Madness and Literature

This book engages with literature’s multifarious ways of probing minds and bodies in a state of ill mental health. Chapters analyse literature that depicts issues and diagnoses such as trauma, psychosis, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, self-harm, hoarding disorder and PTSD from multiple theoretical and methodological perspectives.

Mental illness has been a favourite topic for authors throughout the history of literature, and, conversely, psychologists and psychiatrists like Sigmund Freud and Karl Jaspers have been interested in and influenced by literature. Pioneers within philosophy, psychiatry and literature share the endeavour to explore and explain the human mind and behaviour, including what a society deems as being outside perceived normality. This volume engages with literature’s multifarious ways of probing minds and bodies in a state of ill mental health. To encompass this diversity, the theoretical approach is eclectic and transdisciplinary. The cases and the theory are in dialogue with a clinical approach, addressing issues and diagnoses such as trauma, psychosis, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, self-harm, hoarding disorder, PTSD and Digital Sexual Assault. The volume has three parts. Chapters in Part I address literary representations of madness with a historical awareness, outlining the socio-political potentials of madness literature. Part II investigates how representations of mental illness can provide a different way of understanding what it is like to experience alternative states of mind, as well as how theoretical concepts from studies in literature can supplement the language of psychopathology. The chapters in Part III explore ways to apply literary cases in clinical practice. Throughout the book, the contributors explore and explain how the language and discourses of literature (stylistically and theoretically) can teach us something new about what it means to be in ill mental health.

Introduction: Madness and Literature and the Health Humanities Lasse Raaby Gammelgaard
DOI: 10.47788/AFZH5419

Part I: Literary History and Socio-Political Perspectives
1. Layla and Majnun in Historical and Contemporary Conceptions of Madness in Islamic Psychology Alan Weber
DOI: 10.47788/RRMJ3362
2. The Anti-Psychiatry Ethos in Samuel Beckett’s Murphy Shoshana Benjamin
DOI: 10.47788/YEGJ4716
3. Apartheid’s Garden: Dismantling Madness in J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K Sebastian C. Galbo
DOI: 10.47788/TJNQ3925
4. Sniffs and Dribblers: Poppy Shakespeare and the Identities of Madness Clare Allan
DOI: 10.47788/SEHO5518

Part II: Literary Theory and Experiencing Mental Illness
5. Reading Shattering Minds and Extended Selves in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway Anna Ovaska
DOI: 10.47788/KVCT9727
6. Spill the Words: Speechlessness and Creativity in the Writing of Janet Frame Mary Elene Wood
DOI: 10.47788/ZEIP9285
7. Pronominal Shifts and the Confusion of Self with Not-Self Alice Hervé
DOI: 10.47788/KQGN8180
8. Rethinking Clinical and Critical Perspectives on Psychosis in Kathy Acker’s Writing Charley Baker
DOI: 10.47788/KIQF3977
9. Countering the DSM in Poetry about Bipolar Disorder Lasse Raaby Gammelgaard
DOI: 10.47788/GRFK1241
10. Seeing Feeling: Dissociation and Post-Traumatic Memory in the Graphic Novel Perfect Hair Penni Russon
DOI: 10.47788/WKFD8677

Part III: Literary Instrumentality and Clinical Psychopathology
11. Writing Therapy, Writing Data: Therapeutic Writing as a Methodological and Ethical Approach in Researching Digital Sexual Assault Signe Uldbjerg
DOI: 10.47788/SWBN2997
12. A Question of Context: Sites for Cultural Negotiation in Narratives of Manic Depression Megan Milota
DOI: 10.47788/LTVE5090
13. Conscripting Dante: History, Anachronism, and the Uses of Literary Precedents in the ‘New’ Diagnosis of Hoarding Disorder David Orr
DOI: 10.47788/QYGF1330
14. Opening Up the Discourse of Male Eating Disorders: Personal Experience in German and English Narratives Heike Bartel
DOI: 10.47788/FCMM5517

Afterword Lasse Raaby Gammelgaard
DOI: 10.47788/IXUD7033

Notes
Index

• Edited by Lasse R. Gammelgaard

"Madness and Literature adds new and important insights to an ongoing conversation. A particular accomplishment of the collection is that it does not only talk interdisciplinary talk but also walks the walk... a rich and thought-provoking volume.What a wonderful goal, to put literature and psychopathology in dialogue, and I can testify as a psychopathologist, to the extraordinary and enriching achievement of that goal. I have prospered from my engagement with the many complex and enlightening ideas in this book. I cannot recommend this book enough.Grammelgaard's assertion that the volume fosters a purposeful dialogue between literary and medicalised understandings of mental illness is convincing. The book is an important contribution that can aid students and scholars in psychiatry in their endeavors to understand mental illness as a meaningful experience."
—

What a wonderful goal, to put literature and psychopathology in dialogue, and I can testify as a psychopathologist, to the extraordinary and enriching achievement of that goal. I have prospered from my engagement with the many complex and enlightening ideas in this book. I cannot recommend this book enough.

— Femi Oyebode, Theory & Psychology

Madness and Literature adds new and important insights to an ongoing conversation. A particular accomplishment of the collection is that it does not only talk interdisciplinary talk but also walks the walk... a rich and thought-provoking volume.

— Christina Slopek, Storyworlds

Grammelgaard’s assertion that the volume fosters a purposeful dialogue between literary and medicalised understandings of mental illness is convincing. The book is an important contribution that can aid students and scholars in psychiatry in their endeavors to understand mental illness as a meaningful experience.

— Martin Guha and Dyuti Gupta