Madness From Without: Foucault’s Flaw
Carolyn Hendry
For Dr. Allen
History of the Body
31 January 1995
One of Foucault's more noticeable traits as an author is the certitude with which he displays his opinions. His attitude does not postulate his thoughts as theories, but presents them as facts. His writing, especially in his Madness & Civilization, is peppered with quotes from untold dozens of men who considered themselves authorities on the subject of insanity and the insane. His distance in time from these specialists lends his writing an unbiased, objective flavor that is deceptively sweet and agreeable to the reader. The body of previous writers that Foucault cites, his own mastery of expression, and the general public's ignorance of what it is to be mad, all combine to allow Foucault's words to smoothly enter the mainstream of human discourse.
This should not be so, however. Foucault's writing talent and researching abilities are not enough to allow him the confidence that he exhibits. His writing about madness is just as valid as a mechanical engineer's (while depending upon his engineering training) technical analysis of Baroque music or a football coach's (while relying upon his coaching expertise) evaluation of a chess match. The training and abilities that Foucault possesses fail him in this endeavor. The best that he could do would be to report on what observers scrutinized the mad and how they explained what they saw. Foucault does this and then asserts his powers of thought beyond their bounds. He does not admit that what these "specialists" thought was merely from an outsider's viewpoint. He does not postulate that the reality of madness could actually have been quite different from what the "sane" men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries decided. There is no mention of the fact that these men, like Foucault, suffered from the same deficiency as the engineer and the coach in the examples above: Without the experience of madness, the language to describe it and guess at its causes is missing.
Foucault could not know the truth of what he was discussing for his "sane" status prohibited him from knowing the language and the world of the insane.
Now, perhaps Foucault does not seek to get at the "truth" of madness but only to expound upon the surface, language reality of insanity.[1] He does not seem to ever admit to an ultimate source of truth and, in my reading, seems captivated by the ebb and flow of society's philosophical discussions. Even if the truth is not the aim of his discourse here, in other of his texts he is at least cognizant enough of the relativity of the subject he discusses to make note of the discourses’ deficiencies.[2] He should do so when talking about madness also.
Challenged by chemical imbalances in my brain, I have be diagnosed[CH1] and treated for manic depression since 1982. I speak from faint memories of my deepest depression—and know that my "mad" incidents share none of the motivations nor reality that Foucault's experts detail. The closest that he comes to touching the truth of madness is when he sums up the knowing of the classical period: "In the classical period, the man of tragedy and the man of madness confront each other, without a possible dialogue, without a common language" (p. 111). There are no words in the spoken language to communicate the reality of madness. Our social speaking relies upon the assumption that there are moral imperatives, that there are things and people we hold intrinsically valuable. For the mad, this is not so. When "sane" people function, it is to interact with the people and events that surround them. The insane do not. Their world is complete in itself. Mad fits are not caused by evil and sin, as the religious of the eighteenth century proposed. When the usual world of people and pressure triggers a fit, the mad recoils into his/her own microcosm, a peaceful and dependable environment. This retreat from reality does not "[cancel] out both the day's chatter and the lying dark" (p. 111) but grants to the mad person a warm, safe realm in which to exist. It is not a bad place, but rather a warm and welcoming place where no demands can be made nor promises broken.
The men of the mid-eighteenth century believed that madness was caused, like leprosy, by disease. It was an incorrect "moral myth" that madness was
"a mysterious disease that spread . . . from the houses of confinement and would soon threaten the cities. . . .[I]t was said that the air, tainted by disease would corrupt the residential quarters. And the great image of medieval horror reappeared, giving birth, in the metaphors of dread, to a second panic. . . . 'Even the air of the place, which can be smelled four hundred yards away--everything suggests that one is approaching a place of violence, an asylum of degradation and infortune[sic]'" (p. 202).
The insane were thought to be infested with "the corruption of morals as well as with the decomposition of the flesh" (p. 203). But madness is not something that can be caught or transmitted as can the chicken pox or the measles: Unless one considers that social stress can force men and women to withdraw into madness. Pressure to perform to an externally imposed standard has driven many people to withdraw from social interaction. Their inability to communicate where they have gone to is frightening to those around them who still function on a social level. This silence, too, has been misinterpreted by Foucault's sources.
The classical period's insistence on silence as part of the treatment of the insane does not seem to make any logical sense when madness is seen as it truly is.
"Compared to the incessant dialogue of reason and madness during the Renaissance, classical internment had been a silencing. . . . Confinement, prisons, dungeons, even tortures, engaged in a mute dialogue between reason and unreason--the dialogue of struggle. This dialogue itself was not disengaged; silence was absolute; there was no longer any common language between madness and reason. . . . And it is only at this point that a common language becomes possible again, in so far as it will be one of acknowledged guilt. . . . In this inveterate silence, transgression has taken over the very sources of speech" (p. 152).
When one is enveloped in the certainty of insane silence, there is nothing that language can offer. There is no need to communicate ideas with others, for they do not signify anything to the insane. There is no need to gain knowledge from others, for there is nothing that one seeks to learn. Silence is the reassuring shield that guards against intrusion and protection from penetration of the outside world. This silence is not a frightening thing, but rather a sought-after companion. It is not that influences from the outside do not matter, but they are relegated to the realm of the body and are easily disregarded until the spirit has had time to heal and has the energy to deal with the social world.
For someone that we love to retreat from the interactive realm, preferring the monotone of warm silence, is a threatening thing. My husband and children tell me that they feel quite frantic when I withdraw from them into myself. My chemical imbalance exaggerates a normal impulse to have time to be alone when healing and rejuvenation are necessary. It is not a viral infection, a moral sin, or a punishment of silence that causes or "cures" my withdrawal. When I am strong enough, I re-enter the social world to interaction with people. Foucault errs in merely looking at the reports of those who saw the insane and then projected their own fears and feelings onto them. From circus performers to moral transgressors to infected patients, the ages have traced a wide variety of reactions to the insanes' retreat from the social world. In other instances Foucault is cognizant of the differences that exist in perspective--between men and women, between various cultures. He should acknowledge here also that he is merely a stranger looking in on an existence that he cannot know. He cannot explain madness as it really was or is. He has not the language--for the language of the insane is not something that the rational public can hear or understand. It is an inner language that has--and needs--no words.
[CH1] Diagnosed after my marriage, I had suffered depressed and manic episodes from my first memories. When I was 10, I would lay on my bed and cry—without any understanding of the source of my sadness. I understand now that there was no tangible reason. It was my body’s reaction to a misbegotten signal from a chemical misfire within my brain. No outside thing caused or, at that time, could cure me. All that I was felt was disconnected from the outer world. 3/2009 FL
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