madness
madness

We are all mad…..

….to paraphrase Lacan (and, indirectly) Freud.  In some ways this seems to be saying nothing new; after all, isn’t part of Freud’s legacy, whether you subscribe to psychoanalysis or not, that we are all, in some way, disturbed?  And doesn’t this mean that we are all either neurotic to some …

On being mad

The recent court ruling on Anders Breivik1 highlights a number of important issues relating to the nature of madness.  The judges found that he was sane at the time he carried out the bombing of the government buildings in Olso and the subsequent shootings on Utoeya island.  In other words …

Ordinary madness

There is a myth within our culture, and within mainstream psychiatry and psychotherapy, that most people are (relatively) ‘normal’.  To be fair, psychoanalysts are more likely to say that most people are ‘neurotic’, or that by ‘normal’ we mean neurotic, but essentially it amounts to the same thing.  To put …