Madness

Since the time of Hippocrates, madness has typically been viewed through the lens of disease, dysfunction, and defect. Madness, like all other disease, happens when something in the mind or brain does not operate the way that it should, or as nature intended. In this paradigm, the role of the healer is simply to find the dysfunction and fix it. This remains the dominant perspective in global psychiatry today. This book presents a different paradigm for conceiving of madness and the forms that it takes. In this paradigm, madness-as-strategy, madness is neither a disease nor a defect, but a designed feature, like the heart or lungs. That is to say, at least sometimes, when someone is mad, everything inside of them is working exactly as it ought and as nature intended. Through engagement with texts spanning from the classical era to Darwinian medicine, Madness: A Philosophical Exploration shows that madness-as-strategy is not a new conception. Thus, more than a history of science or a conceptual genealogy, Madness: A Philosophical Exploration is a recovery mission. In recovering madness-as-strategy, it leads us beyond today’s dominant medical paradigm toward a very different form of thinking and practice. It also draws out the implication of the madness-as-strategy paradigm for philosophers of medicine and psychiatry, historians and sociologists of medicine, and mental health service users, survivors, and activists. It outlines a new conception of mental disorder, it provides a novel reading of the history of madness, and it presents an alternative vision of what it means to be mad.