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I should have realized in doing my last post that madness is one of those things that have one meaning in the real world and another in a literary sense...I've gotten into the exact same discussion before in XF fandom. Because if madness in fiction can be considered a kink, I've definitely got it!
It's not that I have no interest about real life mental disorders. I try not to be an insensitive jerk about them. I can understand that if one has brought pain and suffering into ones life or family it would be irritating to feel it was described as cool in fiction. But to me, madness is one of those things like death that has meaning beyond the experience of those dealing with it in reality. Like noncon, I don't think one can say it has only its real world meaning, or must be handled a certain way.
Even using the word "madness" or "crazy" or "insane" to me makes me think of fiction, those stories where people "go mad" not because of a disorder but because the madness is a symptom of the society they live in. I was flipping around today looking up some things on the subject and not surprisingly our ideas on madness have always changed along with society. I know in Celtic mythology madmen are often associated with swineherds and wisdom--I think Merlin was mad (and herded pigs) for a time. So there's a madness associated with wisdom or sight other people don't have, probably linked to art. In the Middle Ages it was associated with the end of the word, visions of the apocalypse. It replaced death in the imagination. And in literature it's probably often been a kind of death--like those stories that ends with the person's hair turning white where you know they won't ever be sane again after what they've seen (in the woodshed! Sorry, couldn't resist). Then we moved on to the classical idea of madness linked to man's weaknesses, with Shakespeare and Cervantes for instance. Our own modern idea about mental illness came after a 19th century feeling that madness was a moral evil.
Anyway, I admit I love all those classically mad characters: Ophelia (whom I really don't like until she's mad), King Lear, Bertha Rochester, Ivan Karamazov, the editor in Pale Fire. It looks like madness but it's really fake madness.
I feel like nowadays we're probably more into the madmen who aren't immediately obvious. The character easily identified by funny clothes and howling at the moon is more easily contained or in the past driven out. But today I think we probably get more into sort of the opposite as well...like, that character who was mad had wisdom hidden within his madness. He was a truth teller. But there's also the characters that seem to speak with wisdom but are really peddling madness. I'd put most cult leaders there, for instance. Or as I was saying to![[livejournal.com profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
malafede, those people whom a friend of mind describes as "crazy, but with a craziness that appeals to a lot of people." (Frankly, I'd put George W. Bush in that category too--I don't mean he's insane or mentally ill, but what he pushes as wisdom is, imo, madness.)
So the question thatreenka brought up is kind of hard to answer. Do you have to clearly define madness before you can decide whether a character fits the bill? Because I don't think it's that easy to define. It's like the very expressions we use to refer to it--we talk about "going mad" or "being driven crazy." It suggests a journey. Not to mention those expressions, referring as they do not to mental illness but the kind of figurative madness in literature. Our thoughts are following a logical road to a place we don't want to be.
There doesn't seem to me to be just one thing literary madness can be about. Sometimes it's extremes and obsessions. Sometimes it's more a throwing off of societal conventions and becoming a great big id. Sometimes it's about forbidden wisdom and vision. (In the Whitewolf Vampire games I know the Malkavian Clan is touched with madness. A revealing quote: "Think about this: You're a dead thing, same as me. You died and were reborn...as this. What makes you and me different? Simple--I remember what I saw when I was full and truly dead. You'd be mad too." As somebody who dreams a lot about seeing things that will lead to madness, this strikes a chord with me...) Sometimes it's about an idea that just can't be supported in the mind. Or an inner conflict that divides the mind against itself. Whatever it is, it can't be described in the normal way. Sometimes fiction just has to take a character into that other place to tell its story.
In a way it almost just doesn't work if you think of it realistically. Fictional madness can't come down to just a diagnosis because then it's the illness that would require study, not the person. (And that, of course, is a big part of what science does, which is not a bad thing.) That's why it's so tedious when people want to diagnose fictional characters instead of analyzing them. So Scully just had depression throughout Season 5, and Frodo just had PTSD post-Quest. And Harry had both in OotP because he's just that put upon.;-) But the thing is, while these characters certainly show signs of those things and we don't want to throw away the things we can gain from looking at them that way, making it all about that is just lame and annoying, imo. Especially if the person doing it also has appointed themselves (or their Mary Sue) as Scully's group therapy partner, Frodo's psychoanalyst or Harry's amazingly sensitive guidance counselor. I mean, nobody cares how much you know about a particular disorder, they would rather learn about the character and through the character the world.
ETA: Happy birthdaypippinsqueak!!!
It's not that I have no interest about real life mental disorders. I try not to be an insensitive jerk about them. I can understand that if one has brought pain and suffering into ones life or family it would be irritating to feel it was described as cool in fiction. But to me, madness is one of those things like death that has meaning beyond the experience of those dealing with it in reality. Like noncon, I don't think one can say it has only its real world meaning, or must be handled a certain way.
