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Insane
Translated for the first time into English, cult German author Rainald Goetz’s debut novel Insane draws upon his clinical psychiatric experience to paint a portrait of the asylum as a total institution. We follow a young psychiatrist, Dr Raspe, who enters the profession dreaming of revolutionising its methods. Confronted by day-to-day practices and the reality of life in the psychiatric hospital, Raspe begins to fray at the edges. The very concept of madness is called into question in a brutal portrayal of patients and psychiatrists and the various treatments administered, from psychotherapy to electroshock therapy. What is madness? And who is truly mad? Diving headlong into a terrifying and oppressive world, Insane is a veritable journey into the madhouse by one of Germany’s most prominent and contentious authors.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
62 people are currently reading
1768 people want to read
About the author
Rainald Goetz
26 books76 followersRainald Maria Goetz is a German author, playwright and essayist.
After studying History and Medicine in Munich and earning a degree (PhD and M.D) in each, he soon concentrated on his writing.
With his first works, especially his novel "Irre" ("Insane"), published in 1983, he became a cult author for the intellectual left. To the delight of his fans and the dismay of some critics he mixed neo-expressionist writing with social realism in the vein of Alfred Döblin and the fast pace of British pop writers like Julie Burchill. During a televised literary tournament in 1983, Goetz slit his own forehead with a razor blade and let the blood run down his face until he finished reading.
Goetz made his name as an enthusiastic observer of media and pop culture. He embraced avant-garde philosophers like Foucault and Luhmann as well as the DJs of the techno movement, especially Sven Väth.
He kept a written a daily diary, or blog, on the web in 1998–99 called Abfall für alle ("trash for everybody"), which eventually was published as a book.
Goetz won numerous literary awards.
After studying History and Medicine in Munich and earning a degree (PhD and M.D) in each, he soon concentrated on his writing.
With his first works, especially his novel "Irre" ("Insane"), published in 1983, he became a cult author for the intellectual left. To the delight of his fans and the dismay of some critics he mixed neo-expressionist writing with social realism in the vein of Alfred Döblin and the fast pace of British pop writers like Julie Burchill. During a televised literary tournament in 1983, Goetz slit his own forehead with a razor blade and let the blood run down his face until he finished reading.
Goetz made his name as an enthusiastic observer of media and pop culture. He embraced avant-garde philosophers like Foucault and Luhmann as well as the DJs of the techno movement, especially Sven Väth.
He kept a written a daily diary, or blog, on the web in 1998–99 called Abfall für alle ("trash for everybody"), which eventually was published as a book.
Goetz won numerous literary awards.
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December 1, 2017
But as time goes on, inevitably they turn into one single patient, this entire group of individuals becomes one and the same patient, someone who loses it, gets medicated, clams down, then loses it again, and so it again, and so it goes with all of them, and the same thing happens with the relatives, eventually it’s just one relative telling you the same guy-wrenching family and partner stories. You’d like to try and take a proper interest in the individual, in every individual and his respective fate, but you just can’t, it suddenly happens that you’re just not interested anymore. A jumble of suffering, a morass.
Irre was the first novel, in 1983, of Rainald Goetz and has become something of a cult novel. But it appears in English in 2017, as Insane, courtesy of Adrian Nathan-West's excellent translation, and Fitzcarraldo Editions, an "independent publisher specialising in contemporary fiction and long-form essays. Founded in 2014, it focuses on ambitious, imaginative and innovative writing, both in translation and in the English language."
This was certainly a very distinctive read if not always entirely straightforward.
It is based around Dr Raspe, a young psychiatric and punk rocker, starting in his first practice at an institution (his name a likely nod to the Baader-Meinhof member Jan-Carl Raspe).
The novel is told in three sections of very different styles.
The first presents a succession of short passages in a variety of unattributed passages from a variety of voices, doctors and patients alike, describing their illnesses, insights and incidents. The opening quote very much describes the deliberate but disorientating effect – ‘a jumble of suffering, a morass.’
One lengthy speech has someone (Raspe?) address the other doctors:
I repeat: the truth of madness, banal as it is contested by all sides, may be reduced to the principle of the cumulative capacities of the abstract free will. Anyone who has discovered anything different about madness is cordially invited to come to the microphone and give us their account of it, and we will be glad to discuss it together. To give the lie to a widespread slander, the results divulged just now are not a dogma in the least, but instead the corollary of a way of thinking directed towards an awareness of the world, and even this is already a scandal in the university, where the distinguished professors have comfortably attained the most splendid stupidity with their philosophical jokes about the unknowability of the world. As we have arrived at our results not through free association or spiritistic séances, but instead through constant hewing to reality, and have made progress, today, for example, in relation to madness, we have no need of a plurality of opinion or that tolerance with which bourgeois society decks out its intellectual sloth and its errors. We are moving past these formalities, these security measures that serve as cover for every intellectual defect, which is then accorded the same right to exist as rationally grounded knowledge; we are moving past this banter to the results of our thinking and making these results public in numerous ways, and naturally this leads to the idiotic reproach of dogmatism, whose ideological character I want to point out briefly, in order perhaps to encourage those who are reluctant to enter the conversation. So where are all the psychologists, psychiatrists, antipsychiatrists, sociologists, and depth analysts? Come to the microphone and acquaint us with your arguments. And let me say once more, pointedly and slowly, so you may write it down while you gather your courage: In the exercise (established through false consciousness) of his thoroughly free will, the madman has chosen delusion, he opts for insanity, in order to reckon with the demands of capital and state, dispensing with the criteria the bourgeois world imposes to determine its members’ validity.
The second section, while still far from standard prose, is the most straightforward, and tells, in the third person, the story of Raspe’s time in the institute. This part worked very well as it helped make sense of the fragments in the first, as the different patients and doctors’ stories became clearer, and it also documents Raspe’s own difficulties with his work and his own mental torment.
The third section is told in the first person – albeit the identity of the narrator seems to switch between Raspe and the author Goetz himself so that who is speaking is unclear. The text is interspersed with pictures, cartoons etc. E.g. one part has the narrator and a friend singing along to The Stray Cats Strut:
KLAUS: And the next one. Uh uh uh uh. I get my dinner fro-om a garbage can, shloobydooby duby dee, woow.
BOTH: I don’t wonna chasing mice around, shloobey-doo-, I wish I could be as Kevin -
ME: Kevin who?
(the real lyrics being
I don't bother chasing mice around
I slink down the alleyway looking for a fight
Howling to the moonlight on a hot summer night
Singin' the blues while the lady cats cry
"Wild stray cat, you're a real gone guy"
I wish I could be as carefree and wild
But I got cat class and I got cat style)
And while it ostensibly tells of Raspe’s time after the institute, it increasingly addresses more the cultural establishment of Germany at the time.
The writing and setting of the novel in the early 1980s is crucial as the punk rock and new wave era gave way to the bland commercialism of 80s pop (not sure it there was a German equivalent of Stock Aitken Waterman, but if there was it is probably satirised here) and politically, the centre-left government fell, ushering in the era of Helmut Kohl.
Raspe links mental illness to the prevailing socio-economic culture:
Your job at the clinic is the epitome of reactionary politics in action. A society that consistently makes its members ill, mentally ill in particular, employs psychiatry to help itself survive. You are healing people whose sicknesses are a reaction to the twisted conditions they live in for the sole purpose of enabling them to function again amid the conditions that made them sick in the first place. As a psychiatrist, you eradicate symptoms of this society’s debasement without even considering the causes, let alone working towards eradicating them: to the contrary, you actually cover them up, so your labour conforms to the same principles as advertising, consumption, the enhanced gratification of urges, improved work conditions, in brief, the principles of societal self-preservation. You need to decide whether it’s really so great, letting the strategy of capitalist reason works through you as they do through so many others, and forget all your therapeutic nonsense, that’s a dead end. Look, you don’t even need to daydream with political romantics like Marcuse about the revolutionary potential of the marginalised and outsiders, historical materialism on its own is enough to show how all of that is politically reactionary praxis, reactionary, get it, reactionary.
