Format:
XIV, 177 S.
Edition:
1. publ.
ISBN:
0-8014-2210-8
Content:
Insanity - in clinical practice as in the popular imagination - is seen as a state of believing things that are not true and perceiving things that do not exist. Most schizophrenics, however, do not act as if they mistake their delusions for reality. In a work of uncommon insight and empathy, Louis A. Sass shatters conventional thinking about insanity by juxtaposing the narratives of delusional schizophrenics with the philosophical writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Content:
In the formative years of psychiatry Freud, Bleuler, and Jaspers all studied Daniel Paul Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness as a model of psychotic thought. Sass provides a nuanced interpretation of Schreber's Memoirs in the context of Wittgenstein's analysis of philosophical solipsism. A dauntless critic of the illusions of philosophy, Wittgenstein likened the speculative excesses of traditional metaphysics to mental illness. Sass observes that many of the "intellectual diseases" that Wittgenstein discerned - diseases involving detachment from social existence and practical concerns, and exaggerated processes of abstraction and self-consciousness - have striking affinities with the symptoms of schizophrenia. Like the philosophical solipsist, the schizophrenic may define his or her own consciousness as the center of the universe - and may experience his or her delusional world as a product of that same consciousness
Content:
Schizophrenia, Sass demonstrates, is not the loss of rationality, but the far point in the trajectory of a consciousness turned in upon itself. The Paradoxes of Delusion will be necessary reading for anyone concerned with the preoccupations of modern philosophy and the realities of mental illness
Language:
English
Keywords:
1889-1951 Wittgenstein, Ludwig
;
Schizophrenie
;
1842-1911 Schreber, Daniel Paul
;
1889-1951 Wittgenstein, Ludwig
;
Philosophie
;
1842-1911 Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken Schreber, Daniel Paul
;
Schizophrenie
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