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Madness And Modernism: Insanity In The Light Of Modern Art, Literature, And Thought
A stunning revelation of the eerie likeness between schizophrenic insanity and the sensibility of modern art, literature, and thought, Madness and Modernism presents a vivid and highly original portrait of the world of the madman, along with a provocative commentary on modernist and postmodernist culture. Sass, a clinical psychologist, explores the bizarre experiences of schizophrenia (and related conditions) through a comparison with the works of various artists and writers, including Franz Kafka, Paul Valery, Samuel Beckett, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Giorgio de Chirico, and Marcel Duchamp, and by considering the ideas of philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida.
The similarities between madness and modernism are defiance of authority and convention; an extreme, often dizzying relativism, which can culminate in paralysis; nihilism and all-embracing irony; a tantalizing, uncanny, but always frustrating sense of revelation; obliteration of standard forms of time and narrative; pervasive dehumanization; and disappearance of external reality in favor of the omnipotent ego or, alternatively, dissolution of all sense of selfhood.
This rigorously argued, gracefully written book offers a startlingly new vision of schizophrenia, an illness long recognized as the greatest challenge to psychiatric or psychological understanding. Conventionally seen as a loss of rationality, perhaps involving a return to some infantile or bestial condition, schizophrenia, according to Sass, is better understood as, in a sense, a disease of hyperrationality, with detachment from action, emotions, and the body and entrapment in forms of acute self-consciousness and heightened awareness. Sass refuses to romanticize the schizophrenic as a heroic rebel, mystic, or passionate Wildman, arguing instead that this condition echoes many of the most alienating aspects of modern life. In an epilogue and appendix, he considers whether modern culture might actively contribute to the genesis or shaping of schizophrenic forms of pathology, and he discusses the possible role of abnormalities of the brain.
The similarities between madness and modernism are defiance of authority and convention; an extreme, often dizzying relativism, which can culminate in paralysis; nihilism and all-embracing irony; a tantalizing, uncanny, but always frustrating sense of revelation; obliteration of standard forms of time and narrative; pervasive dehumanization; and disappearance of external reality in favor of the omnipotent ego or, alternatively, dissolution of all sense of selfhood.
This rigorously argued, gracefully written book offers a startlingly new vision of schizophrenia, an illness long recognized as the greatest challenge to psychiatric or psychological understanding. Conventionally seen as a loss of rationality, perhaps involving a return to some infantile or bestial condition, schizophrenia, according to Sass, is better understood as, in a sense, a disease of hyperrationality, with detachment from action, emotions, and the body and entrapment in forms of acute self-consciousness and heightened awareness. Sass refuses to romanticize the schizophrenic as a heroic rebel, mystic, or passionate Wildman, arguing instead that this condition echoes many of the most alienating aspects of modern life. In an epilogue and appendix, he considers whether modern culture might actively contribute to the genesis or shaping of schizophrenic forms of pathology, and he discusses the possible role of abnormalities of the brain.
608 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
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1942 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
March 10, 2021
Without making schizophrenics special snowflakes or to othering them or demonizing them or romanticizing them. They have a disease that disturbs their consciousness and gives them an altered awareness. They (and I also by they mean me) see things that aren't there or at least other people don't see those things. Their thinking is askew often focusing on things and ideas that are not of common salience to neurotypicals. I have heard that it is a disease of modernity only existing since the industrial revolution, but madness I suspect(holy fools and shamans) have a long tenure with humanity. This disturbance often takes a lot from the zeitgeist and creates hallucinations and delusions that work with these elements in novel ways which sometimes probably rarely show a creative aspect possibly even more rarely something significant on the level of genius even. Maybe schizophrenia is all deficit I suspect that (maybe) it might actually have positives or maybe I am flattering a fragile ego. At any rate, it has a lot of well-documented negatives to it. Most schizophrenics are tormented and not very functional. But sometimes the disturbed consciousness is attuned in an imperfect way to things overlooked by others and sometimes this is of value. This beautiful book covers the parallels between modernism (the author lumps modernism and postmodernism as the same thing I do as well) and schizophrenia. Is it because the delusions of schizophrenics are dependent on the zeitgeist or is there something about modernity that has a special relationship with Schizophrenia. I think it a combination of both. Schizophrenia is more prevalent in urban environments and urbanization is a hallmark of modernity. A highly artificial environment of dead mechanisms and unseen forces or spirits characterize the twentieth and twenty-first-century urban landscape. This will show up in art and the disturbed consciousness of schizophrenics who are sensitive to this disturbed and fast-changing environment. Their antennae are attuned to this nay probably overwhelmed by the zeitgeist. science and modernity have revived the animist spirits of the shaman in modern technology. And maybe schizophrenics pick up on this. I know I have. I have so much to say about this on the level of the first-person experience but I will save it for a later updated revision.
Update 3/10/2021
I had schizophrenia for thirty years. It was fairly bad in the beginning when I was diagnosed at the age of 23 in 1990. I slowly gained functionality over the next few years and although though I would have to deal with sporadic psychotic episodes over the years they became less frequent over time. I finished college and have had an okay work-life despite it. Since I came out as a Trans girl last November the remaining symptoms have lessened much more (another story perhaps). This book captures many of the cognitive and sensory experiences of what it is like to be schizophrenic and the mode of modernist art in my and the author's opinion is the best window into this state of mind. The uncanny style that this evokes often captures well in its desolate graphics, sculpture, and architecture the alienation one feels in this state. In addition, the crazy stream of the conscious flow of much modernist literature captures the loose associations and inner eclectic language of an admittedly disordered yet highly intricate and complex mode of thought which usually contains many allusions both private to the sufferer but also often public linked to both high art and religious iconography and pop references current to the times. Schizophrenics are usually portrayed as childlike disorganized dolts or violent animals but often this is because like modernism it is due to barriers of communication of someone experience an alien and often terrifying state of mind. There is much self-reference and admittedly a lot of self-centered style of relating the woes of a schizophrenic to cosmic drama largely because the hellish experience of schizophrenia often reduces the universe to their particular pain which is intense. Modernism catch's much of this very well which makes me wonder why this contemporary mode of art expression takes on much that is similar to this malady. What is it about the modern moment that makes artists use our aesthetic as a prototype for expression in the modern world? We live in weird times and as Hunter S. Thompson once quipped in weird times "the weird turn pro". I dunno. Anyway maybe in the future I will speculate on the link between dissociative disorders like bipolar and schizophrenia and some intriguing preliminary papers on its presence in transgender folks at rates that are much higher than the general population. Another story for another day.
For a political angle on mental illness.
here is "mad blender" about how Capitalist Realism (a negative side of modernity) and how it relates to mental illness. The mad are not space aliens but more often canaries in a coal mine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPeBE...
If you are working on your schizophrenia here is a channel that might be helpful as a resource.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCENq...
schizophrenia simulator video which is similar to dreaming states.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJdfV...
Update 3/10/2021
I had schizophrenia for thirty years. It was fairly bad in the beginning when I was diagnosed at the age of 23 in 1990. I slowly gained functionality over the next few years and although though I would have to deal with sporadic psychotic episodes over the years they became less frequent over time. I finished college and have had an okay work-life despite it. Since I came out as a Trans girl last November the remaining symptoms have lessened much more (another story perhaps). This book captures many of the cognitive and sensory experiences of what it is like to be schizophrenic and the mode of modernist art in my and the author's opinion is the best window into this state of mind. The uncanny style that this evokes often captures well in its desolate graphics, sculpture, and architecture the alienation one feels in this state. In addition, the crazy stream of the conscious flow of much modernist literature captures the loose associations and inner eclectic language of an admittedly disordered yet highly intricate and complex mode of thought which usually contains many allusions both private to the sufferer but also often public linked to both high art and religious iconography and pop references current to the times. Schizophrenics are usually portrayed as childlike disorganized dolts or violent animals but often this is because like modernism it is due to barriers of communication of someone experience an alien and often terrifying state of mind. There is much self-reference and admittedly a lot of self-centered style of relating the woes of a schizophrenic to cosmic drama largely because the hellish experience of schizophrenia often reduces the universe to their particular pain which is intense. Modernism catch's much of this very well which makes me wonder why this contemporary mode of art expression takes on much that is similar to this malady. What is it about the modern moment that makes artists use our aesthetic as a prototype for expression in the modern world? We live in weird times and as Hunter S. Thompson once quipped in weird times "the weird turn pro". I dunno. Anyway maybe in the future I will speculate on the link between dissociative disorders like bipolar and schizophrenia and some intriguing preliminary papers on its presence in transgender folks at rates that are much higher than the general population. Another story for another day.