The difficulty for the English reader in 2017 is the bewildering array of references to specific figures e.g. praise for the the films of Herbert Achternbusch and for Diedrich Diederichsen:
Professor Diedrich Diederichsen, Ordinary Emeritus. A clever professor, as you’d have to be, logically, to be an Emeritus at only 24 years old, but so he is, they shut his journal down on him because it was too clever. It was the only unboring German magazine. It was called Sounds and it was the salvation of Germany. Now we have the 8-year plague of Kohl and nothing but Titanic. That fortifying sentence might go something like: On it goes with new cool cult legends and other consolations so strength and dignity may flourish in order - that’s right!
At least these can be googled (https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/the-a...) but far more confusing is the score settling with various figures (authors, cultural commentators) often referred to by nicknames, initials, or physical descriptions. The style is of a punk version of Thomas Bernhard but whereas his The Woodcutters has similar indirect references to actual cultural figures, the novel still works even if the reader (as in my case) has no appreciation of this: whereas Goetz’s jibes make little sense out of context.
So overall a book I am glad to have read, but which was only good, now 30+ years later and read in another country, in places.
A helpful interview with the author:
http://conversationalreading.com/six-...
Two excerpts to give you a flavour
https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/book...
http://partisanhotel.co.uk/Insane
Irre was the first novel, in 1983, of Rainald Goetz and has become something of a cult novel. But it appears in English in 2017, as Insane, courtesy of Adrian Nathan-West's excellent translation, and Fitzcarraldo Editions, an "independent publisher specialising in contemporary fiction and long-form essays. Founded in 2014, it focuses on ambitious, imaginative and innovative writing, both in translation and in the English language."
This was certainly a very distinctive read if not always entirely straightforward.
It is based around Dr Raspe, a young psychiatric and punk rocker, starting in his first practice at an institution (his name a likely nod to the Baader-Meinhof member Jan-Carl Raspe).
The novel is told in three sections of very different styles.
The first presents a succession of short passages in a variety of unattributed passages from a variety of voices, doctors and patients alike, describing their illnesses, insights and incidents. The opening quote very much describes the deliberate but disorientating effect – ‘a jumble of suffering, a morass.’
One lengthy speech has someone (Raspe?) address the other doctors:
I repeat: the truth of madness, banal as it is contested by all sides, may be reduced to the principle of the cumulative capacities of the abstract free will. Anyone who has discovered anything different about madness is cordially invited to come to the microphone and give us their account of it, and we will be glad to discuss it together. To give the lie to a widespread slander, the results divulged just now are not a dogma in the least, but instead the corollary of a way of thinking directed towards an awareness of the world, and even this is already a scandal in the university, where the distinguished professors have comfortably attained the most splendid stupidity with their philosophical jokes about the unknowability of the world. As we have arrived at our results not through free association or spiritistic séances, but instead through constant hewing to reality, and have made progress, today, for example, in relation to madness, we have no need of a plurality of opinion or that tolerance with which bourgeois society decks out its intellectual sloth and its errors. We are moving past these formalities, these security measures that serve as cover for every intellectual defect, which is then accorded the same right to exist as rationally grounded knowledge; we are moving past this banter to the results of our thinking and making these results public in numerous ways, and naturally this leads to the idiotic reproach of dogmatism, whose ideological character I want to point out briefly, in order perhaps to encourage those who are reluctant to enter the conversation. So where are all the psychologists, psychiatrists, antipsychiatrists, sociologists, and depth analysts? Come to the microphone and acquaint us with your arguments. And let me say once more, pointedly and slowly, so you may write it down while you gather your courage: In the exercise (established through false consciousness) of his thoroughly free will, the madman has chosen delusion, he opts for insanity, in order to reckon with the demands of capital and state, dispensing with the criteria the bourgeois world imposes to determine its members’ validity.
The second section, while still far from standard prose, is the most straightforward, and tells, in the third person, the story of Raspe’s time in the institute. This part worked very well as it helped make sense of the fragments in the first, as the different patients and doctors’ stories became clearer, and it also documents Raspe’s own difficulties with his work and his own mental torment.
The third section is told in the first person – albeit the identity of the narrator seems to switch between Raspe and the author Goetz himself so that who is speaking is unclear. The text is interspersed with pictures, cartoons etc. E.g. one part has the narrator and a friend singing along to The Stray Cats Strut:
KLAUS: And the next one. Uh uh uh uh. I get my dinner fro-om a garbage can, shloobydooby duby dee, woow.
BOTH: I don’t wonna chasing mice around, shloobey-doo-, I wish I could be as Kevin -
ME: Kevin who?
(the real lyrics being
I don't bother chasing mice around
I slink down the alleyway looking for a fight
Howling to the moonlight on a hot summer night
Singin' the blues while the lady cats cry
"Wild stray cat, you're a real gone guy"
I wish I could be as carefree and wild
But I got cat class and I got cat style)
And while it ostensibly tells of Raspe’s time after the institute, it increasingly addresses more the cultural establishment of Germany at the time.
The writing and setting of the novel in the early 1980s is crucial as the punk rock and new wave era gave way to the bland commercialism of 80s pop (not sure it there was a German equivalent of Stock Aitken Waterman, but if there was it is probably satirised here) and politically, the centre-left government fell, ushering in the era of Helmut Kohl.
Raspe links mental illness to the prevailing socio-economic culture:
Your job at the clinic is the epitome of reactionary politics in action. A society that consistently makes its members ill, mentally ill in particular, employs psychiatry to help itself survive. You are healing people whose sicknesses are a reaction to the twisted conditions they live in for the sole purpose of enabling them to function again amid the conditions that made them sick in the first place. As a psychiatrist, you eradicate symptoms of this society’s debasement without even considering the causes, let alone working towards eradicating them: to the contrary, you actually cover them up, so your labour conforms to the same principles as advertising, consumption, the enhanced gratification of urges, improved work conditions, in brief, the principles of societal self-preservation. You need to decide whether it’s really so great, letting the strategy of capitalist reason works through you as they do through so many others, and forget all your therapeutic nonsense, that’s a dead end. Look, you don’t even need to daydream with political romantics like Marcuse about the revolutionary potential of the marginalised and outsiders, historical materialism on its own is enough to show how all of that is politically reactionary praxis, reactionary, get it, reactionary.
The difficulty for the English reader in 2017 is the bewildering array of references to specific figures e.g. praise for the the films of Herbert Achternbusch and for Diedrich Diederichsen:
Professor Diedrich Diederichsen, Ordinary Emeritus. A clever professor, as you’d have to be, logically, to be an Emeritus at only 24 years old, but so he is, they shut his journal down on him because it was too clever. It was the only unboring German magazine. It was called Sounds and it was the salvation of Germany. Now we have the 8-year plague of Kohl and nothing but Titanic. That fortifying sentence might go something like: On it goes with new cool cult legends and other consolations so strength and dignity may flourish in order - that’s right!
At least these can be googled (https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/the-a...) but far more confusing is the score settling with various figures (authors, cultural commentators) often referred to by nicknames, initials, or physical descriptions. The style is of a punk version of Thomas Bernhard but whereas his The Woodcutters has similar indirect references to actual cultural figures, the novel still works even if the reader (as in my case) has no appreciation of this: whereas Goetz’s jibes make little sense out of context.
So overall a book I am glad to have read, but which was only good, now 30+ years later and read in another country, in places.
A helpful interview with the author:
http://conversationalreading.com/six-...
