Going Sane, Adam Phillips
Going Sane: Maps of Happiness - Adam Phillips, Hamish Hamilton, 256 pages (February 24, 2005). ISBN:0241142091
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In Going Sane, Adam Phillips suggest that our culture has been better able to address the subject of madness than sanity. He points out that madness has loomed large in the western literary canon, with sanity taking the back seat. Not surprisingly, he draws on Hamlet to illustrate this thesis. Polonius is the only Shakespearian character to use the word "sanity", and only once, and even then it comes out badly when compared to madness. Polonius talks of Hamlet's utterances being "pregnant" with "a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of".
Modern western culture has a romantic obsession with the myth of the mad genius, and this has glamorised madness. The mad have been written about endlessly, while the sane have been ignored.
Being a psychiatrist, Adam Phillips also looks at how sanity relates to areas that affect modern tormented souls. Being a Freudian, sex and childhood loom large here, but I found these sections less interesting than his ruminations about money and the fundamental nature of sanity itself. Adam Phillips has a lot to say about "everyday sanity" and various kinds of madness in an attempt to delineate the "truly sane". For instance, he suggests, that “The sane person is the person who can include their madness without being overwhelmed by it. And yet for some reason this doesn’t catch on ... ”
In Going Sane, Adam Phillips argues that we need appealing kinds of sanity to which we can aspire, otherwise our epidemic of mental illness will continue. But it's no good pursuing the average suburban existence. Sanity, he suggests, should be risk-taking, creative and surprising rather than predictable, conformist and boring. He says, “Sanity is, on the one hand, a reassuring compact of normality. But I think it’s also a cover story for anxieties we have about not being quite as sane as we would wish” and "We need the idea of sanity to help us to believe that upbringing and education are worthwhile, that culture works, that whatever is sane about us can be placated. Sanity is part of that peculiarly modern vocabulary of hope that depends on progress; on the belief that what makes our lives worth living is that they can be improved.".
The retreat from sanity into a spurious normality is explored when Adam Phillips looks at how "going sane" must involve an improvement of our relationship with money: "To want money over and above the amount one actually needs to live is an essential part of modern people's passion for ignorance about themselves."
Some of the reviews in the left margin praise this book highly but the careful buyer should note that these reviewers have a literary background. This, perhaps, reflects the fact that the book can be considered well written if you like a high-blown literary style. It's a bit like reading Proust--which some may view as a compliment and others like an invitation to avoid.
The two reviewers with a scientific background really disliked the book. In the Scotsman, Andrew Crumey admits to "having been thoroughly confused by this book". Crumey has a background in physics and therefore, like me, finds the lack of clear definitions, somewhat off-putting. But Crumey, I think, makes the opposite error by seeking for definitions that are too precise. He defines the insane as having "somehow lost their grip on reality". From this he states that the schizophrenic are insane, but the depressed and autistic are not. This is too simple. Couldn't you argue the autistic are not dealing properly with the real world, i.e. have indeed lost their grip? I can give no clear answer unless tighter and better definitions are given. Unfortunately, Adam Phillips does not help me. Fortunately, there are other books which consider these issues within the framework of a scientific psychology, see the left margin.
The other very negative review is from Anthony Daniels in the Telegraph. He's a medical doctor and dismisses Phillips as "un-self-critical pub bore who thinks he has something important to say but hasn't". Daniels' review, on the other hand, considers Happiness- Lessons from A New Science by Richard Layard as worth reading (I would certainly agree with that conclusion).
For Adam Phillips, sanity is not about living a complacent, "normal" existence. It's about learning to enjoy conflict and dissatisfaction. Inspiration, not humdrum existence, is the touchstone of sanity. Because sanity goes beyond the norm, other people might not approve. He agrees with David Weeks in Eccentrics that unusual people can be the most sane. As Adam Phillips says, "for the sane, the need to be recognised, like the need to be understood, is unnecessary; they [do not] subscribe to the view that relationships are the kind of thing that one can be good or bad at ... any more than you can be good or bad at having red hair."
- In summary, Going Sane by Adam Phillips is an addition to the literature of madness and sanity, and as such can be compared to the fictions of Dostoevsky or Freud. But if you want to encounter the latest, scientific ideas on "true sanity", then there is growing literature on "positive psychology" that may prove a less confusing and useful read. Many of the key texts are listed in the left margin.