Continental Philosophy of Psychiatry : The Lure of Madness

This book explores how the continental philosophical tradition in the 20 th 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. Preface Contents 1: Introduction Continental Philosophy An Image of Madness An Image of Psychiatry The Lure of Madness References Part I: Three Inclusive Exclusions 2: “A Subtle, Pervasive and Strangely Uncertain Light”: Jaspers on Understanding Madness Jaspers on Understanding and Explanation Ununderstandability Ununderstandability as a Task: Madness at the Limits References 3: “As Strange to Me as the Birds in the Garden”: Bleuler, Jung and the Creation of Schizophrenia The Burghölzli Clinic Carl Gustav Jung Schizophrenia Keeping “Bad” Company: Bleuler Between Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis References 4: A Distance from All That Is Human: Freud and Psychosis Written on the Body: Women and Hysteria Psychoanalysis and Hysteria The Schreber Case Listening to the Voice of the Other: Sabina Spielrein and the Death Drive Beyond the Pleasure Principle References Part II: Through a Glass Darkly 5: Vital Contact What Is Vital Contact with Reality? “The Disturbances Commence with Life Itself”: Bion and Vital Contact Attention to Life Morbid Rationalism Coda: Beckett’s Murphy and the Body in Ruins References 6: Ipseity Selfhood and Ipseity Ipseity and Schizophrenia ‘Living Is Not Possible in the World’ The Width of Presence The Impossibility of Being What One Is The Fragility of Ipseity References 7: The Body Bodily Intentionality Leib and Körper Bodily Doubt On Female Embodiment Madness and the Corporealisation of the Body Self and Other: Expressivism and Its Critique Being-with-Others Woman as “absolute” Other An Opening to the Other References 8: Being-in-the-World Being-in-the-World Immersed Practice Unworlding Angst and the Philosophy of Breakdown Binswanger’s Intellectual and Psychiatric Formation Binswanger and Heidegger’s Analytic of Existence “Understood to the Brink of Your Throttled Life”: Ellen West and the Case of Existential Analysis The Existential Analysis Clinical Doom Foucault and Binswanger References Part III: It’s A Mad World 9: “The World Cannot Acknowledge Its Own Madness”: Alienation and the Destruction of Experience “An Inhuman Power Rules Over Everything”: Marx’s Account of Alienation Alienation as a “Relation of Relationlessness” Civilisation and Its Discontents Modern Life as Anaesthetic Life References 10: Reification and Schizophrenia: A Socio-pathological Parallelism What is Reification? Joseph Gabel: Reification and Schizophrenia Honneth on Reification References 11: “Beware, Marcuse”! Fromm and Reich: Two Routes for Freudian Marxism The Return to Freud and the Critique of Revisionism Marcuse’s Psychological Utopianism Narcissism: Primary and Secondary Beware, Marcuse ! Between Self-relinquishment and Critical Rationality References 12: “O My Body...”: Fanon and the Pathologies of Recognition Fanon’s Formation Fanon’s Thesis Fanon at Saint-Alban The Lived Experience of Blackness Négritude Pathologies of Recognition The “Impalpable Frontiers of Complete Recognition”: Psychiatric Recognition of the Other The Colonial Situation and Recognition References Part IV: A Certain Madness Must Watch Over Thinking 13: “In the Distance of Madness”: Foucault and the History of Madness. An Archaeology of Silence: Of “Madness Itself” The Foucault-Derrida Debate The Otherness of Madness References 14: The Lure of Madness The Lure of Madness and the Serenity of the Positive Dialectics vs Transgression Derrida Again References 15: Lacan: The Shadow of Madness Lacan and Paranoia The Mirror-Stage and the Vicissitudes of Recognition Structuralism and the Symbolic Madness and Language “... fixed in oblivion and waiting to come to life”: Irigaray on Psychoanalysis Madness and the Real Three Trajectories for Understanding Madness Beyond Lacan References 16: The Ineffable and Limit-experience Limit-experience A.W. Moore: “saying a good deal about what cannot be said” Henri Maldiney: On Losing One’s Existence The Limit-experience as Transgressive: Bataille on Inner experience Artaud: The Poison of Being References Part V: Anti-psychiatry and Madness 17: Capitalism and Schizophrenia Institutional Psychotherapy A ‘schizo’ Out for a Stroll Desiring-Machines Body Without Organs Schizophrenia, Capitalism, Paranoia Schizo-Culture References 18: A Germinal Anti-Psychiatry: R.D. Laing’s Wild Empathy “On the fringe of being”: The Divided Self Self and Others Between Winnicott and Sartre Ego-loss A Germinal Anti-psychiatry References 19: “It all began with a ‘no’”: The Institution Negated Basaglia’s Formation Subjectivity and Embodiment Goffman and the Asylum as Total Institution “A small, open city”: Foucault—Disciplinary Power and Subjectification Bare Life The Institution Negated The Institution Destroyed Bracketing Mental Illness Beyond Anti-Psychiatry References 20: Epilogue: The End of Madness? References Index This 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. Alastair Morgan is a Senior Lecturer, University of Manchester, UK "This 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." [Back cover] "This 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."--Bacl cover