Two excerpts to give you a flavour
https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/book...
http://partisanhotel.co.uk/Insane
January 2, 2024
An incoherent mess with some mildly interesting ideas about psychiatry wrapped up within a great deal of middle-class performativity.
Part one (Away) is a jumble of nonsense vignettes narrated in first and third person so that you don't really understand what the hell is going on. I assumed it was a collection of individuals at the asylum (mostly patients) but it's hard to tell and you never get anything close to resembling a narrative. It was at this point that I strongly considered quitting the book.
Then part two (Inside) which, thankfully, endeavours to give the reader an actual narrative that can be understood. We follow the new (and seemingly idealistic) psychiatric doctor, Raspe, as he is shown the ropes by other more experienced doctors (notably Bögl) and introduced to patients (potentially the patients who were rambling incoherently in part one but I'm not entirely sure). Here the book is vastly more readable and finally starts exploring an interesting subject matter. Raspe is somewhat brought down to earth with a bang by what he encounters. He begins to see how ineffective and arbitrary most treatments are, how medication is predominantly created to make patients docile rather than better, and how psychiatry is a profoundly flawed profession dealing with as much scientific certainty as medium's who communicate with the dead. They're essentially making it up as they go and hoping for the best. As someone who used to work in mental health, I immediately related to the whole concept of one step forward, two steps back. Raspe, of course, notes the fact that doctors and patients are often in their roles by sheer convenience and luck. And while this section of the book is undeniably the only part worth reading, it's still not exactly what I would call entertaining or good.
Then comes part three (Order) which is presumably an ironic title given that this contains the most incoherent gibberish of the entire book. Here we get more random garbage and more disassociated narration from both Raspe and Goetz himself. I'm sure it's all very artistic and brilliant but it's also extremely banal and tedious. Throughout the book (published in 1983), there is an ongoing sense coming from Goetz that punk was highly influential on him. This book is clearly his contribution to that rather forgettable scene. But given that punk was all about working-class kids picking up guitars and doing it for themselves (later to be bastardised by middle-class kids onto new wave and new romantics), there is something phoney about the whole thing. Goetz is a very well-educated privileged man masquerading as an outsider. He is a poser. A fake. And his book is frankly awful.
So that's it, that's the book. If you're a painfully tedious hipster who's never had a momentary struggle in his entire life but thinks being performatively left-wing qualifies you as an outsider, then you should read this. You'll love it... by which I mean you'll pretend to love it.
Part one (Away) is a jumble of nonsense vignettes narrated in first and third person so that you don't really understand what the hell is going on. I assumed it was a collection of individuals at the asylum (mostly patients) but it's hard to tell and you never get anything close to resembling a narrative. It was at this point that I strongly considered quitting the book.
Then part two (Inside) which, thankfully, endeavours to give the reader an actual narrative that can be understood. We follow the new (and seemingly idealistic) psychiatric doctor, Raspe, as he is shown the ropes by other more experienced doctors (notably Bögl) and introduced to patients (potentially the patients who were rambling incoherently in part one but I'm not entirely sure). Here the book is vastly more readable and finally starts exploring an interesting subject matter. Raspe is somewhat brought down to earth with a bang by what he encounters. He begins to see how ineffective and arbitrary most treatments are, how medication is predominantly created to make patients docile rather than better, and how psychiatry is a profoundly flawed profession dealing with as much scientific certainty as medium's who communicate with the dead. They're essentially making it up as they go and hoping for the best. As someone who used to work in mental health, I immediately related to the whole concept of one step forward, two steps back. Raspe, of course, notes the fact that doctors and patients are often in their roles by sheer convenience and luck. And while this section of the book is undeniably the only part worth reading, it's still not exactly what I would call entertaining or good.
Then comes part three (Order) which is presumably an ironic title given that this contains the most incoherent gibberish of the entire book. Here we get more random garbage and more disassociated narration from both Raspe and Goetz himself. I'm sure it's all very artistic and brilliant but it's also extremely banal and tedious. Throughout the book (published in 1983), there is an ongoing sense coming from Goetz that punk was highly influential on him. This book is clearly his contribution to that rather forgettable scene. But given that punk was all about working-class kids picking up guitars and doing it for themselves (later to be bastardised by middle-class kids onto new wave and new romantics), there is something phoney about the whole thing. Goetz is a very well-educated privileged man masquerading as an outsider. He is a poser. A fake. And his book is frankly awful.
So that's it, that's the book. If you're a painfully tedious hipster who's never had a momentary struggle in his entire life but thinks being performatively left-wing qualifies you as an outsider, then you should read this. You'll love it... by which I mean you'll pretend to love it.
November 16, 2023
Ein gezähmter Expressionismus ohne Mythos, oder: Einem Monolog geht der Atem aus.
Rainald Goetz, Georg-Büchner-Preisträger von 2015, schimpft in seinem Debütroman „Irre“ aus dem Jahr 1983 wie ein Rohrspatz gegen Herbert Achternbusch und Magnus Enzensberger, gegen Diedrich Diederichsen und den Springer Verlag, gegen die Regierungsparteien, Willy Brandt und viele mehr. Einige Monate zuvor ritzte sich besagter Goetz beim Ingeborg-Bachmann-Wettbewerb die Stirn mit Rasierklingen an und blutete sein Manuskript und das Lesepult voll. Sein Roman gleicht auch eher einer Intervention und hat mit einem Roman nur noch sehr äußerlich etwas zu tun:
Raspe schlug seinen Kopf an der Schreibtischkante auf. Da fiel ein Gehirn heraus. Es tropfte auf die Seiten eines Buchs. Oder war das Wasser? In den Augen tanzten nur die Wörter, verloren, Buchstaben ohne Zusammenhang und Sinn. Ich muß das Lesen wieder lernen. Raspe verstand nur noch Symptome, zerfallen waren die Geschichten. Alle fiktiven Bücherleben waren tot wie nie, doch auch die eigene Geschichte war so zerhackt. Jetzt jetzt: Riechen Sie das? Ein Lärm, ein Chaos hinter meinen Augen, wie das stinkt, Gehirngeruch.
Offiziell, von Goetz selbst angegebenes Vorbild von Raspe, der Hauptfigur in „Irre“, ist Werff Rönne aus Gottfried Benns Novellensammlung "Gehirne: Novellen (1916)“. Beide üben den Arztberuf aus. Beide geraten in eine Sinnkrise. Beide entfliehen ihrem Job: Raspe, bei Goetz, indem er säuft und säuft und säuft, sich prügelt, auf Punkkonzerte geht und Drogen nimmt. Er will mit der verlogenen Gesellschaft so wenig wie möglich zu tun haben und kündigt schließlich. Danach gurkt er herum, schmuggelt Drogen und beginnt für Zeitungen zu schreiben. Es hilft aber alles nichts:
Und es waren doch die KlinikBilder, die ich auch nach dem Verlassen der Klinik aus dem Kopf nicht heraus gekriegt habe, durch kein Vergessen, kein Bier, durch kein nichts, Bilder, die mich in einen wochenlangen narkolepsiegleichen Schlaf in das Bett hinein gefällt haben. Und es waren diese Bilder, die mich nach Monaten, keineswegs nur belanglosen PipifaxMonaten, dann doch ganz und gar eingefordert haben, die mir meine Pflicht gegeben und die größte Anstrengung auferlegt haben, Bilder, die ich habe weg schreiben wollen, die ich aber mit keinem Wort und mit keiner Beschreibung weg kriegen habe können, Bilder, die mich immer noch verfolgen und in die panischste Panik hinein jagen.