Even using the word "madness" or "crazy" or "insane" to me makes me think of fiction, those stories where people "go mad" not because of a disorder but because the madness is a symptom of the society they live in. I was flipping around today looking up some things on the subject and not surprisingly our ideas on madness have always changed along with society. I know in Celtic mythology madmen are often associated with swineherds and wisdom--I think Merlin was mad (and herded pigs) for a time. So there's a madness associated with wisdom or sight other people don't have, probably linked to art. In the Middle Ages it was associated with the end of the word, visions of the apocalypse. It replaced death in the imagination. And in literature it's probably often been a kind of death--like those stories that ends with the person's hair turning white where you know they won't ever be sane again after what they've seen (in the woodshed! Sorry, couldn't resist). Then we moved on to the classical idea of madness linked to man's weaknesses, with Shakespeare and Cervantes for instance. Our own modern idea about mental illness came after a 19th century feeling that madness was a moral evil.
Anyway, I admit I love all those classically mad characters: Ophelia (whom I really don't like until she's mad), King Lear, Bertha Rochester, Ivan Karamazov, the editor in Pale Fire. It looks like madness but it's really fake madness.
I feel like nowadays we're probably more into the madmen who aren't immediately obvious. The character easily identified by funny clothes and howling at the moon is more easily contained or in the past driven out. But today I think we probably get more into sort of the opposite as well...like, that character who was mad had wisdom hidden within his madness. He was a truth teller. But there's also the characters that seem to speak with wisdom but are really peddling madness. I'd put most cult leaders there, for instance. Or as I was saying to
malafede, those people whom a friend of mind describes as "crazy, but with a craziness that appeals to a lot of people." (Frankly, I'd put George W. Bush in that category too--I don't mean he's insane or mentally ill, but what he pushes as wisdom is, imo, madness.)So the question that
reenka brought up is kind of hard to answer. Do you have to clearly define madness before you can decide whether a character fits the bill? Because I don't think it's that easy to define. It's like the very expressions we use to refer to it--we talk about "going mad" or "being driven crazy." It suggests a journey. Not to mention those expressions, referring as they do not to mental illness but the kind of figurative madness in literature. Our thoughts are following a logical road to a place we don't want to be.There doesn't seem to me to be just one thing literary madness can be about. Sometimes it's extremes and obsessions. Sometimes it's more a throwing off of societal conventions and becoming a great big id. Sometimes it's about forbidden wisdom and vision. (In the Whitewolf Vampire games I know the Malkavian Clan is touched with madness. A revealing quote: "Think about this: You're a dead thing, same as me. You died and were reborn...as this. What makes you and me different? Simple--I remember what I saw when I was full and truly dead. You'd be mad too." As somebody who dreams a lot about seeing things that will lead to madness, this strikes a chord with me...) Sometimes it's about an idea that just can't be supported in the mind. Or an inner conflict that divides the mind against itself. Whatever it is, it can't be described in the normal way. Sometimes fiction just has to take a character into that other place to tell its story.
In a way it almost just doesn't work if you think of it realistically. Fictional madness can't come down to just a diagnosis because then it's the illness that would require study, not the person. (And that, of course, is a big part of what science does, which is not a bad thing.) That's why it's so tedious when people want to diagnose fictional characters instead of analyzing them. So Scully just had depression throughout Season 5, and Frodo just had PTSD post-Quest. And Harry had both in OotP because he's just that put upon.;-) But the thing is, while these characters certainly show signs of those things and we don't want to throw away the things we can gain from looking at them that way, making it all about that is just lame and annoying, imo. Especially if the person doing it also has appointed themselves (or their Mary Sue) as Scully's group therapy partner, Frodo's psychoanalyst or Harry's amazingly sensitive guidance counselor. I mean, nobody cares how much you know about a particular disorder, they would rather learn about the character and through the character the world.
ETA: Happy birthday
pippinsqueak!!!
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From:
no subject
On the subject of artists, I think that's why I also loved Jamison's book on artists and mood disorders. We have this romantic idea of people being touched with madness and spitting out great art, but the reality is more that artists may have gotten an important perspective from their illness, but it was their intelligence and discipline that turned it into art.
Now I'm all interested in Narcissistic personality disorder. Heh--I remember after CoS the movie when everybody kept saying they'd made Draco into a kleptomaniac I thought, "I really don't think he's being a kleptomaniac there..." and so I looked up all this stuff on that and no, that's really not what he was being. But it was fascinating nonethless. My roommate has...the thing I can't spell, but it's where you pull your hair out. That's another OCD type thing.
From:
no subject
Oh yeah, we do indeed, but the truth is, as you've implied, it's a damn painful process to go through and it's not in the least bit romantic. Still, I suppose most people don't want to know the truth of it - they want their fictional art sprung from fictional madness.
Now I'm all interested in Narcissistic personality disorder
There's a fantastic site by Sam Vaknin a diagnosed narcissist at:
http://www.geocities.com/vaksam/faq1.htm
It's completely brilliant and discusses pretty much everything about this rather scary personality disorder.