Madness and Modernism

Louis Sass


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PROLOGUE: THE SLEEP OF REASON

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Traditional Twentieth-Century views of Schizophrenia
      Doctrine of the Abyss and the Broken Brain
      The Original Infantile Story
      The Wildman: Hero of Desire
Anomalous Features of Schizophrenia
A Bizarre Tradition and a Tradition of the Bizarre
      Avant-Gardism, the Adversarial Stance
      Perspectivism and Relativism
      Dehumanization, or the Disappearance of the Active Self
      Derealization and the "Unworlding of the World"
      "Spatial Form"
      Aesthetic Self-Referentiality
      Irony and Detachment
      Modernism: Hyperreflexivity and Alienation

PART ONE: EARLY SIGNS AND PRECURSORS: PERCEPTION AND PERSONALITY

CHAPTER 2: THE TRUTH-TAKING STARE
The Stimmung in Schizophrenia
      Unreality
      Mere Being
      Fragmentation
      Apophany
      Traditional Interpretations
The Anti-Epiphany in Modernism
"Tacit Intimations": On the Formation of Delusions
Futurism, Surrealism, and the Modernist Stare
Act or Affliction?

CHAPTER 3: THE SEPARATED SELF
Schizoid Personality
Theories and Subtypes of Schizoid Personality
      The Views of Ernst Kretshmer
      Franz Kafka: A Hypersensitive Sensibility
      Charles Baudelairs: A New Aesthetics of Disdain
Parallels with Modern Culture: Disconnection
      Interiorizing Trends
      Loss of Reality
Parallels with Modern Culture: Uncoupling
      Role Distance
      Abdication of the Public Self
      Unconventionality and Inauthenticity
The Path of Most Resistance: Schizoid Traits in Overt Schizophrenia
      A Counter-Etiquette
      The "Famous Empty Smile"


PART TWO: ASPECTS OF MADNESS: THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE

CHAPTER 4: COGNITIVE SLIPPAGE
Schizophrenic Thinking
      Traditional Theories
      Eccentricity of Perspective
      Vacillation and Inconsistency
Parallels with Modernism
      Heroism of Doubt
      Relativism and Perspectivism: "Vertigo of the Modern"

CHAPTER 5: DISTURBANCES OF DISTANCE
Verbal Concepts and Nietzscean Dualism
Narrative Understanding
      Narrative Form and Schizophrenia
      Spatial form in Modern Literature
Escape from Time
Visual Form
      Schizophrenia and the Rorschach Test
      The Visual Arts

CHAPTER 6: LANGUAGES OF INWARDNESS
Trends in Schizophrenic Language
      Desocialization
      Autonomization
      Impoverishment
Traditional Theories of Schizophrenic Language
Parallels with Modernism
      Impoverishment and Ineffability
      Inner Speech
      The Apotheosis of the Word
Intention and Meaning in Schizophrenic Speech

PART THREE: SELF AND WORLD IN THE FULL-BLOWN PSYCHOSIS

CHAPTER 7: LOSS OF SELF
Psychiatric, Psychoanalytic, and Avant-Gardist Views
Coming Apart: Modern Culture and the Self
      William James: Searching for the Self
      Literary Developments: "Imagination Imagining Itself Imagine"
Self-Disorders in Schizophrenia
      The Influencing Machine
      "Dispossession" and "Furtive Abductions"
Conclusion

CHAPTER 8: MEMOIRS OF A NERVOUS ILLNESS
Schreber's Delusional Cosmos
Panopticism
      "Rays" and "God"
      "Nerves" and "Nerve-Language"
An Allegory of Innerness
Body and Soul

CHAPTER 9: THE MORBID DREAMER
Schizophrenic Worldhood
      Major Symptoms
      Traditional Interpretations
      Anomalous Features of Schizophrenic Delusion
The Age of the World as View
Subjectivism and the Schizophrenic World
      The Realm of the Imaginary
      Epistemological Delusions
Two Objections
      The Question of the "Real"
      The Ontic and the Ontological
Schizophrenic Solipsism

CHAPTER 10: WORLD CATASTROPHE
Rampant Subjectivism
      Ontological Insecurity
      The Invention of Morel
Dissolution of Ego Boundaries
      Fichte and the Subjectivization of the All
      Kafka's "Description of a Struggle"

CHAPTER 11: CONCLUSION: PARADOXES OF THE REFLEXIVE
The Doublet of Modern Thought
The Consciousness Machine
"A Metaphysical Illness"
Romanticism, Modernism, Postmodernism
      The Romantic Critique
      Two Modernisms: Postromantic and Hypermodernist
      Philosophical Positions: Postromantic and Postmodernist
Anguish and Omnipotence

EPILOGUE: SCHIZOPHRENIA AND MODERN CULTURE
The Prevalence of Schizophrenia
      The Cross-Cultural Dimension
      The Historical Dimension
Etiological Hypotheses

APPENDIX: NEUROBIOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Biological Reductionism: Assumptions and Sources
General Critique of Neurobiological Reductionism
Specific Critique of Neurobiological Approaches
      The Anterior-Posterior Dimension
      The Cortical-Subcortical Dimension
      The Laterality Hypothesis

NOTES

NAME INDEX

SUBJECT INDEX


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