Madness
In my perception a person dealing with madness acts from impulsive behavior without considering possible consequences or rational questioning on deciding wether to do something or not. I believe they don’t censor themselves in their behavior because they act from a place of honesty, where we as rational human beings act from a place of judgments or the fear of being judged. We make choices based on diplomatic considerations, pleasing and answering the desires of others in order to be liked, loved and included in societal constructs. The impulsive and honest behavior of mad people, free from censorship is a source of inspiration for me. It seems to me that there is ‘something going on’ inside of them that is valuable, as if something urgently has to manifest. I draw a cautious line between this observation and my creativity.
I see the creative act and the act of choreography as a practice of motion and movement in continuous transformation. Choreography, the practice of it and its perception is continually changing and doesn’t allow itself -because of its moving nature- to be fixed and defined. We try to capture movement in video, photo, definitions and other media and means of documentation, but it would never contain or communicate what it does itself, from itself, by itself. It is for this reason that I love the act of choreography; it is a way to study and organize movement: it seems to me an act of ceaseless change, like the life itself. Therefor a study and research on madness draws my string attention and motivates me to allocate it as my main subject-matter of this research. Michel Foucault says it strikingly: […] studying madness allows one to recognize deeper and much larger transformations (Foucault, 1965).
Aim
The primarily aim of this research inquiry is not to define madness, it is not attempting to take responsibility of a seemingly impossible task. Instead, it is an engagement with a study of madness with the aim to learn from it, beyond the boundaries of definitions. In the pursuit of this study I have looked into different understandings, perceptions and point of views on madness from other thinkers and reflected upon them to see how they resonate in me. I have selected different sources using different media, modes of language and sciences which approach madness in their own unique matter. Since the list of definitions is infinite, I selected sources that can provide me useful information in the growth and development of the understanding on the topic in relation to my research inquiry. The sources function as an inspiration, wider contextual framework and substantiation of my creative practice, as well as catalyst for sharpening a more critical stand.
Eric Maisel
In an online article of Eric R. Maisel Ph.D. in Psychology Today, I have found two interesting reflections, which I describe here. The first one is a fresh look on Psychosis and Schizophrenia which leads toward a perception of inner world experience and the concept of in-dwelling. The second reflection carries out a conduct of morality along the observation of how we collectively are labelling madness.
Maisel sets out that both Psychosis and Schizophrenia are the result of or can be a reaction to stressful events and life such as divorce, rejection, redundancy, bitter disappointments, bereavement and other kinds of failure. But also positive events like winning the lottery, for example – can be stressful and lead to such psychological states. Traumatic experiences like this can lead a person to become mad and an often diagnosed symptom is that the person in question is hearing voices. Maisel explains an interesting thought by saying that these voices arise because of the built up of inner worlds under duress after having experienced traumatic event(s). These inner worlds are built on figments of imagination. It may well turn out that this inner world experience is simply one predictable result of an experienced event as traumatic by a person who possesses the habit or style of indwelling. Indwelling is a phenomenon of a guiding or activating entity from within.
In the same article, Maisel bluntly asks: “What is actually going on with the understanding and definition of madness? What are the origins of the cause of severe and often disabling difficulties that can leave an individual unable to work, isolated, frightened, unable to function, at odds with relatives, family and friends, loved ones and society, agitated, raw, despairing and suicidal?” The answer Maisel gives is simple and brief: Nobody knows. He continues by saying that we do not exactly know what madness is or what it represents but that we add nothing when we define it with psychosis, schizophrenia, hysteria or craziness and act like we do nowadays. Rather than adding, we subtract. We subtract energy from different sorts of research that might help us understand the relationship between human experience and phenomena like hearing voices. We deduct good will and direct ourselves toward a model of oppression and harassment: we deviate from helping to controlling. We take away empathy and promote a vision of “us” and “them”: us as being normal and them as being crazy. All this deduction costs lives. Maisel suggests to try to be of more help, even from the unfortunate place of not knowing enough, and stop labeling when we ought to be caring.
A small resumé of madness’ history
Michel Foucault’s History of Madness (Foucault, 1965) discusses madness as a history. I am reading this work in order to get some more insight of a larger context in how western world has formed its perception of madness, how madness developed geographically and in time; not only how we as humans shaped and fueled the concept, but also how madness shaped us, our thinking and our (acting in) society.
The backbone of Foucault’s thesis is a time line which he divided into three phases. These three phases are significant for a radical different perception of madness and show how western society was shaped by it. The phases reveal also a process of transformation, they show each period in time and the events that happened were both causes and effects from each other.
