UNDERSTANDING MADNESS: FROM MENTAL ILLNESS TO A GLOBAL HUMAN PHENOMENON
UNDERSTANDING MADNESS: FROM MENTAL ILLNESS TO A GLOBAL HUMAN PHENOMENON

Summary/Abstract: Madness has been predominantly treated as a mental illness by psychiatry, a medical discipline which alleviates moral-psychological suffering along the lines of somatic illnesses. In the conception of psychiatrists, the strictly medical perspective on madness does not cover the whole phenomenon of madness, therefore new perspectives, such as the existentialist-phenomenological one may have important implications for understanding normality and abnormality in mental life. The present study discusses the arguments of psychiatrist Constantin Enăchescu for transferring the topic from the technical-clinical to the anthropological field, thus recovering not only the essence of the phenomenon of madness, but also a complete perception of the nature of the human.

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