Wisdom, Madness and Folly

Adventure into the Unconscious

John Custance. London: Christopher Johnson. Pp. 207. 18/'. It is very difficult to review this unusual book. Mr. Custance (whose earlier book, "Wisdom, Madness and Folly," will be remembered)?is a self-confessed sufferer from manic depressive psychosis, and he has written the different chapters in different phases of his illness. It would be easy therefore to discard the book as being the moons...

Lady Wisdom and Dame Folly at Qumran

Healers and healing in early modern Italy

fool" or the wily "artificial fool" like Friedrich Taubmann who served as "merry counselor' to the electors of Saxony. Midelfort's discussion of court buffoons, like his closing chapters on pilgrims and hospital inmates, exploits little-known, or insufficiently utilized, archival and printed literature in ways that help overturn facile generalizations. 'Pilgrims in Search of Reason' mines mirac...

Janus-Faced Madness in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power

This paper is an attempt to discuss the concept of madness and its differentcauses and functions in Bessie Head’s semiautobiographical novel A Question ofPower. It aims to explore the multifaceted insanity of Elizabeth the exiled coloredprotagonist in terms of different theories. We will see how once a devastatingtrauma turns out to be a habilitating schizophrenia. Head challenges the readers’n...

Expanding Examples of Madness According to the Concept and Criterion of Madness Perspective of Jurisprudence, Law and Psychology

Background and aim: Madness is a subject that has long been the subject of legal attention. Today, Industrial societies are confronted with a phenomenon called mental disorders and those with such disease which unfortunately is increasing day by day. Obviously, laws over time for scientific advances need to be reformed. This article explores the legal status and the way in which mental patients...