Voller Inbrunst, Intensität, voll reißerischer, sich überbietender, überbordender Sprache rast der Ich-Erzähler durch die 1983er-Gegenwart und lässt kein gutes Haar an nichts. Er will alles mit sich in den Abgrund reißen und holt zum literarischen Rundumschlag aus. Nur so richtig weh tut es leider nicht. Die Hauptfigur wirkt zu wenig kohärent, selbst zu irre, zu spontan, unberechenbar und neben der Spur, als dass die Tiraden treffen könnten. Die Glaubwürdigkeit stellt sich nicht ein. Es fehlt die Selbstbeschränkung, die Rahmung, die Positionierung seines Angriffes. Er bleibt zu referenziell und hiermit zu abhängig von seinem Kritisierten, ohne den Schritt zum selbstreferenziellen Abgrund eines Thomas Bernhard in „Auslöschung: Ein Zerfall“ zu wagen.
So bleibt Rainald Goetz in Irre zwischen dem Benn‘schen Mythos und der Bernhard‘schen Selbstzerfleischung unentschlossen stehen und wirkt eigenartigerweise am Ende nur noch zahm.
Rainald Goetz, Georg-Büchner-Preisträger von 2015, schimpft in seinem Debütroman „Irre“ aus dem Jahr 1983 wie ein Rohrspatz gegen Herbert Achternbusch und Magnus Enzensberger, gegen Diedrich Diederichsen und den Springer Verlag, gegen die Regierungsparteien, Willy Brandt und viele mehr. Einige Monate zuvor ritzte sich besagter Goetz beim Ingeborg-Bachmann-Wettbewerb die Stirn mit Rasierklingen an und blutete sein Manuskript und das Lesepult voll. Sein Roman gleicht auch eher einer Intervention und hat mit einem Roman nur noch sehr äußerlich etwas zu tun:
Raspe schlug seinen Kopf an der Schreibtischkante auf. Da fiel ein Gehirn heraus. Es tropfte auf die Seiten eines Buchs. Oder war das Wasser? In den Augen tanzten nur die Wörter, verloren, Buchstaben ohne Zusammenhang und Sinn. Ich muß das Lesen wieder lernen. Raspe verstand nur noch Symptome, zerfallen waren die Geschichten. Alle fiktiven Bücherleben waren tot wie nie, doch auch die eigene Geschichte war so zerhackt. Jetzt jetzt: Riechen Sie das? Ein Lärm, ein Chaos hinter meinen Augen, wie das stinkt, Gehirngeruch.
Offiziell, von Goetz selbst angegebenes Vorbild von Raspe, der Hauptfigur in „Irre“, ist Werff Rönne aus Gottfried Benns Novellensammlung "Gehirne: Novellen (1916)“. Beide üben den Arztberuf aus. Beide geraten in eine Sinnkrise. Beide entfliehen ihrem Job: Raspe, bei Goetz, indem er säuft und säuft und säuft, sich prügelt, auf Punkkonzerte geht und Drogen nimmt. Er will mit der verlogenen Gesellschaft so wenig wie möglich zu tun haben und kündigt schließlich. Danach gurkt er herum, schmuggelt Drogen und beginnt für Zeitungen zu schreiben. Es hilft aber alles nichts:
Und es waren doch die KlinikBilder, die ich auch nach dem Verlassen der Klinik aus dem Kopf nicht heraus gekriegt habe, durch kein Vergessen, kein Bier, durch kein nichts, Bilder, die mich in einen wochenlangen narkolepsiegleichen Schlaf in das Bett hinein gefällt haben. Und es waren diese Bilder, die mich nach Monaten, keineswegs nur belanglosen PipifaxMonaten, dann doch ganz und gar eingefordert haben, die mir meine Pflicht gegeben und die größte Anstrengung auferlegt haben, Bilder, die ich habe weg schreiben wollen, die ich aber mit keinem Wort und mit keiner Beschreibung weg kriegen habe können, Bilder, die mich immer noch verfolgen und in die panischste Panik hinein jagen.
Voller Inbrunst, Intensität, voll reißerischer, sich überbietender, überbordender Sprache rast der Ich-Erzähler durch die 1983er-Gegenwart und lässt kein gutes Haar an nichts. Er will alles mit sich in den Abgrund reißen und holt zum literarischen Rundumschlag aus. Nur so richtig weh tut es leider nicht. Die Hauptfigur wirkt zu wenig kohärent, selbst zu irre, zu spontan, unberechenbar und neben der Spur, als dass die Tiraden treffen könnten. Die Glaubwürdigkeit stellt sich nicht ein. Es fehlt die Selbstbeschränkung, die Rahmung, die Positionierung seines Angriffes. Er bleibt zu referenziell und hiermit zu abhängig von seinem Kritisierten, ohne den Schritt zum selbstreferenziellen Abgrund eines Thomas Bernhard in „Auslöschung: Ein Zerfall“ zu wagen.
So bleibt Rainald Goetz in Irre zwischen dem Benn‘schen Mythos und der Bernhard‘schen Selbstzerfleischung unentschlossen stehen und wirkt eigenartigerweise am Ende nur noch zahm.
May 21, 2018
'Insane' is a book for all those with an affiliation to, knowledge of or interest in psychiatry. Or, of course, for everyone who like their books breaking with conventions. Goetz drags you down, step by step, into the crags of psychiatry (of the early 80s) and beyond; steaming with punk. This is not the umpteenth pamphlet against psychiatry as such. 'Insane' is a triptych of madness. The main character is Raspe, a reference to Jan-Carl Raspe (one of the members of the 'Rote Armee Fraktion'). The RAF once terrorised society, in 'Insane' Raspe feels terrorised by society.
In Part One, 'Away', Goetz drops you right away into a impressionistic collage of all the characters in the book. Here, no distinction in importance is made between patients, doctors and friends of Raspe. One tumbles from one character to the other, only seeing glimpses; which makes part one a joy to read.
Part Two, 'Inside', is the most classic, with a conventional narrative arc. Here, Goetz sketches the life and the practices inside a psychiatric hospital, and more in detail of a closed ward. Raspe is a young, ideological and a bit naive psychiatrist, hoping to leave his therapeutic mark. It almost reads like a historical document, it feels like it's written to the life. Raspe is shocked how easily he's involved in everyday work of the doctors, losing touch with his ideals; medical treatment, sometimes electroshock therapy, the total lack of psychotherapy, the total lack of empathy and respect for the patients. The nurses are the ones who try to introduce more humane ways to deal with the patients. Raspe is naive in thinking that it's possible to heal patients who are staying in a closed ward. He tries and at first sight it seems like he's succeeding, but soon enough the patients are returning to the closed ward. Raspe forgets that stability and relief of the mental pain for the patients is the foremost treatment. More and more the patients blend in Raspe's mind as a big blur of misery. After one year, sick of the mentality of the medics and the hopelessness of the patient's future, Raspe has a breakdown.
Part Three, 'Order', is the most challenging section for the reader. It lacks order in all possible ways. Raspe slips away into a condition of depressive ('so much lying and sleeping, lying and sleeping and nothing but') and manic (the raging against the machine, and 'because in life, against life, the only salvation is through work') episodes, fused with paranoid (the police station opposite his home) and psychotic (he feels responsible for the sinking of a ship the other side of the world, and he thinks he is the one to save Lebanon) tendencies. Raspe dives into CULTURE, the Munich 'underground' scene, writing a fanzine, working as a journalist, trying to write a novel and a film. It's not always clear when Goetz or Raspe are talking. Goetz makes no concessions to the reader. Part Three is written out of the logic of a mentally ill, almost impossible to grasp for the outsider. The second half of Part Three is one big raging against the insanity of the cultural scene. It's a pity the translator didn't include notes to clarify the German cultural scene at the beginning of the 80s. Google wasn't enough to clarify all the references by myself. But I think I was able to understand the essence of what Goetz wanted to say.