For a political angle on mental illness.
here is "mad blender" about how Capitalist Realism (a negative side of modernity) and how it relates to mental illness. The mad are not space aliens but more often canaries in a coal mine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPeBE...
If you are working on your schizophrenia here is a channel that might be helpful as a resource.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCENq...
schizophrenia simulator video which is similar to dreaming states.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJdfV...
January 3, 2008
Describes my state of mind in high school disturbingly well.
February 10, 2023
Without making schizophrenics special snowflakes or to othering them or demonizing them or romanticizing them. They have a disease that disturbs their consciousness and gives them an altered awareness. They (and I also by they mean me) see things that aren't there or at least other people don't see those things. Their thinking is askew often focusing on things and ideas that are not of common salience to neurotypicals. I have heard that it is a disease of modernity only existing since the industrial revolution, but madness I suspect(holy fools and shamans) have a long tenure with humanity. This disturbance often takes a lot from the zeitgeist and creates hallucinations and delusions that work with these elements in novel ways which sometimes probably rarely show a creative aspect possibly even more rarely something significant on the level of genius even. Maybe schizophrenia is all deficit I suspect that (maybe) it might actually have positives or maybe I am flattering a fragile ego. At any rate, it has a lot of well-documented negatives to it. Most schizophrenics are tormented and not very functional. But sometimes the disturbed consciousness is attuned in an imperfect way to things overlooked by others and sometimes this is of value. This beautiful book covers the parallels between modernism (the author lumps modernism and postmodernism as the same thing I do as well) and schizophrenia. Is it because the delusions of schizophrenics are dependent on the zeitgeist or is there something about modernity that has a special relationship with Schizophrenia. I think it a combination of both. Schizophrenia is more prevalent in urban environments and urbanization is a hallmark of modernity. A highly artificial environment of dead mechanisms and unseen forces or spirits characterize the twentieth and twenty-first-century urban landscape. This will show up in art and the disturbed consciousness of schizophrenics who are sensitive to this disturbed and fast-changing environment. Their antennae are attuned to this nay probably overwhelmed by the zeitgeist. science and modernity have revived the animist spirits of the shaman in modern technology. And maybe schizophrenics pick up on this. I know I have. I have so much to say about this on the level of the first-person experience but I will save it for a later updated revision.
Update 3/10/2021
I had schizophrenia for thirty years. It was fairly bad in the beginning when I was diagnosed at the age of 23 in 1990. I slowly gained functionality over the next few years and although though I would have to deal with sporadic psychotic episodes over the years they became less frequent over time. I finished college and have had an okay work-life despite it. Since I came out as a Trans girl last November the remaining symptoms have lessened much more (another story perhaps). This book captures many of the cognitive and sensory experiences of what it is like to be schizophrenic and the mode of modernist art in my and the author's opinion is the best window into this state of mind. The uncanny style that this evokes often captures well in its desolate graphics, sculpture, and architecture the alienation one feels in this state. In addition, the crazy stream of the conscious flow of much modernist literature captures the loose associations and inner eclectic language of an admittedly disordered yet highly intricate and complex mode of thought which usually contains many allusions both private to the sufferer but also often public linked to both high art and religious iconography and pop references current to the times. Schizophrenics are usually portrayed as childlike disorganized dolts or violent animals but often this is because like modernism it is due to barriers of communication of someone experience an alien and often terrifying state of mind. There is much self-reference and admittedly a lot of self-centered style of relating the woes of a schizophrenic to cosmic drama largely because the hellish experience of schizophrenia often reduces the universe to their particular pain which is intense. Modernism catch's much of this very well which makes me wonder why this contemporary mode of art expression takes on much that is similar to this malady. What is it about the modern moment that makes artists use our aesthetic as a prototype for expression in the modern world? We live in weird times and as Hunter S. Thompson once quipped in weird times "the weird turn pro". I dunno. Anyway maybe in the future I will speculate on the link between dissociative disorders like bipolar and schizophrenia and some intriguing preliminary papers on its presence in transgender folks at rates that are much higher than the general population. Another story for another day.
Update 8/19/2021 a painful comingling of opposites, subjective and universal, dead mechanism and otherworldly spirits, the self that is suspicious and exhibitionist, the permeable self that broadcasts thoughts and has thoughts inserted by agents from the outside, personal ontological crisis and imagined universal apocalypticism, impotent and omnipotent, highly self-referential but with a fragmented psyche, distorted and blasted landscapes bordering on an abyss. Both modernism and madness. This book covers how modernist art both plastic and literary seems to embody much that is found in schizoid and schizophrenic people. The author understands modern art and the subjective worlds of schizophrenics to a degree rarely matched. I get more from this book every time I approach it. Excellent work.
Update 6/22/2022 I enjoyed this book many times but couldn't concentrate much this time around. This happens when I am overly familiar with a book and I can end up skimming which I am wont to do. Anyway, I have already commented much on this book so I will leave it there.
Update 2/9/2023 there are a few aspects of schizophrenia that seem to be in congruence with modernism. The highly self-reflexive nature of a schizophrenics thought process, the overwhelmed nature of it where everything takes on too much salience and everything is imbued with meaning, the dissolution of self and world and the fascination with mechanism and ghost in the machine or consciousness moving flesh instruments like an AI bio robot. These themes are often reflected in modernist art. Schizophrenics I suspect have existed long before modernism but never were they so central to art and literature as in the modernist period at least in terms of aesthetic choices that mirror modern society.
For a political angle on mental illness.
here is "mad blender" about how Capitalist Realism (a negative side of modernity) and how it relates to mental illness. The mad are not space aliens but more often canaries in a coal mine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPeBE...
If you are working on your schizophrenia here is a channel that might be helpful as a resource.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCENq...
schizophrenia simulator video which is similar to dreaming states.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJdfV...
the first bout of paranoia and hallucination happened at age seven when my bedroom became simultaneously an infinite chasm and infinitesimal nullity. My room had become perceptually a sizeless set of measure theory. Not a pleasant experience for a seven-year-old trying to go to bed at night.
https://youtu.be/hcRZadc5KpI
READING PROGRESS
December 1, 2020 – Shelved
December 1, 2020 – Shelved as: to-read
December 12, 2020 – Started Reading
December 12, 2020 – page 12
1.97% "I am returning to this book again partly because I lost my old review when I deleted my previous account and want to put something on it out there second because this is an important book for me. It is a condition that has a lot of parallels with modernity. The hyper-reflexivity and self-reference, odd symbolic content, Ghost in the machine metaphors it is highly in tune with the 20th and 21st-century consciousness."
December 12, 2020 – page 12
1.97% "Modernism contains many elements in common with schizophrenic experience. It has the hyper-reflexivity, breakdown of self, a stream of consciousness, spatialization of literature and thought, fascination with mechanism, a deadness driven by an unearthly power or radiance. it is all there"
December 12, 2020 – page 43
7.07%
December 12, 2020 – page 43
7.07% "De Chirico and the Truth Taking Stare "Stimming" in German like staring at the sun both brilliant and blinding."
December 12, 2020 – page 43
7.07% "a song with a Modernist aesthetic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEjut..."
December 12, 2020 – page 43
7.07% "The morbid dreamer the walking dead. I used to tell people it was my zombie power."
December 12, 2020 – page 60
9.87%
December 12, 2020 – page 75
12.34% "some modernist works like Sartre's "nausea" where perceive raw reality and the feeling of disgust at its blockiness and it being "de trop" a lump of phenomena that sticks in the mind's craw just an ugly brute fact one can't get rid of. It is a feeling I have had on LSD and in Psychosis."
December 12, 2020 – page 75
12.34% "Hypersensitive to the environment, Hyperaesthetic and symbolic mania, yet still a super chaotic mess. Yep."
December 14, 2020 – page 119
19.57% "The path of most resistance like the underground man of Dostoyevsky the Schizophrenic often eschews the easy way out by insisting on doing things the hard way (usually some principle is involved) and can make for some really hard lessons."
December 14, 2020 – page 134
22.04% "Schizophrenics can handle generalization and abstraction very well it is just that their categorization is peculiar or off. Like Borges Chinese Encyclopedist the categories seem strange but loosely connected."
December 14, 2020 – page 139
22.86%
December 14, 2020 – page 157
25.82%
December 15, 2020 – page 162
26.64% "A lot of references to dead mechanism animated by spirits. Hyper-sensitive affect as if in extreme PTSD yet blunted affect at the same time. As if one has been so exposed to an existential threat level emergency for so long that one has outwardly become inured to it while inwardly in deep turmoil. That is what it is like."
December 17, 2020 – page 174
28.62%
December 17, 2020 – page 213
35.03%
December 17, 2020 – page 243
39.97%
December 17, 2020 – page 269
44.24%
December 17, 2020 – page 302
49.67%
December 18, 2020 – page 358
58.88%
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: american-history
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: european-history
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: general-science
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: late-twentieth-century
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: early-twentieth-century
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: mid-twentieth-century
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: philosophy
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: psychology
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: religion-or-not
December 18, 2020 – Finished Reading
March 7, 2021 – Started Reading
March 8, 2021 – page 43
7.07% "Some of the characteristics that Schizophrenia shares with 20th-century modernism. The uncanny Unworlding of the world or making it otherworldly. The self-referentiality, spatial angling & sharpened points and breaking wholes into unrelated parts. A fascination with mechanism on my old account I talked a lot about ghosts and machines. It often feels like a ghostly presence running a machine insides & outsides clash"
March 8, 2021 – page 75
12.34% "Overstimulated to the max by the environment that reactions paradoxically depresses affect. I a constant state of emergency there is no proportion so a flat reaction to this situation has some logic to it both jangled and numb at the same time. I know this mode of existence quite well increasingly since 2016 and 2020 a lot of seemingly normal people might be getting a taste of it."
March 9, 2021 – page 148
24.34%
March 9, 2021 – page 174
28.62%
March 9, 2021 – page 213
35.03%
March 9, 2021 – page 213
35.03%
March 9, 2021 – page 242
39.8%
March 9, 2021 – page 242
39.8%
March 10, 2021 – page 268
44.08%
March 10, 2021 – page 268
44.08%
March 10, 2021 – page 324
53.29%
March 10, 2021 – page 324
53.29%
March 10, 2021 – page 400
65.79%
March 10, 2021 – page 400
65.79%
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: apocalypse-pending
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: biology
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: art
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: education
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: late-capitalism
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: lbgtqia
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: lgbt
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: media
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: medicine
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: music
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: modernism
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: sociology
March 10, 2021 – Finished Reading
Update 3/10/2021
I had schizophrenia for thirty years. It was fairly bad in the beginning when I was diagnosed at the age of 23 in 1990. I slowly gained functionality over the next few years and although though I would have to deal with sporadic psychotic episodes over the years they became less frequent over time. I finished college and have had an okay work-life despite it. Since I came out as a Trans girl last November the remaining symptoms have lessened much more (another story perhaps). This book captures many of the cognitive and sensory experiences of what it is like to be schizophrenic and the mode of modernist art in my and the author's opinion is the best window into this state of mind. The uncanny style that this evokes often captures well in its desolate graphics, sculpture, and architecture the alienation one feels in this state. In addition, the crazy stream of the conscious flow of much modernist literature captures the loose associations and inner eclectic language of an admittedly disordered yet highly intricate and complex mode of thought which usually contains many allusions both private to the sufferer but also often public linked to both high art and religious iconography and pop references current to the times. Schizophrenics are usually portrayed as childlike disorganized dolts or violent animals but often this is because like modernism it is due to barriers of communication of someone experience an alien and often terrifying state of mind. There is much self-reference and admittedly a lot of self-centered style of relating the woes of a schizophrenic to cosmic drama largely because the hellish experience of schizophrenia often reduces the universe to their particular pain which is intense. Modernism catch's much of this very well which makes me wonder why this contemporary mode of art expression takes on much that is similar to this malady. What is it about the modern moment that makes artists use our aesthetic as a prototype for expression in the modern world? We live in weird times and as Hunter S. Thompson once quipped in weird times "the weird turn pro". I dunno. Anyway maybe in the future I will speculate on the link between dissociative disorders like bipolar and schizophrenia and some intriguing preliminary papers on its presence in transgender folks at rates that are much higher than the general population. Another story for another day.
Update 8/19/2021 a painful comingling of opposites, subjective and universal, dead mechanism and otherworldly spirits, the self that is suspicious and exhibitionist, the permeable self that broadcasts thoughts and has thoughts inserted by agents from the outside, personal ontological crisis and imagined universal apocalypticism, impotent and omnipotent, highly self-referential but with a fragmented psyche, distorted and blasted landscapes bordering on an abyss. Both modernism and madness. This book covers how modernist art both plastic and literary seems to embody much that is found in schizoid and schizophrenic people. The author understands modern art and the subjective worlds of schizophrenics to a degree rarely matched. I get more from this book every time I approach it. Excellent work.
Update 6/22/2022 I enjoyed this book many times but couldn't concentrate much this time around. This happens when I am overly familiar with a book and I can end up skimming which I am wont to do. Anyway, I have already commented much on this book so I will leave it there.
Update 2/9/2023 there are a few aspects of schizophrenia that seem to be in congruence with modernism. The highly self-reflexive nature of a schizophrenics thought process, the overwhelmed nature of it where everything takes on too much salience and everything is imbued with meaning, the dissolution of self and world and the fascination with mechanism and ghost in the machine or consciousness moving flesh instruments like an AI bio robot. These themes are often reflected in modernist art. Schizophrenics I suspect have existed long before modernism but never were they so central to art and literature as in the modernist period at least in terms of aesthetic choices that mirror modern society.
For a political angle on mental illness.
here is "mad blender" about how Capitalist Realism (a negative side of modernity) and how it relates to mental illness. The mad are not space aliens but more often canaries in a coal mine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPeBE...
If you are working on your schizophrenia here is a channel that might be helpful as a resource.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCENq...
schizophrenia simulator video which is similar to dreaming states.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJdfV...
the first bout of paranoia and hallucination happened at age seven when my bedroom became simultaneously an infinite chasm and infinitesimal nullity. My room had become perceptually a sizeless set of measure theory. Not a pleasant experience for a seven-year-old trying to go to bed at night.
https://youtu.be/hcRZadc5KpI
READING PROGRESS
December 1, 2020 – Shelved
December 1, 2020 – Shelved as: to-read
December 12, 2020 – Started Reading
December 12, 2020 – page 12
1.97% "I am returning to this book again partly because I lost my old review when I deleted my previous account and want to put something on it out there second because this is an important book for me. It is a condition that has a lot of parallels with modernity. The hyper-reflexivity and self-reference, odd symbolic content, Ghost in the machine metaphors it is highly in tune with the 20th and 21st-century consciousness."
December 12, 2020 – page 12
1.97% "Modernism contains many elements in common with schizophrenic experience. It has the hyper-reflexivity, breakdown of self, a stream of consciousness, spatialization of literature and thought, fascination with mechanism, a deadness driven by an unearthly power or radiance. it is all there"
December 12, 2020 – page 43
7.07%
December 12, 2020 – page 43
7.07% "De Chirico and the Truth Taking Stare "Stimming" in German like staring at the sun both brilliant and blinding."
December 12, 2020 – page 43
7.07% "a song with a Modernist aesthetic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEjut..."
December 12, 2020 – page 43
7.07% "The morbid dreamer the walking dead. I used to tell people it was my zombie power."
December 12, 2020 – page 60
9.87%
December 12, 2020 – page 75
12.34% "some modernist works like Sartre's "nausea" where perceive raw reality and the feeling of disgust at its blockiness and it being "de trop" a lump of phenomena that sticks in the mind's craw just an ugly brute fact one can't get rid of. It is a feeling I have had on LSD and in Psychosis."
December 12, 2020 – page 75
12.34% "Hypersensitive to the environment, Hyperaesthetic and symbolic mania, yet still a super chaotic mess. Yep."
December 14, 2020 – page 119
19.57% "The path of most resistance like the underground man of Dostoyevsky the Schizophrenic often eschews the easy way out by insisting on doing things the hard way (usually some principle is involved) and can make for some really hard lessons."
December 14, 2020 – page 134
22.04% "Schizophrenics can handle generalization and abstraction very well it is just that their categorization is peculiar or off. Like Borges Chinese Encyclopedist the categories seem strange but loosely connected."
December 14, 2020 – page 139
22.86%
December 14, 2020 – page 157
25.82%
December 15, 2020 – page 162
26.64% "A lot of references to dead mechanism animated by spirits. Hyper-sensitive affect as if in extreme PTSD yet blunted affect at the same time. As if one has been so exposed to an existential threat level emergency for so long that one has outwardly become inured to it while inwardly in deep turmoil. That is what it is like."