Madness can be described as a religious or philosophical phenomenon (an experience of inspiration, a loss of mind, etc.) as well as an objective medical sense (as in myriad types of madness that have been described in psychiatry like hysteria, dementia, psychosis, (manic) depression, schizophrenia, bipolar), these conceptions are not discoveries but historical constructions of meaning. Foucault’s inquiry was constructed on a vast comparison of different conceptions of madness that appeared in different civilizations. Foucault realized that madness could be a phenomenon of civilization, as variable, as floating as any other phenomenon of culture (Foucault, 1965) and that healing the mad is not the only possible reaction to the phenomenon of madness.
A moment occurred in history where madness started to be considered as a disease, as an object of scientific inquiry. And if this change of madness’ conception is adding to the understanding and articulation of the history of psychiatry and of medicine in general, it is maybe more important to understand what actually has changed in our society to make that kind of transformation arise. Foucault is not looking through the rational glasses of a classical historian or a psychiatrist, no, his interest of inquiry goes toward decisions, limits and exclusions made in specific moments in history and indicate the changes of how certain phenomena were experienced. These changes were frequently overlapped or came along with other shifts originating from different parts of society and became part of ruptures in which unknown earlier experiences of madness were excluded.
Foucault says that the history madness is not the history of a disease (of what we nowadays consider to be such). Rather, it is the history of the gesture of partage, division, separation, through each of its moments, incarnations or figures to describe a process of division through which a reality splits into radically different parts until a new realization takes place, a synthesis which in itself is a new reality. (Khalfa, 2006)
My reflections
While reading and reflecting on Maisel’s article, I was particularly moved and interested by the concept of in-dwelling. This phenomenon made a bell ring in my mind. I somehow recognize it in my practice; being in the process of creative research, creating, exploring and producing, a level of indwelling is present in me. I become sensitive when I am in contact with memories, when I think of events from the past that moved me. Recalling a state of indwelling is valuable for my practice; it helps to be closer to oneself and find movement materials that are more honest, because the indwelling is more linked to the person than only the dancer.
Foucault's three phases
1 Renaissance, when a subtle transformation of the conversation between madness and reason -a conversation dominated in the Middle Ages- took place and appeared to be a reflection on wisdom.
2 Classical Age, the period when madness and reason were radically separated and when most of the social institutions and confinements are constructed. Foucault describes this period as tragic, hence it was a period where reason and madness became polarized without the presence of hope of reconciliation.
3 Modern experience of Madness; in this period madness is perceived as factual or positive, an object of science, as a disease or as a series of diseases. (Khalfa, 2006) Foucault explains this period of transformation influenced by a new, literary experience of madness, late romantic works and of the avant-garde of the twentieth century.
Foucault’s first phase, the Renaissance, is explained mainly by purposing work of artists which show the perception of madness as some sort of knowledge, similar to a religious experience, like the terrifying biblical depiction of the apocalypse. The mad are the ones who have tragic experiences which are a threat for the reality of the world and the frailty of human institutions. So these individuals were able to perceive those forces and seem both to reveal and belong to the limits of the world. These people living inside of society were menacing from the inside the great organization of the world and of humanity. It is this accession of the (artistic) image of madness that is key phenomenon in the Renaissance period. Besides this explosive growing of imagery, Foucault points out that there’s another medium of response to madness appearing, namely textual matter. Opposed to the image of madness which is tragic, the textual material is critical. The role of madness is to indicate a discrepancy between what men are and what they pretend to be (Khalfa, 2006). This was a significant theme for the humanist writers like Erasmus and Montaigne.
The Renaissance is the period which stages a vertiginous conception, definition and understanding of madness; wise is the man who sees madness in claiming with means of reason to have found an absolute truth regarding the perception of madness.
The Christians state that human reason is madness when compared with reason of God, but divine reason appears as madness to human reason. The vertiginous aspect comes from the fact that there lays a contradiction in the definition of madness and reason; there’s unreason within reason. But, both reason and unreason are now superiorly looked at; a wise person would understand limits of reason, while before madness was experienced from within. The first seed of rupture or separation between the two different forms of experiences of madness is planted and broadcasts the beginning of Foucault’s Classical Age.
Seventeenth and eighteenth century seems to push the experience of madness differently; this period called by Foucault the Classical Age, is embracing the perception of madness as unreason, so the opposite of reason. Where the mad were sent out on ships of fools, bateaux îvres and pilgrim boats on rivers far away from the land of society; the classical age is locking up the mad people in houses of confinement, which were being constructed numerously throughout Europe. The institutions were constructed for the support of medical, scientific development, Foucault argues however that the perception of these institutions are merely a construction for controlling and manipulating ethical views. The mad were locked up together with criminals, prostitutes, unemployed and other individuals considered performing anomalous behavior in society. Inside those institutions, the people were heavily treated with the aim to alter their behavior through extreme precise systems of physical deprivation and rewards. Like in Foucault’s previous phase, in Classical Age, occurred another movement. The institutions in this period created houses of confinement to reverse the mad’s behavior through punishment and reward, because they were condemned to be guilty of their behavior; the mad themselves were accused that they had chosen to reject nature, but for medical doctors the behavior of the mad was no exception or deviation anymore, but a natural object; serving their scientific study.