All in all I'm very happy to have read this book, and thanks to Fitzcarraldo for publishing this cult book in an English translation. I would gladly have given this book 5 stars, if it was not for the references I missed.
In Part One, 'Away', Goetz drops you right away into a impressionistic collage of all the characters in the book. Here, no distinction in importance is made between patients, doctors and friends of Raspe. One tumbles from one character to the other, only seeing glimpses; which makes part one a joy to read.
Part Two, 'Inside', is the most classic, with a conventional narrative arc. Here, Goetz sketches the life and the practices inside a psychiatric hospital, and more in detail of a closed ward. Raspe is a young, ideological and a bit naive psychiatrist, hoping to leave his therapeutic mark. It almost reads like a historical document, it feels like it's written to the life. Raspe is shocked how easily he's involved in everyday work of the doctors, losing touch with his ideals; medical treatment, sometimes electroshock therapy, the total lack of psychotherapy, the total lack of empathy and respect for the patients. The nurses are the ones who try to introduce more humane ways to deal with the patients. Raspe is naive in thinking that it's possible to heal patients who are staying in a closed ward. He tries and at first sight it seems like he's succeeding, but soon enough the patients are returning to the closed ward. Raspe forgets that stability and relief of the mental pain for the patients is the foremost treatment. More and more the patients blend in Raspe's mind as a big blur of misery. After one year, sick of the mentality of the medics and the hopelessness of the patient's future, Raspe has a breakdown.
Part Three, 'Order', is the most challenging section for the reader. It lacks order in all possible ways. Raspe slips away into a condition of depressive ('so much lying and sleeping, lying and sleeping and nothing but') and manic (the raging against the machine, and 'because in life, against life, the only salvation is through work') episodes, fused with paranoid (the police station opposite his home) and psychotic (he feels responsible for the sinking of a ship the other side of the world, and he thinks he is the one to save Lebanon) tendencies. Raspe dives into CULTURE, the Munich 'underground' scene, writing a fanzine, working as a journalist, trying to write a novel and a film. It's not always clear when Goetz or Raspe are talking. Goetz makes no concessions to the reader. Part Three is written out of the logic of a mentally ill, almost impossible to grasp for the outsider. The second half of Part Three is one big raging against the insanity of the cultural scene. It's a pity the translator didn't include notes to clarify the German cultural scene at the beginning of the 80s. Google wasn't enough to clarify all the references by myself. But I think I was able to understand the essence of what Goetz wanted to say.
All in all I'm very happy to have read this book, and thanks to Fitzcarraldo for publishing this cult book in an English translation. I would gladly have given this book 5 stars, if it was not for the references I missed.
August 6, 2018
Fenomenaal.
May 9, 2025
Deel 1 zorgt voor onrust, verwarde me en deed in tegenstelling tot het klassieke inleidende hoofdstuk wél alles dat een inleiding moet doen: het bos platwalsen en de bomen ondersteboven herplanten ter voorbereiding op een verhaal. Zodoende kan men in deel 2 het weelderig bladloof overstijgen en de daaruit groeiende stammen individueren. In deel 3 wordt de in het vorige georganiseerde waarheid verhakseld en als brandstof gebruikt voor een kamikazevlucht met als doelwit al het gevestigde, al het georganiseerde, al het culturele. De postanarchopunk aan het stuur laat nu zijn ware gelaat zien.
De zieke ontheven van zijn ziekte en de genezer ontdaan van zijn gezondheidssuprematie. De verteller ontlast van een eenduidige, beknottende identiteit en persoonlijkheid. De roman gestript van al haar beredeneerde narratieve structuren, van opgelegde verhaalbogen - en niet op zo'n experimentalistische wijze van 'ik ga hier eens breken met de normen en voor de vorm eens alles anders doen.' In die wanorde komt de waarheid aan het licht, uit de waanzin wringt zich compulsief de mens naar buiten. Al lachend spreekt de zot de waarheid.
De zieke ontheven van zijn ziekte en de genezer ontdaan van zijn gezondheidssuprematie. De verteller ontlast van een eenduidige, beknottende identiteit en persoonlijkheid. De roman gestript van al haar beredeneerde narratieve structuren, van opgelegde verhaalbogen - en niet op zo'n experimentalistische wijze van 'ik ga hier eens breken met de normen en voor de vorm eens alles anders doen.' In die wanorde komt de waarheid aan het licht, uit de waanzin wringt zich compulsief de mens naar buiten. Al lachend spreekt de zot de waarheid.
January 26, 2024
gestoord saai
September 29, 2024
Abandoned halfway. Barely coherent. A few slightly interesting vignettes if that’s what you’d even call them. Meant to be experimental but I’m convinced anyone who says they enjoyed or didn’t skim through most of this is lying. Insane waste of time
October 6, 2025
Ich bin mir sicher dass es es für viele ein sehr gutes Buch ist. Ich bin keine davon.
1.75
1.75
July 11, 2024
eindelijk, steengoed
January 29, 2023
Rainald Goetz began his career as a doctor of psychiatry then gave it up to become a writer. A rather insane choice. Insane (pub. 1983) is one of his early works, and is quasi-autobiographical in nature. The main character is a newly minted psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Raspe. Like Goetz, Raspe works in a German asylum, and like Goetz Raspe becomes disillusioned by the work and eventually leaves the profession. A character named Dr. Rainald Goetz has a cameo (late) in the novel; he is addressed as "Psychiatry" by Raspe.
Insane has been touted as pop culture "cult classic" of German literature. The book is structured into three parts.
The first part, Away, consists of an impressionistic pastiche of patient stories; we read paragraph after paragraph of idiosyncratic psychological ailments and non-neurotypical thought patterns. It puts the reader in the position of a new doctor making the "rounds," being inundated and overwhelmed by patient histories, hardly able to differentiate one patient front the next as he acclimatizes to his new environment.
We are only properly introduced to the main character, Dr. Raspe in the second part, titled Inside. We follow Raspe as he learns his way around the clinic, meets his colleagues, avoids his patients, and generally comes to disdain the psychiatric field in toto, including all of its "innovative" technologies (e.g. pharmacology and esp. electric shock therapy). At night Raspe frequents punk clubs, drinks heavily, gets in bar fights, argues with socialists, and cuts himself. (Infamously, Goetz cut open his own head during a reading of the novel at a literary festival in 1983, bleeding all over his manuscript.)
Things go off the rails in the third part, ironically called Order. Raspe has quit his job and is pursuing the career of a zine writer, chasing payments from editors, being a punk scene-ster, manically self-destructing, and just generally being "unwell." The writing at this point in the novel is just painfully bad, consisting largely of half-assed critiques of other German writers/pop-culture figures, and (non?)self-conscious justifications for the authentic "rawness" of his own work. It's hardly edited. He was probably drunk when he wrote it. How punk!
This might be one of those books I should have read when I was younger, when I could still say "punk's not dead" with a straight face. Maybe I would have liked it then, or felt "edgy" and "cool" reading it. From my vantage now (under quilts, in house-slippers, sipping tea), the punk scene as described by Goetz/Raspe is as vapid and meaningless as our out-of-touch parents complained it was back in the day. Punk was cool! Is cool. Maybe Goetz/Raspe was never a real punk, and that's his problem. Maybe he was just a fuckin poser all along.
Insane has been touted as pop culture "cult classic" of German literature. The book is structured into three parts.
The first part, Away, consists of an impressionistic pastiche of patient stories; we read paragraph after paragraph of idiosyncratic psychological ailments and non-neurotypical thought patterns. It puts the reader in the position of a new doctor making the "rounds," being inundated and overwhelmed by patient histories, hardly able to differentiate one patient front the next as he acclimatizes to his new environment.
We are only properly introduced to the main character, Dr. Raspe in the second part, titled Inside. We follow Raspe as he learns his way around the clinic, meets his colleagues, avoids his patients, and generally comes to disdain the psychiatric field in toto, including all of its "innovative" technologies (e.g. pharmacology and esp. electric shock therapy). At night Raspe frequents punk clubs, drinks heavily, gets in bar fights, argues with socialists, and cuts himself. (Infamously, Goetz cut open his own head during a reading of the novel at a literary festival in 1983, bleeding all over his manuscript.)
Things go off the rails in the third part, ironically called Order. Raspe has quit his job and is pursuing the career of a zine writer, chasing payments from editors, being a punk scene-ster, manically self-destructing, and just generally being "unwell." The writing at this point in the novel is just painfully bad, consisting largely of half-assed critiques of other German writers/pop-culture figures, and (non?)self-conscious justifications for the authentic "rawness" of his own work. It's hardly edited. He was probably drunk when he wrote it. How punk!
This might be one of those books I should have read when I was younger, when I could still say "punk's not dead" with a straight face. Maybe I would have liked it then, or felt "edgy" and "cool" reading it. From my vantage now (under quilts, in house-slippers, sipping tea), the punk scene as described by Goetz/Raspe is as vapid and meaningless as our out-of-touch parents complained it was back in the day. Punk was cool! Is cool. Maybe Goetz/Raspe was never a real punk, and that's his problem. Maybe he was just a fuckin poser all along.
June 27, 2020
The opening dialogues were frantic and seemed a cacophony of voices until I grasped the multitude of characters that were speaking. A bit chaotic and challenging, but enjoyable.
The second part of the book followed a more traditional narrative arc, detailing the protagonists entering of the world of psychiatry. I have no background or understanding of psychiatry and struggled with some of the more technical references, but enjoyed the progatgonists struggle to establish (or not) himself in the profession and description of life in an institution.
The third part of the book marks the protagonists own descend into madness, and the fractured, manic writing reflects this. I struggled to follow the story at this point, although the writing is good and full of energy.
The second part of the book followed a more traditional narrative arc, detailing the protagonists entering of the world of psychiatry. I have no background or understanding of psychiatry and struggled with some of the more technical references, but enjoyed the progatgonists struggle to establish (or not) himself in the profession and description of life in an institution.
The third part of the book marks the protagonists own descend into madness, and the fractured, manic writing reflects this. I struggled to follow the story at this point, although the writing is good and full of energy.
October 19, 2022
Kompletter Wahnsinn
October 25, 2020
Quería leer sobre experiencias en centros psiquiátricos. Andaba escribiendo algo que a decir verdad tiene poco que ver con estos lugares, pero en mi cabeza se establecía cierta analogía. Me decanté por Loco de Rainald Goetz. El autor había estudiado medicina. Era conocido por sus extravagantes performances en las que llegó a cortarse con una cuchilla en la presentación de un libro. Decían de él que verdaderamente estaba loco. ¿Qué podía fallar?
Loco está compuesto por 3 partes completamente diferenciadas. Cada una de ellas es presentada por una apropiada ilustración a toda página. Leí la primera de ellas como si se tratara de un libro de poemas. Los fragmentos, breves, facilitaban esta medida. Se intercalaban experiencias de pacientes en un sanatorio mental, enfermedades, médicos. En fin, se crea una atmósfera. La segunda parte se centra en la experiencia profesional Raspe, un médico recién incorporado al centro psiquiátrico. A través de su visión se pone en tela de juicio los tratamientos, pero sobre todo la consideración de los pacientes como elementos que deben mantenerse fuera de la sociedad. Por la tercera parte me vi superado. Las expresiones de locura se suceden. En ningún momento fui capaz de discernir si los testimonios correspondían al personaje principal que había perdido la cabeza o continuaban las de los internos.
Las traducciones del alemán no son nada sencillas. Supongo que en un texto en el que se quiere plasmar las inconsistencias mentales de un enfermo psiquiátrico, que van acompañadas de imágenes, deben ser casi imposible de trasladar al castellano. Quiero pensar que esta dificultad convierte partes del texto en ininteligibles. O no, y ésta era la pretensión inicial del autor. En cualquier caso, Loco no es una de fácil ni cómoda lectura. A la dificultades del lenguaje se unen las experiencias en un sanatorio mental, un lugar que como las casas para los adolescentes, el cine nos ha ilustrado con que no son los lugares adecuados. Por último, me gustaría hacer hincapié en la maravillosa imagen seleccionada por Pálido Fuego para la portada. Se trata de una imagen tomada de una perfomance de Ruldof Schwarzogler. Se queda entre mis favoritas.
Loco está compuesto por 3 partes completamente diferenciadas. Cada una de ellas es presentada por una apropiada ilustración a toda página. Leí la primera de ellas como si se tratara de un libro de poemas. Los fragmentos, breves, facilitaban esta medida. Se intercalaban experiencias de pacientes en un sanatorio mental, enfermedades, médicos. En fin, se crea una atmósfera. La segunda parte se centra en la experiencia profesional Raspe, un médico recién incorporado al centro psiquiátrico. A través de su visión se pone en tela de juicio los tratamientos, pero sobre todo la consideración de los pacientes como elementos que deben mantenerse fuera de la sociedad. Por la tercera parte me vi superado. Las expresiones de locura se suceden. En ningún momento fui capaz de discernir si los testimonios correspondían al personaje principal que había perdido la cabeza o continuaban las de los internos.
Las traducciones del alemán no son nada sencillas. Supongo que en un texto en el que se quiere plasmar las inconsistencias mentales de un enfermo psiquiátrico, que van acompañadas de imágenes, deben ser casi imposible de trasladar al castellano. Quiero pensar que esta dificultad convierte partes del texto en ininteligibles. O no, y ésta era la pretensión inicial del autor. En cualquier caso, Loco no es una de fácil ni cómoda lectura. A la dificultades del lenguaje se unen las experiencias en un sanatorio mental, un lugar que como las casas para los adolescentes, el cine nos ha ilustrado con que no son los lugares adecuados. Por último, me gustaría hacer hincapié en la maravillosa imagen seleccionada por Pálido Fuego para la portada. Se trata de una imagen tomada de una perfomance de Ruldof Schwarzogler. Se queda entre mis favoritas.
December 22, 2023
Waarheid en waanzin in drie delen, het laatste nog meer op losse schroeven dan het voorgaande, over psychiatrie en punk.
Bij momenten is ‘Gestoord’ compleet onnavolgbaar, een woordenketel vol obscure referenties, stemmen die zonder aanwijsbaar personage in het ijle zweven. Even vaak is het glashelder in zijn weergave van leed zonder logica: ‘In je lichaam dat blok graniet dragen, je vooruit worstelen door water, wakker worden, wakker willen worden uit deze nachtmerrie, maar al terwijl je schreeuwt weten dat dit geen droom is, maar de werkelijkheid, die gehoorzaamt aan een vreemde gestoorde wet.’
Op het einde maakt Goetz - niet vies van een beetje polemiek - in niet mis te verstane woorden duidelijk waar het hem om te doen is: ‘Het geijkte gelijk bewandelen en keurig in de pas blijven, daar slaagt zelfs de meest verhabbezakte schijtlaars nog in, maar hoezeer mij dat geen hol kan schelen, daar houden jullie niet voor mogelijk, omdat ik iets veel moeilijkers in mijn werk moet uitwerken: de waarheid van alles.’
☆☆☆☆ 1/2
Bij momenten is ‘Gestoord’ compleet onnavolgbaar, een woordenketel vol obscure referenties, stemmen die zonder aanwijsbaar personage in het ijle zweven. Even vaak is het glashelder in zijn weergave van leed zonder logica: ‘In je lichaam dat blok graniet dragen, je vooruit worstelen door water, wakker worden, wakker willen worden uit deze nachtmerrie, maar al terwijl je schreeuwt weten dat dit geen droom is, maar de werkelijkheid, die gehoorzaamt aan een vreemde gestoorde wet.’
