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Insanity – a term decried by Thomas Szasz – is used here as a sobriquet for the kinds of mental aberrations that seem to lie outside the norms of mental behavior: neurological disorders (not incurred by biologic failure), dementia praecox, hysteria, hallucinatory episodes, disruptive anti-social outbursts, paralysis (not caused by biologic failure), schizophrenia, paranoia, et al.
Those in my circle, who are attuned to psychological disorders – Tim Hibert and Gilles Fernandez – are aware of the many kinds of mental disorders that are called insane, but know that the panoply of bizarre human behavior also includes anti-social behavior which lie outside this discussion, and are deliberate in nature whereas “insane” activity is often spontaneous and out of the control of the person afflicted.
An article in the May 27, 2019 New Yorker by Jerome Groopman (Recanati Professor of Medicine at Harvard) looks at Psychiatry’s fraught history in his review of Mind Fixers [Norton] by Anne Harrington (history-of-science professor at Harvard).
The article/review presents a concise rendition of the struggle by psychiatry and neurology to determine the cause of mental illness: insanity.
All the names, theories, and efforts are proffered: Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Pierre Janet, Freud, Charcot, Adolf Meyer, Eugen Bleuler et al.
The “battle” has been to determine if insanity is derived from biology (the body) or the mind, with reference to Descarte’s theories.
Schizophrenia, psychotropic drugs, “cures” and failures – something Tim Hebert and I discussed in comments here about Adamski’s apparent “lunacy” [See below] – are well delineated.
But for this piece, here, I’m accenting disturbances of the mind, accepting biological failures (Alzheimers and dementia) as outside the scope of my point.
People who hear voices, see odd things, and have illusory episodes that are hallucinatory in nature but come to them as a material, actual event or episode is the gist of what I’m getting at – or, rather, what Jose Caravaca is getting at in his Theory of Distortion.
A notable example of what occurs to people who sink into mental illness, or even just have a recoverable bout of bizarre observations or encounters (UFOs, Big Foot, Nessie, angels, spirits, et cetera) is what happened to John Keel.
Momentary bouts of hallucination or UFO (or monster) observations are akin to what many of us experience as a déjà vu moment – when we think we are experiencing something we have experienced before. The moment passes and we are no worse for wear.
The insane person is one who continues to be assaulted by bizarre experiences, sightings, and hallucinations.
Tim Hebert observes, from his work with schizophrenics, that psycho-medicinals often quell their “insanity.”
For UFO observers, something curbs, usually, their “insane” transient episode, although a few have gone off the deep end as it were: some contactees, and a few cases from UFO literature such as the ongoing Billy Meier oeuvre.
It’s when a person remains to be assaulted, over and over again – with UFO sightings or feelings of being abducted – that “insanity” may be allowed as the operating meme.
Jose Caravaca’s litany of Marian encounters – the Fatima episodes being the de rigueur example – are a kind of soporific insanity.
The episodes reek of hallucination and often hysteria but subside and slide into a pastiche of holy (or religious) sanctimony. In UFO lore, the 1964 Lonnie Zamora/Socorro episode is of a like kind.
No matter how we look at UFO sightings or Big Foot encounters, those who present their experience may be said to have been temporarily “insane.”
It’s not an epithet – insane – to be used in its historical context – as Foucault brilliantly offers, but it is a term that aptly applies, and which could, one day, replace the inherently ignorant thinking that UFOs are visits by extraterrestrial entities.
One can only hope.
RR
http://ufocon.blogspot.com – The UFO Iconoclast(s)
Source:
https://ufocon.blogspot.com/2019/05/degrees-of-insanity-ufo-experience.html
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