December 17, 2020 – page 174
28.62%
December 17, 2020 – page 213
35.03%
December 17, 2020 – page 243
39.97%
December 17, 2020 – page 269
44.24%
December 17, 2020 – page 302
49.67%
December 18, 2020 – page 358
58.88%
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: american-history
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: european-history
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: general-science
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: late-twentieth-century
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: early-twentieth-century
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: mid-twentieth-century
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: philosophy
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: psychology
December 18, 2020 – Shelved as: religion-or-not
December 18, 2020 – Finished Reading
March 7, 2021 – Started Reading
March 8, 2021 – page 43
7.07% "Some of the characteristics that Schizophrenia shares with 20th-century modernism. The uncanny Unworlding of the world or making it otherworldly. The self-referentiality, spatial angling & sharpened points and breaking wholes into unrelated parts. A fascination with mechanism on my old account I talked a lot about ghosts and machines. It often feels like a ghostly presence running a machine insides & outsides clash"
March 8, 2021 – page 75
12.34% "Overstimulated to the max by the environment that reactions paradoxically depresses affect. I a constant state of emergency there is no proportion so a flat reaction to this situation has some logic to it both jangled and numb at the same time. I know this mode of existence quite well increasingly since 2016 and 2020 a lot of seemingly normal people might be getting a taste of it."
March 9, 2021 – page 148
24.34%
March 9, 2021 – page 174
28.62%
March 9, 2021 – page 213
35.03%
March 9, 2021 – page 213
35.03%
March 9, 2021 – page 242
39.8%
March 9, 2021 – page 242
39.8%
March 10, 2021 – page 268
44.08%
March 10, 2021 – page 268
44.08%
March 10, 2021 – page 324
53.29%
March 10, 2021 – page 324
53.29%
March 10, 2021 – page 400
65.79%
March 10, 2021 – page 400
65.79%
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: apocalypse-pending
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: biology
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: art
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: education
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: late-capitalism
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: lbgtqia
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: lgbt
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: media
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: medicine
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: music
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: modernism
March 10, 2021 – Shelved as: sociology
March 10, 2021 – Finished Reading
November 17, 2016
musty. had to rest my wrists and thought-sodden brain every half an hour or so in order not to yield to psychosomatic fatigue. its great length is demonstrative and not entirely functional, wallowing in empirical detail and adding very little to the claims being made (which, in themselves, would have survived radical compression). these lingerings and delays, however, are wholly redeemed by the fantastic range of examples that accompany the supple reporting on the modernist moment, and the meticulousness with which the author approaches his supremely interesting topic. the only irritating thing is the implicit tenor of the endevor: that madness somehow would lose its stigma if shown to engage in, even creatively modulating, the modernist impulse instead of (this is the image) just running its endless insular rounds in the heads of the insane whose experiences, ever caged in their margins, thereby would seem to gain some legitimacy. this, of course, is most retrograde. a treasure anyhow. savor
September 19, 2012
This is one of the best books I've ever read, particularly as far as contemporary nonfiction goes. Do you ever wonder what exactly the word "culture" means and how it applies to you in a practical sense? Have you ever wanted to at least feel situated in our non-situatedness? Then have-at this rich and brilliant book! The footnotes alone are must-reads.
December 5, 2019
Modernizm ve delilik bağlantısının çözümlemesi üzerine bir kitap olduğunu umarak edinmiştim ama kitap daha çok Şizofreni üzerine.... Dili çok ağır ve zorlayıcı. Eğer psikiyatri ve şizofreni üzerine iyi bir temel sahibiyseniz tavsiye edebilirim.
Read
May 21, 2010Often critics try to diagnose artists with what disorder they have. this book mercifully puts an end to that by diagnosing the roots of modernism itself.
May 16, 2020
Taking a flawed medical diagnostic system, identifying the flaws, confusing the system's flawedness for an attribute of the primary experience of mental illness/madness/disability, this book utilizes a medicalized and disabling gaze that unironically compares "schizophrenic" experience to "normal" experience, and uses this as a way to pathologize an entire era of art and literature. This book diagnoses and silences in the guise of exploratory comparison.
January 5, 2009
Into the phenomenology of mental illness.
July 17, 2012
It was a tad bloated, but otherwise very very good.
Read
April 9, 2024Tarpeettoman pitkä ja kytkökset modernismiin + postmodernismiin suht. ympäripyöreitä mutta ylipäänsä tosi kiinnostava avaus. Ydin lyhyesti: Se mitä on perinteisesti pidetty alkukantaisena/taantumuksellisena/virheenä skitsofreenisessä potilaassa pidetään nerokkuutena/tarkkanäköisyytenä modernistisessa teoksessa. Siis; Miksi skitsofreenistä ajattelua dissataan samoista asioista joista modernistista ajattelua kiitetään? Tätä puidaan paljon syventymättä kauheasti! Esimerkit oli tosi kiinnostavia silti!
Puolustuspuhe sen puolesta, etteivät skitsofreenikon kognitiiviset kyvyt ole alentuneet, kenties vain suuntautuneet toisin; teos kuitenkin kallistuu välillä romantisointiin / muistuttaa sairauden ikävästä puolesta sivumainintana
Puolustuspuhe sen puolesta, etteivät skitsofreenikon kognitiiviset kyvyt ole alentuneet, kenties vain suuntautuneet toisin; teos kuitenkin kallistuu välillä romantisointiin / muistuttaa sairauden ikävästä puolesta sivumainintana
April 16, 2025
This book illustrates a deep, multi-faceted issue: In our personal lives, how should we relate to value and truth, in light of our awareness of the contingency of value and truth upon cultural and history? For the sake of our social world, what views on the nature of value and truth should we promote? How have answers to these questions been manifest in artwork over the past two centuries, and how have these answers changed? Finally, what is the nature of mental illness, and in particular, schizophrenia?
Not all of these questions may appear to be related at the outset. Before getting into how they are, I’ll make a note on the writing style. Sass is extremely rambly. Most chapters are full of examples which don’t obviously add to the depth of his points; they are just top-down applications of his assumptions, not unlike how literary criticism these days often sadly proceeds by just top-down applying some literary theory upon an artwork, without letting the artwork speak for itself and shed insights which could be taken up and used to modify the background theory. In light of this writing style, I recommend reading just the introduction and conclusion chapters, and perhaps one random chapter in the body of this massive book as an example of how Sass’s thought proceed (or look at the index and choose a chapter that might include an analysis of one of your favorite books, if it’s in here). I think Sass would've made his points more forcefully with fewer and more in-depth examples.
That aside, let me get into Sass’s major claim. He thinks that the transition from romanticism to post-modernism in the history of artwork can be explained by certain principles. Romantic artwork often reflects an ideology in which it’s believed that there is an intrinsic purpose to our being human in this world, which will make it the case that our endeavors and creativity will lead us into increasing harmony and union with other people, our history, and the natural world. Post-modernism consists in a distancing from that ideology, which proceeds by critical reflection, or what Sass calls “hyper-reflexivity.”
One might notice how there’s some condition upon our subjectivity that biases how the world appears to us (e.g., even Kant’s picture of transcendental conditions of experience), and then one focuses in on that condition in such a way that its ontological status is elevated to its being “more real” than the world in which we were previously immersed, prior to this self-awareness or awareness of this condition of our subjectivity.
Then, one might reflect again upon how this condition one has identified appears to oneself, and identify yet again a further condition in the background, which was shaping how this seemed. And one becomes obsessed anew with that further condition and lets it appear “more real” than everything else. Instead of looking to the future under the light of the promise of being at home in the world, in post-modernism, we anticipate that the world will dissolve to further, smaller pieces, each not something that can be found in immersed experience, and each located not in the world but rather in our isolated subjectivity.
Sass identifies this “hyper-reflexitiy” with schizophrenia. A practicing psychiatrist, Sass shows how many of his patients report experiences which manifest this condition, as much as post-modern literature and artwork does. Sass, similarly, identifies normal mental health with romanticism; there, we feel at home with the values and truths we encounter in everyday life. We take them for granted and feel comfortable with that.
In conclusion, Sass emphasizes that he does not intend to demonize or praise one ethos over the other. He is weary of glorifying schizophrenia as an enlightened or more authentic state. I appreciate this. He paints a vidid picture for us, in front of which it becomes undeniable that certain extremes of criticality and distancing from tradition is delusional and harmful; but also insights and wonder can be glimpsed into only by taking steps on that dangerous path.
I was dissatisfied with certain aspects of this book. Sass isn’t very careful in his key claims, and he ends up, what I think, muddying the waters for seeing what independent axes are at play in the phenomena he studies—appreciating each axis individually is critical, I think, for our being able to see for ourselves how best to proceed in our alienated, contemporary world. For example, the concept “hyper-reflexivity” conflates the following: We can (1) more or less reflect upon a naive experience of some part of the world, identify some explanatory factor behind it, and view that part of the world in the future under the light of this factor, and (2) more or less be veridical in which explanatory factors we identify (which has baked into it how veridical or truthful we are to how a factor we might identify is systematically linked to others).
