ACQUES RIVETTE’S L ’Amourfou (1968) is one of the few major modern European films to fall under the influence of Luigi Piran­ dello. In an interview with Cahiers du Cinéma, Rivette recalled that in conceiving its central dramatic situation (an apparently sane theatre director with a “ mad” wife) he had been inspired by the life of the Italian dramatist. The original scenario, in fact, began with a liminary quotation from Pirandello: “ I have thought about it, and we are all mad.” 1 Indeed, if one considers merely L ’Amour fo u ’s main subject matter (madness) and formal concerns (a continuing discourse on theat­ rical practice, embedded in a reflexive, film-within-a-film structure), one might be tempted to classify the film as a “ pirandellian” work. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Though initially inspired by Pirandello, Rivette’s film provides an exemplary demonstration of the huge, almost unbridgeable cultural distance which separates serious con­ temporary filmmakers from the early Italian modernist. Consider the (archetypally Pirandellian) theme of madness. The dramatist’s numerous madmen and madwomen almost inevitably resem­ ble the title character in Enrico IV (1922): their insanity manifests itself in a logical, rigorous, and consistent adherence to a fictional role. They are like theatrical characters who forget they are created, arbitrary con­ structs; their mad logic exposes the situation of “ normal” people—that life must be lived as a series of roles, or masks. On occasion, as happens with the man who takes himself to be “ Henry IV,” Pirandello’s mad characters suddenly understand their madness, but continue to live their parts. (What else can they do? These roles have given meaning to their lives.) Other characters can have madness thrust upon them; a definition of their behavior as “ insane” makes an impossible social situation livable. (Thus the jealous wife in II Berretto a Sonagli [Cap and Bells, 1917] is sent to an insane asylum, even though everyone knows she has acted foolishly, but rationally.) Pirandello’s notion of madness is profoundly social and linked to his understanding of ordinary life, seen as role playing. In L ’Amourfou, on the other hand, madness is impenetrable, nonlinguistic, and irrational, 14 Su m m er 1990 W illiams the ultimate limit on (and not the parody, or the explication of) human understanding. Rivette seems to have misread (probably deliberately) the Pirandellian sense in which “ we are all mad.” The space of madness in L ’ Amour fou is the couple’s apartment, where in an excruciating scene offolie a deux they mutilate themselves with a razor; the space of theatre —which in a Pirandellian world would provide suggestive parallels of “ mad” behavior—represents the domain of the symbolic, the logical, ordered world from which husband and wife grow ever more distant. How could one make a more authentically Pirandellian film in our era? One would have to forget so much: the Italian dramatist’s understanding of psychology was almost completely pre-Freudian, and his notions of the range and origins of human destructiveness (provoked in most of his works by jealousy and having social discord or, in the most extreme cases, murder as a consequence) were formed before two World Wars had taught their awful lessons. Even during his lifetime, Pirandello had little impact on world cinema, despite a strong, if ambivalent interest in the medium. (His sixth novel, Si gira [Shoot, 1916], is narrated by a cinema cameraman, and examines many familiar Pirandellian themes in the context of the early Italian film industry.) The most often cited adaptation of one of his plays remains the MGM As You Desire Me (1932, directed by George Fitzmaurice and starring Greta Garbo and Eric von Stroheim). But Holly­ wood in the studio era had a voracious appetite for theatrical material, and the surprising thing is not that the American film industry produced such an adaptation, but that it was such an isolated, almost unique occurrence. The French film industry, which relied almost as heavily on theatrical adaptations, paid even less attention to the writer’s plays. But whereas Hollywood only produced one notable...