Madness is a very popular term for centuries and has been used for the purposes of coexistence and adaptation. Madness is such a relative term that it opens the doors to a diversity of psychological analyses: especially in the social and health consequences. In Psychology-Online we explain what is madness in psychologya term that has perhaps been misused or abused for the benefit of certain entities and contextualizations that cause very significant clinical confusion.
What is madness: meaning
If madness exists, surely there is still no madman who knows how to describe it. Talking about madness is a luxury that only people who believe they are far from being called crazy allow themselves.
Madness, a term difficult to define
Defining madness is as complex as defining sanity; dozens, hundreds and perhaps quantifying the fact in a hyperbolic way, there could be thousands of definitions that exist about madness: psychology and psychiatry manuals, history books, dictionaries and magazines offer descriptions of this popular term. Society also has fun airing its prejudices here and there trying to define madness, as if this practice were handshakes, but… Isn’t this an act of madness? The action of alluding to social custom over airing moral prejudices could be considered by the most gifted as an act characteristic of madness. The definition of madness should be provided by the madmen themselves, since they are the ones who present it – Or does madness require a certain degree of unconsciousness? – The madman is not aware that he is mad and therefore this cannot be the one who describes his madness, but this task is frequently carried out by those who claim to cope with the effects of the asymmetrical behavior, the divergent lifestyle and the accentuated emotional life of the madman.
Definition of insanity
To define madness in three or two lines is to take lightly the responsibility of being. Labeling any action that is incompatible and unknowable to my reasoning is not exactly equivalent to an act of madness, but rather a procedure different from mine. Feeling harmed by the “crazy” actions of those next to us, in order to exile them to permanent alienation, does not make us sane/sensible or complete, it makes us just as crazy. Who can say that we are not crazy too and we are just arguing with someone who makes reliable use of his judgment and that is why we call him “crazy”? We could not, not with that imperative need to define as madness everything that does not contrast with our concept of normality.
Popular wisdom generally describes as crazy what is clearly distinguished from reasonfrom which the irrational receives the well-known labels of crazy or crazy.
The concept of madness
Below we will see what is meant by madness from different perspectives:
Madness from philosophy
Notable philosophical systems have been promoters of individualism; Great authors of the French and German Enlightenment such as Kant and Rousseau, authors of English empiricism such as Locke and Hobbes, existentialist philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche reacted against the generalizing and collective lines of Hegelian idealism. The individualism to which Hegel refers is aimed precisely at dividing the link between the singular and the universal (between the individual and the whole of which he is a part). By ignoring this dialectical relationship, the individual can come to maintain that he is self-sufficient without ties to the spirit of the people, having his own purpose. It is like this then a singular/individualistic consciousnessthe conscience of the madman for Hegel.
Lacan (1946) also explained that madness corresponds to one of the most normal relations of the human personality, “its ideals”, and at the same time proposed the famous example: if a man who believes himself to be a king is mad, the man is equally mad. king who thinks he is king.
Madness for society
Most of us know some homeless person who walks around the streets of our city, who, perhaps since we were very little, we labeled as – the crazy dog, the crazy man who is mute, the crazy man with the cans, the crazy man. of the boots, the madman of the market or simply the madman -. Although most people do not know about psychology, it is so easy for them, just like a child, to diagnose anyone with insanity. Well madness has been considered indistinctly by society as a synonym for mania, delirium, anger, rage, hallucinations, dementia, dissociation, panic or anxiety. This causes confusion with significant clinical consequences.
Where is the difference between normality and madness?
Just meditating for a few minutes on our normality – our concept of normality – (which surely does not agree with that of the person next to us), would clarify that we are not as sane as we thought.
Could we consider it normal to have sexual relations with a chicken? For some entire communities it may have been a well-accepted initiation ritual for decades. Would it be normal to kill one’s children because that is how God commands it? Would it be normal to talk to dogs while we cook? Would it be normal to talk out loud to yourself? Would “endogamy,” marriage or reproduction between people of common descent be normal? Would it be normal to cry and constantly think about a significant loss? Would it be normal to always have to leave the volume of the estuary at an even number? Would it be normal to knock on the wall three times to avoid a family accident? Would it be normal to not detach from parents? Would it be normal to become attached to an object, a partner or a job? Would it be normal to give mom a kiss on the lips when saying goodbye to her? What would be normal?
