SHAKESPEARE and MADNESS

http://theshakespeareblog.com/2012/03/shakespeares-minds-diseased-mental-illness-and-its-treatment/

Shakespeare was clearly fascinated by mental illness, many characters displaying a variety of symptoms from Lear’s madness, Jaques’ melancholy, Timon’s bitter cursing, Macbeth’s visions and Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking, to the obsessiveness of Leontes.

It’s usually accepted that Shakespeare was influenced in medical matters by his son in law, the renowned doctor John Hall. Some of his patients suffer from a kind of mental illness which he calls “hypochondriac melancholy”, combined with physical symptoms such as fever. According to his Casebook, patients were offered his usual combinations of bloodletting and purgatives, as if curing the physical symptoms would also cure the mental ones.

Glad that things have changed to such an Enlightened approach :slight_smile:

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Poor Shakespeare. I sense that he wouldn’t be quite delighted to see his magnificent work used for such profane purpose.

As it is oftenly case with poets and philosophers, mental illness are being poeticised, romanticised, if not demonized, all to illustrate an act of crossing the borders for which only geniuses or fools for Christ (see:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foolishness_for_Christ) are capable.
So what we have in such works is basically, an anti psychiatric approach - I can see why you choose a fictional charachters and imagined life to get the arguments for real world (sic!)
In the core of anti psychiatric modeling of characters in Shakespeare’s world is a relation described by one of his readers.
"The disease is becoming the answer to what life is and what life gives: disease, seen as escape, as well as freedom from responsibility, unconditioned anything, but the disease is seen as confirmation of identity, as a confirmation of himself in a world where there is no room for any identity or for their own realization that it would not be seen as a “success” or “defeat”. For us, for our culture, the disease is a death because life means absolutely Health; It is for man loss of self because the only identity that arises is the identity of a healthy man, efficient, productive (…) The disease is the fear of the unknown, unfathomable. "

Franco Basaglia.
As if our mental health problems have only a physical source! :smiley:

PS. Not only that your arguments are borrowed from vulgar realism but they also represent a dangerous method sometimes called reversed mimesis - a belief that life imitate what is written in fictional worlds.

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i don’t know what your on about?

About your ambiguous bolded sentence or sneaking your anti medication propaganda under Shakespeare’s interpretations.

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[quote=“Sarad, post:4, topic:35261, full:true”]
About your ambiguous bolded sentence or sneaking your anti medication propaganda under Shakespeare’s interpretations.[/quote]

You’re reading a hell of a lot into a post about Shakespeare & madness.

What anti medication propaganda?

Why do you make such assumptions & judgements? i’m in favour of a more comprehensive psychiatry & wise use of medications. i’m Not anti-medication.

'Glad that things have changed to such an Enlightened approach ’ he/she wrote …

I think that there was no antimedication propaganda.

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Why are you parroting the same thing all over again.?

It would be much more interesting if you’d have balls to say what you want to say directly. Then I could actually grab my candy popcorns.

:lollipop:

I guess you’re just hoping that everyone doesn’t remember your prior postings and is too lazy to check them.

That is called irony. Or sarcasm.

Is this to me? i do speak very directly - i’m Not opposed to a comprehensive psychiatry & wise use of medications - i think that should be part of a more ideal/more comprehensive psychosocial approach, with a focus on a far more integral understanding - But other than that what you read into anything that i post is your stuff.

What would they be? Please link me to them? Being critical of the mass drugging of society as the primary approach to mental health ‘care’, & being aware of more comprehensive approaches, isn’t the same as being anti-medication.

Yeah I guess I should just believe to a a guy who equals schizophrenia with shamanism lol.
I’m not reading into your posts, I am just debunking your ambiguity and sarcasm.

And yes it was to you.

Click on your user icon. You can see all previous postings you have made on your profile.

I’m not here to argue with you or to go through some ridiculous charade where I link you to your many, many anti-med postings. I have better things to do with my Saturday. I am only here to help alert readers who may not be aware to the context of your comments and the existence of your agenda. Carry on.

Just wondering why Shakespeare became so famous, were there other poets and authors too in his era, needless to say I have read no Shakespeare in my life, just wondering … ?

i don’t equal them at all - they are very different things. There are however correlations between what comes under the whole range of non-ordinary states.

Because he’s really, really good :smile_cat: with the English language, with human motivation, and with the form of the play.

[quote=“Rhubot, post:13, topic:35261, full:true”]
Click on you user icon. You can see all previous postings you have made on your profile.[/quote]

Nothing anti-medication that i can see. Some stuff trying to raise awareness on more comprehensive approaches & understandings to better mental health care.

What a Hero - thanks. Are you satisfied now that everyone has been alerted to my ‘many anti-med postings’?

Yep! As I said, carry on!

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Will do. Thank you for your permission.

Ah, she can’t be a hero- we are just a bunch of conventional mortals.
But you, you and daimon, you gonna save the world one day.

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