For example, Duchamp’s work might invite us to see objects stripped of their history and social meaning. This invites us to figure out what forces in social life have led an object (e.g., a bicycle wheel) to have the role it does, and what forces of our mind might’ve led to it being taken as so part-and-parcel of the natural order of things, which we might now see as a naive and duped state. It is anything but natural.
If we identify forces of habit and our tendency to only attend to what’s disrupting, uncertain, or threatening as the factors behind the latter issue, this is veridical. We’re at no risk at being alienated from the world in a pathological manner here. We might find these forces of the mind curious, but also see that it is a mind-independent fact that good technologies tend to be reliable and certainty-giving, and take this to have the practical implication that we can go on relying on bicycle wheels. To derive a pathological practical implication, like the world is intrinsically chaotic and meaningless, we’d have to posit, in our explanation of the naive view of things, something absurd, like that the bicycle wheel (and other ordinary objects) exists only insofar as we collectively perceive it, and without our perceiving the world, it’d disappear or dissipate. Some symptoms of schizophrenia Sass names are like this; these symptoms depend not only on being reflective but also on making erroneous inferences.
So “hyper-reflexivity” defined as something that leads to alienation and madness, as Sass defines it to be, is not a basic concept. Sass implies that it is, which can give the misleading appearance that reflection can be devilish and give the illusory puzzle of how to reconcile this dangerous status of reflection with the goods it obviously delivers. There is no puzzle. Truth is always something good to aim for. We can elucidate the matters discussed in this book by foregrounding the question Sass fails to raise: What are effective means for arriving at the truth, given our resources including at least our capacity to go about the world pre-reflectively and reflectively? What are the proper places of reflection and absorption in our aim at arriving at truth? Are there particular risks associated with each epistemic mode?
In the conclusion chapter, Sass raises the question: “Is the artist sick? Is the madman creative, authentic, or wise?” It appears, at the least, that artists and madmen can sometimes reflect more than the average person and arrive at explanations that are wild and unusual, relative to typical explanations invoked. Whether it’s wise or sick appears to depend upon whether their explanations are truthful. Framed this way, much of Sass’s suggestions are no longer so mystical-sounding or mystifying.
Of course, it’s not always easy to ascertain whether something is truthful, if the thing under consideration is evaluative in character. Values depend upon our interests, which can be beholden to only social and personal practice, rather than stable facts of the world. This is not a topic within Sass’s scope. The lack of distinguishing between truthfulness that depends upon value and that which doesn’t, I think, is a major failing of discussions surrounding post-modernism. If we want to make progress and figure out whether we ought to feel at home at the world, there are different senses of being at home, depending upon which variety of truthfulness is at play (e.g., simply aligning one’s belief to facts on the ground vs. adopting values and interests which serve oneself and one’s community).
Not all of these questions may appear to be related at the outset. Before getting into how they are, I’ll make a note on the writing style. Sass is extremely rambly. Most chapters are full of examples which don’t obviously add to the depth of his points; they are just top-down applications of his assumptions, not unlike how literary criticism these days often sadly proceeds by just top-down applying some literary theory upon an artwork, without letting the artwork speak for itself and shed insights which could be taken up and used to modify the background theory. In light of this writing style, I recommend reading just the introduction and conclusion chapters, and perhaps one random chapter in the body of this massive book as an example of how Sass’s thought proceed (or look at the index and choose a chapter that might include an analysis of one of your favorite books, if it’s in here). I think Sass would've made his points more forcefully with fewer and more in-depth examples.
That aside, let me get into Sass’s major claim. He thinks that the transition from romanticism to post-modernism in the history of artwork can be explained by certain principles. Romantic artwork often reflects an ideology in which it’s believed that there is an intrinsic purpose to our being human in this world, which will make it the case that our endeavors and creativity will lead us into increasing harmony and union with other people, our history, and the natural world. Post-modernism consists in a distancing from that ideology, which proceeds by critical reflection, or what Sass calls “hyper-reflexivity.”
One might notice how there’s some condition upon our subjectivity that biases how the world appears to us (e.g., even Kant’s picture of transcendental conditions of experience), and then one focuses in on that condition in such a way that its ontological status is elevated to its being “more real” than the world in which we were previously immersed, prior to this self-awareness or awareness of this condition of our subjectivity.
Then, one might reflect again upon how this condition one has identified appears to oneself, and identify yet again a further condition in the background, which was shaping how this seemed. And one becomes obsessed anew with that further condition and lets it appear “more real” than everything else. Instead of looking to the future under the light of the promise of being at home in the world, in post-modernism, we anticipate that the world will dissolve to further, smaller pieces, each not something that can be found in immersed experience, and each located not in the world but rather in our isolated subjectivity.
Sass identifies this “hyper-reflexitiy” with schizophrenia. A practicing psychiatrist, Sass shows how many of his patients report experiences which manifest this condition, as much as post-modern literature and artwork does. Sass, similarly, identifies normal mental health with romanticism; there, we feel at home with the values and truths we encounter in everyday life. We take them for granted and feel comfortable with that.
In conclusion, Sass emphasizes that he does not intend to demonize or praise one ethos over the other. He is weary of glorifying schizophrenia as an enlightened or more authentic state. I appreciate this. He paints a vidid picture for us, in front of which it becomes undeniable that certain extremes of criticality and distancing from tradition is delusional and harmful; but also insights and wonder can be glimpsed into only by taking steps on that dangerous path.
I was dissatisfied with certain aspects of this book. Sass isn’t very careful in his key claims, and he ends up, what I think, muddying the waters for seeing what independent axes are at play in the phenomena he studies—appreciating each axis individually is critical, I think, for our being able to see for ourselves how best to proceed in our alienated, contemporary world. For example, the concept “hyper-reflexivity” conflates the following: We can (1) more or less reflect upon a naive experience of some part of the world, identify some explanatory factor behind it, and view that part of the world in the future under the light of this factor, and (2) more or less be veridical in which explanatory factors we identify (which has baked into it how veridical or truthful we are to how a factor we might identify is systematically linked to others).
For example, Duchamp’s work might invite us to see objects stripped of their history and social meaning. This invites us to figure out what forces in social life have led an object (e.g., a bicycle wheel) to have the role it does, and what forces of our mind might’ve led to it being taken as so part-and-parcel of the natural order of things, which we might now see as a naive and duped state. It is anything but natural.
If we identify forces of habit and our tendency to only attend to what’s disrupting, uncertain, or threatening as the factors behind the latter issue, this is veridical. We’re at no risk at being alienated from the world in a pathological manner here. We might find these forces of the mind curious, but also see that it is a mind-independent fact that good technologies tend to be reliable and certainty-giving, and take this to have the practical implication that we can go on relying on bicycle wheels. To derive a pathological practical implication, like the world is intrinsically chaotic and meaningless, we’d have to posit, in our explanation of the naive view of things, something absurd, like that the bicycle wheel (and other ordinary objects) exists only insofar as we collectively perceive it, and without our perceiving the world, it’d disappear or dissipate. Some symptoms of schizophrenia Sass names are like this; these symptoms depend not only on being reflective but also on making erroneous inferences.
So “hyper-reflexivity” defined as something that leads to alienation and madness, as Sass defines it to be, is not a basic concept. Sass implies that it is, which can give the misleading appearance that reflection can be devilish and give the illusory puzzle of how to reconcile this dangerous status of reflection with the goods it obviously delivers. There is no puzzle. Truth is always something good to aim for. We can elucidate the matters discussed in this book by foregrounding the question Sass fails to raise: What are effective means for arriving at the truth, given our resources including at least our capacity to go about the world pre-reflectively and reflectively? What are the proper places of reflection and absorption in our aim at arriving at truth? Are there particular risks associated with each epistemic mode?
In the conclusion chapter, Sass raises the question: “Is the artist sick? Is the madman creative, authentic, or wise?” It appears, at the least, that artists and madmen can sometimes reflect more than the average person and arrive at explanations that are wild and unusual, relative to typical explanations invoked. Whether it’s wise or sick appears to depend upon whether their explanations are truthful. Framed this way, much of Sass’s suggestions are no longer so mystical-sounding or mystifying.
Of course, it’s not always easy to ascertain whether something is truthful, if the thing under consideration is evaluative in character. Values depend upon our interests, which can be beholden to only social and personal practice, rather than stable facts of the world. This is not a topic within Sass’s scope. The lack of distinguishing between truthfulness that depends upon value and that which doesn’t, I think, is a major failing of discussions surrounding post-modernism. If we want to make progress and figure out whether we ought to feel at home at the world, there are different senses of being at home, depending upon which variety of truthfulness is at play (e.g., simply aligning one’s belief to facts on the ground vs. adopting values and interests which serve oneself and one’s community).
