In spite of the convenient textbook criteria that specialists set forth, the distinction between the madman and the jealous man is... a difficult one. The madman, like the man in love, the jealous man, or the man prey to any overwhelming passion, is a "patient," that is, a passive agent in the grip of a force that seems to be outside himself. Madman and passionate man are both tossed in piteous agitation, immersed in delirium, or plunged into unwholesome reveries. Both derive the greatest harm from an inalterable incapacity to exert self-control. We know too little of the organic determinants of pathologic mental states, but I would wager that when these become clarified, the disturbance will be shown to be the same in paranoia and in the fits of jealousy. Where does jealousy end and paranoia begin?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man is not merely the sum of his masks. Behind the shifting face of personality is a hard nugget of self, a genetic gift.... The s...elf is malleable but elastic, snapping back to its original shape like a rubber band. Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even if someone knew the entire physical history of the world, and every mental event were identical with a physical, it would not... follow that he could predict or explain a single mental event (so described, of course).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the standards for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantation...s. The problem is not how to improve commitment, but how to abolish it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No further evidence is needed to show that "mental illness" is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be el...ucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The female sex have long been the acknowledged possessors of a sort of mental quickness and intellectual acumen, or rather sharpne...ss of vision, which may be better understood by the term sprightliness of imagination, which has enabled them to discern, or at least to recognize those smaller springs of action that regulate the conduct of mankind, which, from their supposed insignificancy, have escaped the grosser sex.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is little wonder that rape is one of the least-reported crimes. Perhaps it is the only crime in which the victim becomes the ac...cused and, in reality, it is she who must prove her good reputation, her mental soundness, and her impeccable propriety.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I always get back to the question, is it really necessary that men should consume so much of their bodily and mental energies in t...he machinery of civilised life? The world seems to me to do much of its toil for that which is not in any sense bread. Again, does not the latent feeling that much of their striving is to no purpose tend to infuse large quantities of sham into men's work?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »