What is madness or madness?
The stories told by the so-called sleepwalkers will sooner or later be heard and lead to tremendous discoveries. The helplessness of science in relation to madness has become a proverb, although it is nothing more than the helplessness of science itself. Perhaps the sentences of psychiatrists who are given such a high rating are almost honest, but, like in any other area of so-called human knowledge, there are no real standards of judgment here: there is no such phenomenon as insanity or dementia, if we consider it a phenomenon that has the quality of certainty and reality. If it sometimes turns out to be difficult to organize professional sages to pass a definite judgment on the sanity of this or that person, I am allowed to think that inorganic science in this area will be less certain.
Insanity - loss of reason, insanity, insanity
At the end of the 20th century, behavior or thinking that went beyond the accepted generally available norm of behavior, such as painful convulsions, hallucinations while maintaining reason, strange behavior towards oneself and one's body, as well as attempted suicide, was considered insanity. In addition, seizures of epilepsy, concussion and the consequences of craniocerebral or other head injuries were also considered a manifestation of insanity.
Since the term has historically been applied to a range of different mental illnesses, it is rarely used in modern medicine and psychiatry, although it is still popular colloquially.
When did the term insanity appear?
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Primitive people perceived the world around them through the prism of toteism, and therefore believed that crazy people should be treated with respect. If someone from the tribe saw something or someone who was not seen by others, then the whole tribe trusted him, and the people of the tribe believed that the person "seeing" communicates with the spirits of dead creatures, people or animals. If such a person began to behave in a strange way, then his fellow tribesmen believed that a spirit possessed him that possessed his consciousness and it was he who ordered a person to do certain things, and the person himself was losing control over what was happening.
James Frazer in his book "The Golden Bough" points out that "the soul, according to primitive people, can be temporarily excluded from the body, which nevertheless continues to live." From such a journey, the soul can return defeated if in another world it encounters enemies.
It should be noted here that most likely, the ancient population of the Earth treated the mentally ill of that time in the same way as in our time the aborigines of some small island, far from civilization: all aggressive mentally ill were considered possessed by evil spirits, those that were harmless were considered “kindly by the gods”, Those who were possessed were expelled from the villages, beaten and even sometimes killed, and they took care of the harmless, helped them in everyday life, fed and protected them.
It is worth noting that among ancient people, shamans were also the favorites of the gods. If we take the mythological view seriously, then not quite sane statements in fact could carry hidden, prophetic meanings. In the ancient world, predicting anything was a very valuable gift, because shamans, even if they carried complete heresy, nevertheless listened to them, despite the fact that it is likely that many of them were simply mentally ill. However, from them the ancient man could get answers to the questions of the universe, communicate with deceased relatives, find out how the hunt will go or when it is better to start sowing the crop.
Mircea Eliade, a historian of religion, wrote, "the madness of future shamans, their psychic chaos means that this profane person is on the path of extinction and that a new personality is about to be born." He refers to the ideas of the Yakuts, according to which the future shaman, even in his youth, “becomes frantic”, often faints, leaves alone in the forest for a long time, stabs himself with a knife, talks to himself, experiences strange, sometimes prophetic visions. According to Yakut beliefs, during ecstatic states, the shaman finds himself in another world, where he sees the disintegration of his own body, dismembered by dark forces. The manifested mental illness is interpreted as a ritual death - initiation followed by rebirth.
One way or another, the concept of mental norm in the form in which we are accustomed to perceive it does not exist in primitive culture. The mythological attitude to madness was preserved within the framework of popular religiosity even after the emergence of Christianity, continuing to exist today in the cultures of indigenous peoples professing pagan beliefs.
How modern science now looks at madness
In the 50s of the twentieth century, antipsychiatric movements appeared around the world, thanks to which a huge number of clinics for the mentally ill were simply closed due to uselessness, since many patients began to be observed on an outpatient basis. The second half of the twentieth century was marked by the discovery of antipsychotics and antidepressants, which became widely used in the treatment of psychiatric diseases. This radically changed the relationship of doctors with patients, it turned out that many diseases are simply prolonged stress and depression. At the epicenter of the humanities was the study of theoretical models, which include the totality of all things surrounding a person, society and the relationship of a person in it. As a result, a demand appeared in society that all kinds of societies, one way or another, fetter a person,dominate him and often drive him crazy. As a result, it became important to learn to understand where there is normal human behavior, and where it degenerates into madness, and where is the border between these extremes.
In the modern world, the attitude of science towards crazy people is gradually changing, in the 21st century, first of all, it is taken into account whether a person is functional, whether he can set goals for himself and whether he does harm to himself and others. Many disorders are small disruptions that can be easily treated with medications and work with a psychologist, because many serious processes can be stopped and reversed if the cause is determined in time.
The issue of pathologies no longer looks as unambiguous as, say, it was in the Middle Ages. All deviations are varied in their symptoms.
In simple terms, normality is not something that goes beyond the range of normality, but the range of normality is made up of the general average statistical behavior of an individual. And this is nothing else, but a subjective approach to the problem. After all, it is not known how the individual went beyond the framework of our usual perception, maybe he experienced such moments that made him behave in this way in order to protect himself as a person or any other conditions that are not included in our usual understanding of the problem.
The ideal idea of the norm presupposes that there is an ideal model of the state, a certain standard to which one must strive. This point of view leads away from solving the problem, since the parameters of the ideal are formed by a certain discourse and a specific group of people. Today there are a number of approaches to what is called the mental norm, but none of them provides a comprehensive answer.
PS
I admit to some extent the existence of insanity, although it is impossible to draw a definite line between those who are in an insane asylum, those who are not in an insane asylum, and those who have not yet entered an insane asylum. If by madness is meant a process of thinking, perhaps quite logical in itself, but based on false premises, am I not proving with every word that we are all mad? I admit that, taking to the extreme the state that is common to all of us, some classifications or the impossibility of making any classification other than false (scientific), it proves that people who are simply gifted with significant insight or who have experienced unusual events should often end up in insane asylums. Perhaps behind this veil are the themes of startling new research.
Sergey Leibman