Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores how the continental philosophical tradition in the 20th century attempted to understand madness as madness. It traces the paradoxical endeavour of reason attempting to understand madness without dissolving the inherent strangeness and otherness of madness. It provides a comprehensive overview of the contributions of phenomenology, critical theory, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism and anti-psychiatry to continental philosophy and psychiatry. The book outlines an intellectual tradition of psychiatry that is both fascinated by and withdraws from madness. Madness is a lure for philosophy in two senses; as both trap and provocation. It is a trap because this philosophical tradition constructs an otherness of madness so profound, that it condemns madness to silence. However, the idea of madness as another world is also a fertile provocation because it respects the non-identity of madness to reason. The book concludes with some critical reflections on the role of madness in contemporary philosophical thought.
Trade Review“In tracing the continental philosophy of psychiatry tradition, Morgan does indeed succeed in rescuing it from obscurity, in ways that will benefit many. For researchers, the book opens many exegetical and conceptual questions, or returns to old questions from a fresh perspective. For clinicians, a rich and pluralistic understanding of madness emerges, holding space for its difference while recognising the contexts of violence and contradiction that produce it. … As such, there are many who stand to gain from engaging with this important book.” (Robert Chapman, Psychiatrie Filosofie, psychiatrieenfilosofie.nl, June, 2023)
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Introduction.- Part I: Three Inclusive ExclusionsChapter 2: “A subtle, pervasive and strangely uncertain light”: Jaspers on understanding madnessChapter 3: “As strange to me as the birds in the garden”: Bleuler, Jung and the creation of schizophreniaChapter 4: A distance from all that is human: Freud and Psychosis.- Part II: Through a glass darklyChapter 5: Vital ContactChapter 6: IpseityChapter 7: The Body.- Chapter 8: Being-in-the-worldPart III: It’s a Mad worldChapter 9: “The world cannot acknowledge its own madness”: alienation and the destruction of experienceChapter 10: Reification and Schizophrenia – a socio-pathological parallelismChapter 11: Beware, Marcuse!Chapter 12: “O my body. . .”: Fanon and the pathologies of recognitionPart IV: “A certain madness must watch over thinking”Chapter 13: “In the distance of madness”: Foucault and the
History of MadnessChapter 14: The lure of madnessChapter 15: Lacan: the shadow of madnessChapter 16: The ineffable and limit-experiencePart V: Anti -Psychiatry and madnessChapter 17: Capitalism and schizophreniaChapter 18: A germinal anti-psychiatry: R.D. Laing’s wild empathyChapter 19: “It all began with a ‘no’”: The Institution negatedChapter 20: Epilogue – The end of madness?