Op het einde maakt Goetz - niet vies van een beetje polemiek - in niet mis te verstane woorden duidelijk waar het hem om te doen is: ‘Het geijkte gelijk bewandelen en keurig in de pas blijven, daar slaagt zelfs de meest verhabbezakte schijtlaars nog in, maar hoezeer mij dat geen hol kan schelen, daar houden jullie niet voor mogelijk, omdat ik iets veel moeilijkers in mijn werk moet uitwerken: de waarheid van alles.’
☆☆☆☆ 1/2
March 2, 2022
Goetz was clearly fuelled by some frustrations with the post-68 French psychoanalytic writings (Deleuze + Guattari, Lyotard came to mind a few times). But in dissolving content / form in the third part of this novel, I can't help but think he only helped bolster these theorists, especially Guattari's solo writings ("The institutional machine thata we positioned didn't simple remodel the existing subjectivities, but endeavoured... to produce a new type of subjectivity." - Guattari)
Psychoanalysis remains the best capitalist drug!
Psychoanalysis remains the best capitalist drug!
March 18, 2018
Svårläst bok. Kändes mycket lovande i början men kunde faktiskt inte läsa klart den sista tredjedelen. Förmodligen kan jag inte heller göra en rättvis bedömning av boken eftersom det var mycket referenser som gick ovanför mitt huvud. Skulle nog vara mer intressant om en var insatt i den psykiatriska vårdens historia och/eller Tyskland på 80-talet.
September 27, 2023
Die wechselnden Erzählformen und -perspektiven sind nicht immer eine Demonstration seines Schreibgeschicks. Der letzte der 3 Teile wirkt besonders öde, in dem sich Raspe am Literaturbetrieb in wiederholenden Tiraden abarbeitet. Vielleicht waren aber auch die Achternbusch Rezensionen in den 80ern schlimmer als jetzt.
March 25, 2023
Written in a very stream-of-consciousness way which can be a little disorientating, but is very captivating
November 4, 2024
Jarring but captivating read. He really does not like using conjunctions…
4-4.5 / 5
4-4.5 / 5
March 13, 2023
Good if you want to become even more mentally ill
November 11, 2017
3.5 stars in actuality.
When I started this, I thought it was going to offer no fresh insights into the mental health definition & care debate at all. But as the fragmented voices & case studies of the first section wore on, actually it did provide some food for rumination. The second part was a more classic structure through the character of Raspe, first year psychiatrist and lover of punk rock clubs at the weekend, providing a continuity of perspective. Part 3, which is where it all came apart, both in the text itself and in my estimation of the book, Raspe has had some sort of breakdown (Physician Heal Thyself), left the asylum and in sitting down to write his book and re-enter the culture, we are treated to a failry incoherent meta-fiction of Raspe's panorama which he brings to the book. Ultra-fragmentary,hallucinatory even, I think the point is that art, culture et al cause what we call insanity and deem to be in need of therapeutic treatment; insanity is a mere different perspective, a refusal to accept the madness of culture and society. But this third part really fell flat for me and dropped the book a star.
When I started this, I thought it was going to offer no fresh insights into the mental health definition & care debate at all. But as the fragmented voices & case studies of the first section wore on, actually it did provide some food for rumination. The second part was a more classic structure through the character of Raspe, first year psychiatrist and lover of punk rock clubs at the weekend, providing a continuity of perspective. Part 3, which is where it all came apart, both in the text itself and in my estimation of the book, Raspe has had some sort of breakdown (Physician Heal Thyself), left the asylum and in sitting down to write his book and re-enter the culture, we are treated to a failry incoherent meta-fiction of Raspe's panorama which he brings to the book. Ultra-fragmentary,hallucinatory even, I think the point is that art, culture et al cause what we call insanity and deem to be in need of therapeutic treatment; insanity is a mere different perspective, a refusal to accept the madness of culture and society. But this third part really fell flat for me and dropped the book a star.
Read
February 17, 2021Last night, finished Insane. Really really good, I enjoyed it a lot. That last fifty-or-so pages are just a bit mental, and I think Goetz knew that - that people would glide over those passages with speed and confusion, and it comes across in his writing, as if the narrator knew that’s what the reader was doing. I certainly was, but taking it all in, as much as I could. The first section is great, starting off confusing, then you start getting a sense of what’s happening, then it changes; the second section, focusing on Raspe, I thought was great, it really got across the feeling of going into something and slowly losing grip of it, questioning yourself and those around you, the things you’re doing; the third section starts off confusing and only becomes more so - is it written from Raspe’s or Goetz’s perspective? Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and onto Bolt from the Blue now.
January 6, 2025
Das Buch zu: "So wird kein Professor der Erkenntnistheorie für geisteskrank erklärt, wenn er die Ansicht vertritt, Häuser existierten nur, weil man den Blick auf sie richtet ... . Auch wird kein Arbeiter zum Psychiater geschickt, weil er hartnäckig meint, man könne durch Leistung zu Reichtum kommen .... Sollte er jedoch an seinem Arbeitsplatz der Meinung des Professors anhängen und sich immerzu umdrehen, damit das Fließband verschwindet, so wäre er reif für die Klapsmühle – schließlich zeichnet sich der bürgerliche Verstand dadurch aus, sich allerlei Vorstellungen zuzulegen, warum es seine freie Absicht ist, wenn er dem Zwang nachkommt."
February 11, 2018
A stunning exploration of the psychiatric institution breaking conventions of narrative and structure to its own benefit.
The first part provides a sprawling narrative jumping from individual characters on a paragraph by paragraph basis, producing a pastiche of doctors and patients. These give us a wide look at the varying nature of mental illness as well as a look at the lives of the patients before they were admitted. Interlaced are passages focused on doctors, often making directly pointed comments to specific aspects of the practice of medicine itself. Though the initial structuring is somewhat difficult to follow until the reader gains a feel for it, it seems almost a shape that the middle section abandons this.
The middle part pares things back for a more focused narrative around Raspe as he contemplates his actions and the patients themselves. Throughout this section, almost all critiques of psychiatry are explored to an extent, from the limits of treatment to autonomy, careerism and oh so many conflicts of interest.
The final section is a rambly stream of consciousness that forms a manic break from psychiatry itself, and seems purposely incomprehensible. Though it fails to really represent mania, it seems a fitting irony that leaving the logic of the madhouse leaves nothing but a mindless nothingness. Unfortunately, though the book is well translated, the comics that appear in this section are not.
Overall the book explores many of the issues in psychiatry both from the perspective of doctors and patients. However, the strength of the book is also its weakness with a non-traditional narrative that can be difficult, as well as the fact that the complex medical terminology is not supported by a glossary.
The first part provides a sprawling narrative jumping from individual characters on a paragraph by paragraph basis, producing a pastiche of doctors and patients. These give us a wide look at the varying nature of mental illness as well as a look at the lives of the patients before they were admitted. Interlaced are passages focused on doctors, often making directly pointed comments to specific aspects of the practice of medicine itself. Though the initial structuring is somewhat difficult to follow until the reader gains a feel for it, it seems almost a shape that the middle section abandons this.
The middle part pares things back for a more focused narrative around Raspe as he contemplates his actions and the patients themselves. Throughout this section, almost all critiques of psychiatry are explored to an extent, from the limits of treatment to autonomy, careerism and oh so many conflicts of interest.
The final section is a rambly stream of consciousness that forms a manic break from psychiatry itself, and seems purposely incomprehensible. Though it fails to really represent mania, it seems a fitting irony that leaving the logic of the madhouse leaves nothing but a mindless nothingness. Unfortunately, though the book is well translated, the comics that appear in this section are not.