This time of meditation could create the corollary that ends the stigma we have about madness. Learning that that mute homeless man perhaps never heard a sound since his birth and was subsequently exposed to living on the streets; Without words to communicate, he instinctively used primitive signals to survive, without words that structured a thought and that developed a healthy cerebral cortex and per se a socially acceptable behavior of inhibition, would we still think that that homeless man gets naked in the street, why is he crazy? Would we think the same even if we knew that thought is restructured and modified when it is transformed into language, but that without language there is no thought? Or what words did you think the deaf and homeless person in your neighborhood thinks with?
Is madness a mental illness?
If I talk to God, I am religious, if God talks to me, I am schizophrenic. The article does not seek to create an apology for madness, normalize or create pathologies in all types of behavior; Madness is considered by most social contexts as synonymous with mental illness.. That is why we try, perhaps, with a tinge of impudence and with a bit of entanglement between its lines, to clarify what a mental illness represents (its symptoms), and what the concept of madness is; It also refers to the excessive use and exploitation of the terms by pharmaceutical companies, social contexts and religions.
It is well known that IQ was previously used to determine whether someone had some type of intellectual disability and that currently its measurement is not enough to establish a corresponding diagnosis. In the same way as madness, these types of concepts and definitions change, appearing or showing that each era has its own definitions: their own oddities, their own craziness and their corresponding normalities. Just as geniuses have challenged what is known, what is established, what is comfortable, what is realistic, and have been called crazy, just as we explained with Hegel and other philosophers (ibid.).
Society uses most mental illnesses as a synonym for madness, but as mentioned it is a label used to intervene in something that is not known. This final ambivalence results from the excessive and exploitative use that has been given to the term “madness”, since labeling Any behavior that goes against what we consider normal is not necessarily a mental disorder..
There has been speculation on several occasions about the involvement of pharmacological laboratories in the massification of mental disorders that appear in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), and the alteration to which they guide the symptomatology with a lucrative interest. of their methods that alleviate or improve people’s health. I believe that there are people who suffer from a real mental disorder (a significant clinical disability caused by the symptoms of depression, phobias, panic attacks, delusions or symptoms characterized by hallucinations), and who really need and ask for professional help, but who clearly Its etiopathogenesis must be carefully evaluated.
The concept of madness throughout history
In the Middle Ages the term began to be used craziness to encompass people who were not known how to treat from a social point of view or perspective. Within this era it is necessary to refer to witchcraft since power in the Middle Ages was assigned between the church and the feudal lords. Some behaviors that suggested or appeared to be subversive (revolutionary) did not fit into this structure, something similar to go against what is established. People who went or even tried to go against what was established (dogmas/norms) imposed and regulated by the church in the modus vivendi everyday, you were called witches or heretics. It was believed then that these madmen were possessed by demons and therefore should be subjected to the Holy Inquisition.
The specific method to deal with this problem was then the Inquisition. Years passed and the rate of witches/demonized/possessed people increased in a directly proportional manner (more sentences, more witches).
It could then be inferred that there were a greater number of witches or demons than normal people, or perhaps there was something that was not working. It was being used from those in power a label to contend with or fight against a series of people who were beginning to go against the official state of things, accepted by a bureaucracy (the church and the feudal lords). For this reason, thousands of “witches” who developed a way of life other than what was designated were burned. It was mostly women who showed hysterical symptoms or natural sexual manifestations. In general, madness has been a term used for centuries but its implications have gradually changed.
The love and the madness
As Oscar Wilde said, to be in love is to surpass oneself. For centuries, love has been confused with falling in love and consequently love has been associated with madness. Within the state or stage of infatuation People form an extrapolated sense of their emotions, which directs them to states of separation from oneself…