November 21, 2024
Het doel van Louis Sass in dit boek is om een compleet overzicht te creëren van schizofrenie en vergelijkbare condities vanuit een fenomenologisch perspectief.
Vanaf de eerste pagina wordt het duidelijk dat Louis Sass en uitermate duidelijke schrijfstijl heeft. Voor iemand die onderzoek doet naar schizofrenie is dat misschien ook wel nodig.
Deze review dient als een samenvatting van het boek voor mijzelf. Ik update het terwijl ik aan het lezen ben.
Verklarende woordenlijst
Hyperreflexivity:
"The exaggerated tendency for focal or explicit attention to be directed toward what would normally remain tacit or implicit" (p. x)
Het gaat hierbij om een verhoogde staat van bewustzijn, van bijvoorbeeld lichamelijke sensaties, maar ook mentale processen. In het geval van mentale processen kan ook de term "hyperreflective" worden gebruikt in plaats van -reflexive.
Alienation:
"Qualities of disengagement, devitalization, decomposition, and distancing that typically accompany hyperreflexivity" (p. xi)
In plaats van een gevoel van mentale 'presence', is er sprake van een gevoel van 'distance'; een "lived or felt sense of separation, unreality, or deadening inherent in a stance or attitude of disengagement" (p. xi)
Ipseity-disturbance, or self-disorder:
Ipse betekent 'zelf' in het Latijn. Ipseity-disturbance heeft betrekking op het gevoel niet meer zichzelf te zijn, het verlies van een duidelijk gevoel van een zelf.
Dit ontstaat uit een combinatie van hyperreflexiviteit, een diminished self-presence en een disturbance of the field of awareness.
Diminished self-presence:
"Decline of the experienced sense of existing as a living subject of awareness or agent of action" (p. xii).
Mensen die dit ervaren voelen zich vaak alsof ze niet bestaan, niet aanwezig zijn of levend, of dat iemand anders hun ervaringen ervaart.
Disturbance of the field of awareness:
""Disturbed grip," "hold," or "grasp" on the world. This involves disturbances of temporal and spatial structuring of the world, and confusion of such experiential modalities as perceived versus remembered versus imagined" (p. xiii)
De persoon lijkt de wereld op een fundamenteel andere manier te ervaren.
Praecox feeling:
"The sense of encountering someone who seems "totally strange, puzzling, inconceivable, uncanny, and incapable of empathy, even to the point of being sinister and frightening."" (p. 2)
Het gevoel hebben dat iemand fundamenteel anders en onbegrijpbaar is.
Particular vs. totalistic ineffability:
Particular ineffability houdt in dat taal niet in staat is om concrete ervaringen of gevoelens te verwoorden.
Totalistic ineffability houdt in dat taal tekortschiet om abstracte ideeën te vangen. (p. 154)
Bracketing:
Fenomenologische vorm van epoché, opschorting van het oordeel. Einklammerung. Proberen om een ervaring volledig te begrijpen: refraining from judgement in order to fully understand an experience.
CENTRALE THESE
De (post)modernistische esthetiek als metafoor van 'waanzin,' vanwege de karakteristieke reflexiviteit en vervreemding die in deze esthetiek te vinden is.
Het is mogelijk dat schizofrenie een "superabundance of cognitive functioning, or of a radical qualitative difference in the nature of a patient's experience" is (p. 5)
Dit is onderdeel van de affliction-versus-act dichotomy.
DRIE TWINTIGSTE EEUWSE PERSPECTIEVEN OP SCHIZOFRENIE
1) Het psychiatrische perspectief - De ander
Schizofrenie wordt gezien als het gevolg van een defect in het brein.
'Normale' mentale ziekten worden gezien als extreme varianten van normale mentale staten, zoals angst (anxiety, fear), euforie, depressie, grandiositeit, etc. Schizofrenie zou zich echter ook aan deze mentale staten onttrekken en is een oninterpreteerbare mentale ziekte.
Als "psychiatry's quintessential other" (p. 5)
Dat schizofrenie gezien wordt als een organisch defect, een biologische factor, laat vermoeden dat schizofrenie uiteindelijk misschien uitgelegd en genezen kan worden.
2) Het psychoanalytische perspectief - Het kind
Deze blik op schizofrenie beschouwt het niet als een fundamenteel 'andere' vorm van bewustzijn, maar als een primitievere vorm van bewustzijn, namelijk een kinderlijke. De schizofreen wordt weer als mens gezien, maar met de mentale staat van een kind. Een schizofreen zou dus opgevoed kunnen worden.
3) Het avant-gardistische (of Romantische) perspectief - De wilde
Deze blik op schizofrenie beschouwt het als een mentale staat die dateert uit de periode voordat de mens 'geciviliseerd' was. Het is de oorspronkelijke vorm van de mens, puur en al zichzelf, vrij van de vervreemding van de maatschappij, een primordiale held van verlangen (Deleuze & Guattari), het toonbeeld van de Dionysische roes (Nietzsche).
In dit perspectief worden de positieve kenmerken van schizofrenie dan wel benadrukt, i.e. "excess of passion, vitality, and imagination" (p. 8), maar er wordt nog steeds uitgegaan van het ontbreken van zelfcontrole en bewustzijn van sociale normen en omgangsvormen.
Wat al deze drie perspectieven gemeen hebben is:
"Once human consciousness came to be defined by the self-awareness of its mental essence, as in Descartes famous arguments about the certainty of the cogito ("Cogito ergo sum"), it seemed especially evident that madness must be understood as a deviation from this condition of self-transparent mentation, that thought and madness must somehow be profoundly antithetical. At the deepest level, then, all three models - psychiatric, psychoanalytic, avant-gardist - share the assumption that schizophrenic pathology must involve a loss of what, in the West, has long been assumed to be the most essential characteristics of mind or subjectivity: the capacities for logic and abstract thinking, for self-reflection, and for the exercise of free will" (p. 9)
FENOMENOLOGIE
Heidegger, schizofrenie en het tekortschieten van de taal (pp. 154-156):
De taal van schizofrene mensen kan soms onbegrijpelijk lijken omdat ze uitspraken over 'ontologische ervaringen' doen in woorden die alleen 'het ontische' kunnen beschrijven. Dit is waarom Heidegger nieuwe terminologie creëerde, zoals 'the world worlds.' Omdat 'de wereld' boven het concrete staat, kunnen concrete woorden niet toereikend zijn om te beschrijven hoe de wereld bestaat.
"Heidegger argues that the Kantian and Husserlian tendency to conceive of the transcendental subject as if it could, at least in principle, exist prior to or in the absence of its world, stems from conceiving of subject and worldt on the analogy of two objects existing side by side within the world. Such a way of thinking obscures the essential inseperability of consciousness and its objects. It can lead to the error of conceiving the mind;s epistemological constituting of experiential objects on the model of some kind of actual generation or producition of one object by another. Heidegger considers this tendency to interpret, understand, or express ontological issues concerning the fundamental nature of existence or the world on the analygo of empirical facts within the world (the latter being what he calls merely "ontic" issues) to the deepest and most treacherous source of confusion in the entire history of Western thought.
...
The confusion of ontic with ontological is not, after all, some trivial error of translation that can easily be corrected. It stems from a deep truth about the human condition: the extreme difficulty not only of describing but also of conceptualizing, reflecting upon, or in any way fixing in one's mind aspects of experience that have so horizonal or all-encompassing a nature." (p. 242)
Door het denken te analyseren vervormen we ons idee van het denken (hypertrophy of alienating self-consciousness (p. 219)):
"The person who stares intently at his own stream of experience is unlikely to discover any concrete evidence of his own identity, innerness, or volition. Even his own bodily sensations will seem separate from him, since the very fact of scrutinizing will make them seem out there, apart." (pp. 184-185)
"the phenomenon is effaced in the very act of looking for it" (p. 181) - Vergelijk Maurice Blanchot's Gaze of Orpheus
"experience can also be transformed by how it is interpreted - so that certain conceptual models of human existence, like the Cartesian, may not just disguise but also distort their objects." (p. 243)
Heidegger - Age of the World View: "a period when the world is experienced as a view, as a kind of subjectivized picture." (p. 222), geïnitieerd door Descartes en Kant.