Overall the book explores many of the issues in psychiatry both from the perspective of doctors and patients. However, the strength of the book is also its weakness with a non-traditional narrative that can be difficult, as well as the fact that the complex medical terminology is not supported by a glossary.
January 6, 2018
watch this before reading. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn64A.... gets interesting after 1:40 if like me, you spreche kein Deutsch.
punk as fuck. ('he was a doctor, he knew what he was doing' - marcel reich-ranicki)
first section is some of the most creative and engaging writing i've ever read. second part is just as engaging and stimulating, but does not share the uniqueness of the first part, at least in it's style, not content. third part, as most english language readers in 2017 will find, requires the reader to have a good knowledge of german 80's culture (and some of that preceding 1980's cultural deutschland) , which hinders understanding and enjoyment, but the inventive ways goetz writes to show a mind struggling to hold itself together is undeniably brilliant. recommended, but be aware the third part (3/5) will most likely not hold up next to the preceding parts, which are both in themselves, 5/5.
'This ambient chatter, which poisons the air, an aerosol aimed at the atmosphere, will drift up into the universe and be cast back a billion times, occasioning a global catastrophe. Horrible stories, far too brief, had followed one another in succession, each striving with the other to leave the listener more shocked, and not one could Raspe remember from beginning to end. The horror all seemed so similar. And it was particles of this horror, dancing wildly in Raspe's head, that cluttered, balled together into a new mass of suffering, illogical, against which there was no defence.' - 129.
punk as fuck. ('he was a doctor, he knew what he was doing' - marcel reich-ranicki)
first section is some of the most creative and engaging writing i've ever read. second part is just as engaging and stimulating, but does not share the uniqueness of the first part, at least in it's style, not content. third part, as most english language readers in 2017 will find, requires the reader to have a good knowledge of german 80's culture (and some of that preceding 1980's cultural deutschland) , which hinders understanding and enjoyment, but the inventive ways goetz writes to show a mind struggling to hold itself together is undeniably brilliant. recommended, but be aware the third part (3/5) will most likely not hold up next to the preceding parts, which are both in themselves, 5/5.
'This ambient chatter, which poisons the air, an aerosol aimed at the atmosphere, will drift up into the universe and be cast back a billion times, occasioning a global catastrophe. Horrible stories, far too brief, had followed one another in succession, each striving with the other to leave the listener more shocked, and not one could Raspe remember from beginning to end. The horror all seemed so similar. And it was particles of this horror, dancing wildly in Raspe's head, that cluttered, balled together into a new mass of suffering, illogical, against which there was no defence.' - 129.
February 29, 2024
Insane follows young psychiatrist Dr Raspe as he slowly realises that his desire to improve the methods of the mental asylum are at their best, naïve, and at their worst, simply impossible.
The first two parts (Away & Inside) show Goetz' capacity of humanising the patients whilst building a critical view of the psychiatric ward. By overlaying scenes from the ward with the nighttime punk scene, it creates a truly poetic world of anarchism and anti-establishment. Here, there are some deep reflections that are philosophical and extremely poignant. For instance, the internal monologue of a teenage patient explaining how his paranoia and fear of death was caused by the Cold War, is incredibly effective at illustrating how madness is the consequence of a flawed system, rather than a random event that affects flawed individuals.
However, in the final section (Order), the main narrator becomes so angry, agitated and unbearable that his mad voice becomes very hard to follow, diluting the original strenght of his voice. Dissapointingly, what started as a great manifesto on the value of madness as poetry, ends up turning into an endless rant about German politics, art and the publishing industry (?) with unnecessary racist and sexist remarks.
In a nutshell: Goetz seems to think that a book on madness could only succeed by becoming a mad rant. I disagree.
The first two parts (Away & Inside) show Goetz' capacity of humanising the patients whilst building a critical view of the psychiatric ward. By overlaying scenes from the ward with the nighttime punk scene, it creates a truly poetic world of anarchism and anti-establishment. Here, there are some deep reflections that are philosophical and extremely poignant. For instance, the internal monologue of a teenage patient explaining how his paranoia and fear of death was caused by the Cold War, is incredibly effective at illustrating how madness is the consequence of a flawed system, rather than a random event that affects flawed individuals.
However, in the final section (Order), the main narrator becomes so angry, agitated and unbearable that his mad voice becomes very hard to follow, diluting the original strenght of his voice. Dissapointingly, what started as a great manifesto on the value of madness as poetry, ends up turning into an endless rant about German politics, art and the publishing industry (?) with unnecessary racist and sexist remarks.
In a nutshell: Goetz seems to think that a book on madness could only succeed by becoming a mad rant. I disagree.
March 25, 2018
This is a very disorienting book to read, a book that reveals the chaos of the world - and its consequent madness - through its style and "violent" descriptions. It is a book for people who feel alienated in this world or who just want something new. Insane is divided in 3 sections, two of which jump constantly between narrator and perspectives, especially the first chapter, giving you at times a personal perspective, not just from the "hero" but also from the writer himself, and at times a broad perspective from countless voices. It challenges conventional narrative structures and the separation between artist and the work of art, by melting character into the writer. It's only, perhaps, unpleasurable feature is the references to 80s German culture that are hard to grasp by today's audience. Although one can understand broad concepts of the hippie culture and hypocrisy/fakeness of certain popular, cultural voices, one cannot understand certain references to real life people or events.
January 29, 2025
Waarheid en waanzin in drie delen, het laatste nog meer op losse schroeven dan het voorgaande, over psychiatrie en punk.
Bij momenten is ‘Gestoord’ compleet onnavolgbaar, een woordenketel vol obscure referenties, stemmen die zonder aanwijsbaar personage in het ijle zweven. Even vaak is het glashelder in zijn weergave van leed zonder logica: ‘In je lichaam dat blok graniet dragen, je vooruit worstelen door water, wakker worden, wakker willen worden uit deze nachtmerrie, maar al terwijl je schreeuwt weten dat dit geen droom is, maar de werkelijkheid, die gehoorzaamt aan een vreemde gestoorde wet.’
Op het einde maakt Goetz - niet vies van een beetje polemiek - in niet mis te verstane woorden duidelijk waar het hem om te doen is: ‘Het geijkte gelijk bewandelen en keurig in de pas blijven, daar slaagt zelfs de meest verhabbezakte schijtlaars nog in, maar hoezeer mij dat geen hol kan schelen, daar houden jullie niet voor mogelijk, omdat ik iets veel moeilijkers in mijn werk moet uitwerken: de waarheid van alles.’
☆☆☆☆ 1/2
Bij momenten is ‘Gestoord’ compleet onnavolgbaar, een woordenketel vol obscure referenties, stemmen die zonder aanwijsbaar personage in het ijle zweven. Even vaak is het glashelder in zijn weergave van leed zonder logica: ‘In je lichaam dat blok graniet dragen, je vooruit worstelen door water, wakker worden, wakker willen worden uit deze nachtmerrie, maar al terwijl je schreeuwt weten dat dit geen droom is, maar de werkelijkheid, die gehoorzaamt aan een vreemde gestoorde wet.’
Op het einde maakt Goetz - niet vies van een beetje polemiek - in niet mis te verstane woorden duidelijk waar het hem om te doen is: ‘Het geijkte gelijk bewandelen en keurig in de pas blijven, daar slaagt zelfs de meest verhabbezakte schijtlaars nog in, maar hoezeer mij dat geen hol kan schelen, daar houden jullie niet voor mogelijk, omdat ik iets veel moeilijkers in mijn werk moet uitwerken: de waarheid van alles.’
☆☆☆☆ 1/2
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