So the division of reason and madness was factual. Due to the literal confinement of madness, the (social) contact between reason and madness was unrooted. This systematically hiding madness from society and excluding it into houses of confinement, educates society the production of alienation; a total new perception of the mad becomes visible and will katalyse a new dynamic.
Modern Experience of Madness is defined by the creation of institutions which are exclusively dedicated to the care of the mad: the psychiatric hospital. The mad has become the protagonist and single lab-rat for medical research. Now there’s two reasons for which the psychiatric hospital became the new house for the mad. One is the need to cure the mad in order to protect society, the other one is the incapacity of their family to take care of them at home. Foucault is pointing out that the combination of these two reasons for which the houses were constructed, was quickly forgotten in its historical origin and becomes perceived as natural; mad people were simply confined in order to be cured. Madness is perceived as an alienation of the self from itself; the providing of internment spaces was considered necessary for the self gathering with itself again. Foucault claims this ‘real’ and sudden understanding of madness to be a myth, based like all myths on the loss of historical origins.
The transformation of the exclusion space into a medical place made it possible for madness to become an object of scientific observation and experimentation. (Khalfa, 2006) Objectification of the mad was to control and dominate them; they were labelled as product of natural causalities. Foucault mentions a concrete result of this domination of madness; the invention of the straitjacket.
The construction of the psychiatric hospital is one of the cradles of ‘human sciences’; man could systematically be observed and their (mad) behavior administered, documented and archived. With this, Foucault is not trying to prove a scientific truth in itself, he rather reveals that scientific approaches take a natural object that they have identified and classified themselves through methods and for reasons that are often far more external than the object itself.
studying madness allows me to have a deeper and larger understanding of the transformative nature of my creative practice
To me the most significant shift of our perception of madness in Foucault’s thesis is the journey of its perception starting from perceiving madness as a fully accepted, embraced phenomenon in society, a source of unique, hard to find wisdom which is needed for well-being of all of us, transforming toward a medical, ill phenomenon which is ostracized by society and away from the ordinary daily life. Madness is put into darkness; we are afraid to look at it and value it as a threat of our well-being. We have lost the memory of what madness brought to us centuries ago. Yes, we have gained in knowledge and development on technology in medication and instruments to help people bare physical and mental suffering from (phases) of madness, but we have forgotten to learn from madness, we separated ourselves from it, pretending as if it doesn’t exist, while it is a fundamental human phenomenon, it makes us human. We have heavily solidified the concept of ‘us’ and ‘them’.
The collective eye suffers from people performing unusual behavior, it makes us feel uncomfortable because it doesn’t match with how we ‘should’ behave and such behavior is punished by the act of exclusion and from society. This dynamic is a vicious circle which nourishes laziness and resistance to actually be in contact with madness and empathize with it.
We have developed the idea that madness is a separation of the self from itself, but I would like to entertain a thought of its opposite; madness being a phenomenon through which the self is in extreme contact with itself. We as human beings have a unique and rich inner life from the moment we are conceived. As soon as we grow up, we let our inner life be influenced and perhaps disturbed by expectations, judgments, cultural constructs and social tendencies. Not only do we allow the outside world to influence our inner life, we even let it be dominated and controlled by it, we loose awareness of its power upon ourselves and attain a level of infatuation with the world around us. Unconsciously we allow a submissive relation between the world and our inner delicate life; a relation in which the force of society dominates us.
The problem of growing up and being influenced by the forces of society, loosing contact with our inner life is beautifully shared in ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ by Carlo Collodi. The protagonist of the story, Pinocchio, cannot resist performing his lies: when he is not honest, the world sees it immediately. His nose grows longer and longer and will not stop until he is in line with honesty, Pinocchio’s wooden body doesn’t lie. Even Pinocchio himself doesn’t lie, he is expressing his inner world, it is just not in line with the acceptance(s) of the world. His wooden body gives evidence of his inner life. When he finally becomes a real human boy, he looses that ‘honest’ wooden body. From that moment Pinocchio dies and his soul blends in with the norms and expectations of the society. The tragedy is the loss of an extra-ordinary soul, killed by society. Pinocchio’s journey is an allegory of the artist’s pain. We are supposed to be grown up human beings, able to be perceived as ‘normal’ in line with the characteristics of an ordinary human being in society.
In the current millennial generation we see a rising number of people suffering from mental illness, which I believe is partially due to the pressure created by society. Because of this reason I believe it is important to bring madness to the limelight not only to support my creative practice but also to hopefully raise more awareness and open a discussion by bringing this subject to the table.