Walter Ong's "world presence" & Merleau-Ponty "perceptual faith"
Walter Ong: ""World presence" - an experiential orientation in which the existence and value of the external world are taken for granted, and the world is felt to encompass, rather than to be encompassed by, the human beings within it." (p. 230)
Merleay-Ponty: "The world we normally take for granted and credit as a kind of unquestionable foundational domain - the realm of "perceptual faith" (Mearleau-Ponty) - is the world of social engagement and practical activity, a shared realm (intersubjective and enactive) where objects are not felt to exist in some mind's eye but to occupy an independent domain open to the experience of anyone. "When I consider my perception itself, before any objectifying reflection, at no moment am I aware of being shut up within my own sensations"" (p. 240)
Schizofrene mensen lijken niet in staat te participeren met dit 'spel.'
Vanaf de eerste pagina wordt het duidelijk dat Louis Sass en uitermate duidelijke schrijfstijl heeft. Voor iemand die onderzoek doet naar schizofrenie is dat misschien ook wel nodig.
Deze review dient als een samenvatting van het boek voor mijzelf. Ik update het terwijl ik aan het lezen ben.
Verklarende woordenlijst
Hyperreflexivity:
"The exaggerated tendency for focal or explicit attention to be directed toward what would normally remain tacit or implicit" (p. x)
Het gaat hierbij om een verhoogde staat van bewustzijn, van bijvoorbeeld lichamelijke sensaties, maar ook mentale processen. In het geval van mentale processen kan ook de term "hyperreflective" worden gebruikt in plaats van -reflexive.
Alienation:
"Qualities of disengagement, devitalization, decomposition, and distancing that typically accompany hyperreflexivity" (p. xi)
In plaats van een gevoel van mentale 'presence', is er sprake van een gevoel van 'distance'; een "lived or felt sense of separation, unreality, or deadening inherent in a stance or attitude of disengagement" (p. xi)
Ipseity-disturbance, or self-disorder:
Ipse betekent 'zelf' in het Latijn. Ipseity-disturbance heeft betrekking op het gevoel niet meer zichzelf te zijn, het verlies van een duidelijk gevoel van een zelf.
Dit ontstaat uit een combinatie van hyperreflexiviteit, een diminished self-presence en een disturbance of the field of awareness.
Diminished self-presence:
"Decline of the experienced sense of existing as a living subject of awareness or agent of action" (p. xii).
Mensen die dit ervaren voelen zich vaak alsof ze niet bestaan, niet aanwezig zijn of levend, of dat iemand anders hun ervaringen ervaart.
Disturbance of the field of awareness:
""Disturbed grip," "hold," or "grasp" on the world. This involves disturbances of temporal and spatial structuring of the world, and confusion of such experiential modalities as perceived versus remembered versus imagined" (p. xiii)
De persoon lijkt de wereld op een fundamenteel andere manier te ervaren.
Praecox feeling:
"The sense of encountering someone who seems "totally strange, puzzling, inconceivable, uncanny, and incapable of empathy, even to the point of being sinister and frightening."" (p. 2)
Het gevoel hebben dat iemand fundamenteel anders en onbegrijpbaar is.
Particular vs. totalistic ineffability:
Particular ineffability houdt in dat taal niet in staat is om concrete ervaringen of gevoelens te verwoorden.
Totalistic ineffability houdt in dat taal tekortschiet om abstracte ideeën te vangen. (p. 154)
Bracketing:
Fenomenologische vorm van epoché, opschorting van het oordeel. Einklammerung. Proberen om een ervaring volledig te begrijpen: refraining from judgement in order to fully understand an experience.
CENTRALE THESE
De (post)modernistische esthetiek als metafoor van 'waanzin,' vanwege de karakteristieke reflexiviteit en vervreemding die in deze esthetiek te vinden is.
Het is mogelijk dat schizofrenie een "superabundance of cognitive functioning, or of a radical qualitative difference in the nature of a patient's experience" is (p. 5)
Dit is onderdeel van de affliction-versus-act dichotomy.
DRIE TWINTIGSTE EEUWSE PERSPECTIEVEN OP SCHIZOFRENIE
1) Het psychiatrische perspectief - De ander
Schizofrenie wordt gezien als het gevolg van een defect in het brein.
'Normale' mentale ziekten worden gezien als extreme varianten van normale mentale staten, zoals angst (anxiety, fear), euforie, depressie, grandiositeit, etc. Schizofrenie zou zich echter ook aan deze mentale staten onttrekken en is een oninterpreteerbare mentale ziekte.
Als "psychiatry's quintessential other" (p. 5)
Dat schizofrenie gezien wordt als een organisch defect, een biologische factor, laat vermoeden dat schizofrenie uiteindelijk misschien uitgelegd en genezen kan worden.
2) Het psychoanalytische perspectief - Het kind
Deze blik op schizofrenie beschouwt het niet als een fundamenteel 'andere' vorm van bewustzijn, maar als een primitievere vorm van bewustzijn, namelijk een kinderlijke. De schizofreen wordt weer als mens gezien, maar met de mentale staat van een kind. Een schizofreen zou dus opgevoed kunnen worden.
3) Het avant-gardistische (of Romantische) perspectief - De wilde
Deze blik op schizofrenie beschouwt het als een mentale staat die dateert uit de periode voordat de mens 'geciviliseerd' was. Het is de oorspronkelijke vorm van de mens, puur en al zichzelf, vrij van de vervreemding van de maatschappij, een primordiale held van verlangen (Deleuze & Guattari), het toonbeeld van de Dionysische roes (Nietzsche).
In dit perspectief worden de positieve kenmerken van schizofrenie dan wel benadrukt, i.e. "excess of passion, vitality, and imagination" (p. 8), maar er wordt nog steeds uitgegaan van het ontbreken van zelfcontrole en bewustzijn van sociale normen en omgangsvormen.
Wat al deze drie perspectieven gemeen hebben is:
"Once human consciousness came to be defined by the self-awareness of its mental essence, as in Descartes famous arguments about the certainty of the cogito ("Cogito ergo sum"), it seemed especially evident that madness must be understood as a deviation from this condition of self-transparent mentation, that thought and madness must somehow be profoundly antithetical. At the deepest level, then, all three models - psychiatric, psychoanalytic, avant-gardist - share the assumption that schizophrenic pathology must involve a loss of what, in the West, has long been assumed to be the most essential characteristics of mind or subjectivity: the capacities for logic and abstract thinking, for self-reflection, and for the exercise of free will" (p. 9)
FENOMENOLOGIE
Heidegger, schizofrenie en het tekortschieten van de taal (pp. 154-156):
De taal van schizofrene mensen kan soms onbegrijpelijk lijken omdat ze uitspraken over 'ontologische ervaringen' doen in woorden die alleen 'het ontische' kunnen beschrijven. Dit is waarom Heidegger nieuwe terminologie creëerde, zoals 'the world worlds.' Omdat 'de wereld' boven het concrete staat, kunnen concrete woorden niet toereikend zijn om te beschrijven hoe de wereld bestaat.
"Heidegger argues that the Kantian and Husserlian tendency to conceive of the transcendental subject as if it could, at least in principle, exist prior to or in the absence of its world, stems from conceiving of subject and worldt on the analogy of two objects existing side by side within the world. Such a way of thinking obscures the essential inseperability of consciousness and its objects. It can lead to the error of conceiving the mind;s epistemological constituting of experiential objects on the model of some kind of actual generation or producition of one object by another. Heidegger considers this tendency to interpret, understand, or express ontological issues concerning the fundamental nature of existence or the world on the analygo of empirical facts within the world (the latter being what he calls merely "ontic" issues) to the deepest and most treacherous source of confusion in the entire history of Western thought.
...
The confusion of ontic with ontological is not, after all, some trivial error of translation that can easily be corrected. It stems from a deep truth about the human condition: the extreme difficulty not only of describing but also of conceptualizing, reflecting upon, or in any way fixing in one's mind aspects of experience that have so horizonal or all-encompassing a nature." (p. 242)
Door het denken te analyseren vervormen we ons idee van het denken (hypertrophy of alienating self-consciousness (p. 219)):
"The person who stares intently at his own stream of experience is unlikely to discover any concrete evidence of his own identity, innerness, or volition. Even his own bodily sensations will seem separate from him, since the very fact of scrutinizing will make them seem out there, apart." (pp. 184-185)
"the phenomenon is effaced in the very act of looking for it" (p. 181) - Vergelijk Maurice Blanchot's Gaze of Orpheus
"experience can also be transformed by how it is interpreted - so that certain conceptual models of human existence, like the Cartesian, may not just disguise but also distort their objects." (p. 243)
Heidegger - Age of the World View: "a period when the world is experienced as a view, as a kind of subjectivized picture." (p. 222), geïnitieerd door Descartes en Kant.
Walter Ong's "world presence" & Merleau-Ponty "perceptual faith"
Walter Ong: ""World presence" - an experiential orientation in which the existence and value of the external world are taken for granted, and the world is felt to encompass, rather than to be encompassed by, the human beings within it." (p. 230)
Merleay-Ponty: "The world we normally take for granted and credit as a kind of unquestionable foundational domain - the realm of "perceptual faith" (Mearleau-Ponty) - is the world of social engagement and practical activity, a shared realm (intersubjective and enactive) where objects are not felt to exist in some mind's eye but to occupy an independent domain open to the experience of anyone. "When I consider my perception itself, before any objectifying reflection, at no moment am I aware of being shut up within my own sensations"" (p. 240)
Schizofrene mensen lijken niet in staat te participeren met dit 'spel.'
January 7, 2024
Interesting discussion of historical theories of madness and empirical and philosophical implications. There is a wealth of information and ideas here. This is the book's strength.
The weaknesses are where Sass brings in the concept of "Modernism" and links madness to Modern Art and postmodern philosophy. He manages to discuss "Modernism" without any social/historical context. Nothing about the impacts of the Industrial Revolution, the two World Wars. Nothing about the changes in the way insanity was now regarded as a mental illness and was subject to research and not just containment. Nothing about how art practices changed in the face of challenges from the new technology of photography.
So there is some interesting discussion here, especially for a reader new to the topic of madness from a psychological and psychoanalytic perspective. But look elsewhere for discussions of Modernism and Modernity and the social contexts of "madness"
The weaknesses are where Sass brings in the concept of "Modernism" and links madness to Modern Art and postmodern philosophy. He manages to discuss "Modernism" without any social/historical context. Nothing about the impacts of the Industrial Revolution, the two World Wars. Nothing about the changes in the way insanity was now regarded as a mental illness and was subject to research and not just containment. Nothing about how art practices changed in the face of challenges from the new technology of photography.
So there is some interesting discussion here, especially for a reader new to the topic of madness from a psychological and psychoanalytic perspective. But look elsewhere for discussions of Modernism and Modernity and the social contexts of "madness"
July 7, 2013
Great book, very dense, lots of footnotes (200 pages!), actually answered a lot of questions I have had for years. A shame he has not followed up on it since it was published (except for one book on Wittgenstein which I have to find.
Read
May 29, 2013Very interesting work !!
March 3, 2024
Thoroughly enjoyed this weighty, detailed, subversive enquiry into the (possible) relationship between schizophrenia, as a condition, and our current way of operating socioculturally, as an experience. It's fascinating and engrossing throughout, though I should just note that, if you read books in order to arrive at the end of them, you'll be frustrated - Sass doesn't ever take the shorter route when the scenic one will do.
There's much to take from Sass' discussion, but principally I took this: with the Cartesian turn in philosophy plus the subsequent two-century long murder of God, humans were encouraged to adopt a form of self-consciousness that left them at peril to a kind of hypertrophying of left hemispheric functionality/dispositionality, which results in what we are pleased to call a form of "madness".
In a key passage, Sass writes: "Thus it may be that structural or functional disorders of the brain make it difficult to screen out irrelevant stimuli, to direct focal attention toward novel stimuli, to process information in a rapid manner, readily to constitute perceptual Gestalts, or to change principles, mental sets, or frameworks of understanding in a fluent way – to mention but a few hypotheses of cognitive defect proposed in recent years. It seems plausible that such deficiencies could make a person turn inward toward thought, fantasy, or self analysis as a way of replacing a wealth and chaos of external stimuli with a more predictable, less anxiety provoking inner world."
In this respect, then, "modern" life, the intense, overwhelming and unrelenting features of which are such as to casually invoke effects that, in their guise of sensible defence mechanism, mimic those of these deficiencies, pushes us towards planting a foot in the schizoid camp, as a matter of common (sense) social practice. We're all more self-conscious, self-analytical, self-engrossed, and, with it, self-flagellating than is good for us individually or, once aggregated, collectively/socially. If this was the case back in 1992, when the book was first published, how much more so now with the ubiquity of Big Data, social media, the metrification of Self™, and, emerging from these abominations, the Self™-administered whipping hand of "being the best version of You©"?
Back to Sass: "According to these views, the conditions of modern life – its 'complex, conflicting and potentially disorientating cognitive requirements,' its harrowing assignment of individual responsibility – are able to precipitate the occurrence of ... psychosis". Or, these days, we're driving ourselves mad.
There's much to take from Sass' discussion, but principally I took this: with the Cartesian turn in philosophy plus the subsequent two-century long murder of God, humans were encouraged to adopt a form of self-consciousness that left them at peril to a kind of hypertrophying of left hemispheric functionality/dispositionality, which results in what we are pleased to call a form of "madness".
In a key passage, Sass writes: "Thus it may be that structural or functional disorders of the brain make it difficult to screen out irrelevant stimuli, to direct focal attention toward novel stimuli, to process information in a rapid manner, readily to constitute perceptual Gestalts, or to change principles, mental sets, or frameworks of understanding in a fluent way – to mention but a few hypotheses of cognitive defect proposed in recent years. It seems plausible that such deficiencies could make a person turn inward toward thought, fantasy, or self analysis as a way of replacing a wealth and chaos of external stimuli with a more predictable, less anxiety provoking inner world."
In this respect, then, "modern" life, the intense, overwhelming and unrelenting features of which are such as to casually invoke effects that, in their guise of sensible defence mechanism, mimic those of these deficiencies, pushes us towards planting a foot in the schizoid camp, as a matter of common (sense) social practice. We're all more self-conscious, self-analytical, self-engrossed, and, with it, self-flagellating than is good for us individually or, once aggregated, collectively/socially. If this was the case back in 1992, when the book was first published, how much more so now with the ubiquity of Big Data, social media, the metrification of Self™, and, emerging from these abominations, the Self™-administered whipping hand of "being the best version of You©"?
Back to Sass: "According to these views, the conditions of modern life – its 'complex, conflicting and potentially disorientating cognitive requirements,' its harrowing assignment of individual responsibility – are able to precipitate the occurrence of ... psychosis". Or, these days, we're driving ourselves mad.
February 26, 2025
I'm giving this 5 stars because of the extremely deep information on schizophrenia. But I have to say this book wasn't quite what I expected or wanted. I expected an emphasis on the cultural artifacts of modernism--literature, painting, film--and how they express, or are the products of, madness.
What we get here instead, mostly, is the presentation of the author's novel theory of what schizophrenia is. It turns out, that form of mental illness is extremely hard to define, especially compared to other, more "sane" types of madness. (Other types of madness are extreme versions of what anyone experiences: depression, anxiety: we've all felt mild versions of these.) Schizophrenia is just weird. it's crazy, and gaining a full understanding of what's going on with it is nearly impossible.
The author has a lot to say on the topic. Which is great. He does present an explanation of how and why modernism seems so schizo. But I wanted more examples from modernist culture.
What we get here instead, mostly, is the presentation of the author's novel theory of what schizophrenia is. It turns out, that form of mental illness is extremely hard to define, especially compared to other, more "sane" types of madness. (Other types of madness are extreme versions of what anyone experiences: depression, anxiety: we've all felt mild versions of these.) Schizophrenia is just weird. it's crazy, and gaining a full understanding of what's going on with it is nearly impossible.
The author has a lot to say on the topic. Which is great. He does present an explanation of how and why modernism seems so schizo. But I wanted more examples from modernist culture.
April 5, 2021
Just read this already.
March 11, 2022
Not a casual read…I’ll maybe pick it back up one day…very interesting topic but wish they could do another version written for the dirty masses like me
July 20, 2022
This is one of those books that fundamentally altered my thinking about the world. It's a disturbing but enlightening read.
Want to read
October 29, 2022Rachel Aviv recommendation on Ezra Klein
December 18, 2022
A surprising and fascinating book. It's influenced the writings of Iain McGilchrist - that's how I discovered this book.
April 3, 2024
A truly terrifying read, and the best book on schizophrenia, modernism & postmodernism in existence.
September 15, 2024
An exemplary account, not only of schizophrenia but also of the core features of the modern period
October 30, 2019
Amazing book. Similar I'd imagine to 'Anti-Oedipus' a bit, which I intend to read soon, though this book is very even handed and consistently belabors its scientific and psychological facts without ever going over to the point of saying what it is obviously saying. But definitely very interesting reading, completely engrossing.
November 8, 2007
Modern art through the fuzzy lens of schizophrenia and/or vice versa.
December 31, 2015
I love Sass's work. His book on Schreber and Wittgenstein is also recommended.
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