Foucault’s participation in the 1954 carnival of the mad at an asylum in Switzerland marked the beginning of his critical reflections on the origins of psychology. The event revealed a paradox at the heart of psychology to Foucault, for here was an asylum known for its progressive method and groundbreaking scientific research that was somehow still exhibiting traces of a medieval conception of madness. Using the cultural expression of this carnival as a starting place, this paper goes beyond carnival costumes to uncover the historical structures underneath the discipline of modern psychology. Drawing on Foucault’s earliest works in psychology, his 1954 Mental Illness and Personality, his 1954 “Dream, Existence and Imagination,” his 1957 “Scientific Research and Psychology” and briefly his 1961 History of Madness, I will describe the discrepancy between the theory of modern psychology, which finds its heritage in the methods of modern science, and the practice of modern psychology, which finds its heritage in the classical age. I will argue that this division helps make sense of unexplained psychological phenomena, as seen in general practices related to artistic expression, and individual experiences, as seen in the presence of guilt and the resistance to medical diagnosis in patients.
In this article, I draw on Kierkegaard's often over-looked work, The Concept of Anxiety, to gain deeper insight into the tenor of melancholy. We discover that Kierkegaard labels anxiety, due to its connection to hereditary sin, as the source for melancholy. Thus, contrary to the usual interpretation of Kierkegaard, I argue that melancholy is more than an individual's struggle with existence, but is intimately tied to the historical environment, because it is steeped in an ever-increasing, ever-deepening anxiety. This link between anxiety and melancholy clears away misunderstandings about Kierkegaard's description of melancholy and suggests implications in psychology, philosophy, and theology.
This essay offers the beginnings of a taxonomy of madness through the analysis of three different approaches: the phenomenological, the historical-structural and the existential-religious. While there have been many avenues by which the Continental tradition has sought to counter the understanding that madness is inaccessible and unintelligible, these methods are often restricted to viewing madness from one particular angle. By using this tri-perspectival approach, I argue that insight into madness exposes the diverse forms of the nonrational, which I define as the prerational, the irrational, and the suprarational. Each of the forms reveals the reliance on the nonrational in several areas of the human condition, including displays of mental disorders, dynamic structures of society, and experiences of extreme faith. Through these descriptions, we see how expressions of madness immediately bring to the surface the way the nonrational plays an integral role in the common human condition.
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