Essay Title:
‘In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom!’ (J.G Ballard). What can those groups labelled mad, bad or deviant tell us about the social world in which we live? Choosing one or more excluded group examine how their resistance to rational understanding presents a necessary challenge to our received ideas about psychology and society.
The question is about norms, rationality and commonsense and how these structure our social organization, which in turn impacts on our psychological existence in normative frames.
This question works best when considering either madness or different sexualities
People who do not conform to “common-sense” expectations of sanity/sexuality trouble us.
Why?
What are the implications of this for understanding our normative social ideas and sense of self.
Foucault is central to this question: madness – look at Madness and Civilization; sexuality – look at his 3 volume History of Sexuality.
What do people of difference (sexuality or madness) do to challenge our received ideas.
Do they hold the possibility of social and psychological revolution/transformation?
