Good point about things happening at an office table being worse than someone hitting someone else.
I think though that when a community, neighbors, or the authorities want to check to see whether you are mad or not, they are looking for you to admit that you know you are responsible for things and that up until now you have been somewhat lacking in some area and that you know you need to improve in someway.
That is what all the callers on the Dr. Laura show were told. That is what judges want to hear in court rooms. It is all of a piece. I can see why someone might say that it is a system of making people compliant and there might be more to it.
Michel Foucault, a French philosopher from the 1960s ad 70s, wrote a lot about the history of madness. I think he said that madness was acceptable up until a point in history when everything became much more organized. He pointed out that up until a certain point, people that heard voices were considered potentially divine like they were someone that might be hearing God's words, but then something substantially changed and that suddenly was an insane thing to think. What is odd though is the whole system is based on when initial people like Moses and Jesus did hear voices.
The Foucault book is called Madness and Civilization. Foucault loved Nietzsche a lot. You could just Google the book title and there will be lots of summaries of it.
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Date: 18 April 2016 04:56 am (UTC)I think though that when a community, neighbors, or the authorities want to check to see whether you are mad or not, they are looking for you to admit that you know you are responsible for things and that up until now you have been somewhat lacking in some area and that you know you need to improve in someway.
That is what all the callers on the Dr. Laura show were told. That is what judges want to hear in court rooms. It is all of a piece. I can see why someone might say that it is a system of making people compliant and there might be more to it.
Michel Foucault, a French philosopher from the 1960s ad 70s, wrote a lot about the history of madness. I think he said that madness was acceptable up until a point in history when everything became much more organized. He pointed out that up until a certain point, people that heard voices were considered potentially divine like they were someone that might be hearing God's words, but then something substantially changed and that suddenly was an insane thing to think. What is odd though is the whole system is based on when initial people like Moses and Jesus did hear voices.
The Foucault book is called Madness and Civilization. Foucault loved Nietzsche a lot. You could just Google the book title and there will be lots of summaries of it.