In a panel on ‘Altered Realities’ at SPX 2024 that included comic book artists Christie Furnas, Peter Kuper, Laura Pérez, and Nate Powell, Furnas claimed that “the concept of truth” always depends on one’s perception (SPX 2024). In a graphic work conveying multiple realities, Furnas explains, “the truth comes from how people receive” what is…
Tag: mental illness
“She was evidently insane”: Gender and Madness in Victorian Britain
How did Victorians understand and diagnose mental illness? If a person on trial in a nineteenth-century British courtroom was thought to be suffering from “madness,” the court did not necessarily ask a physician to provide an expert opinion or to diagnose the individual. As Joel Peter Eigen explains, doctors were not respected as expert witnesses…
Writing and Reading Mental Illness Narratives with Lucid Hope
Hope has been widely recognized as playing a crucial role in the recovery process of people living with mental illness. When the possibility of recovery in the future becomes imaginable, patients can also (re)experience pleasure and satisfaction in the present (Schrank et al. 230–34). Yet the universal potential of hope for recovery remains difficult to…
What Happened to Mrs. Taguchi? Reading Medical Pluralism in Imperial Japan
Trigger Warning: This essay discusses attempted suicide. What Happened in the Hallway? The story of “Mrs. Taguchi” had a happy ending. Having attempted suicide by hanging for a third time while an inpatient at the Tokyo Matsuzawa Hospital, an elite psychiatric facility where she received treatment in 1930, the 42-year-old’s symptoms took a sudden turn…
Contextualizing Twenty-First Century Schizophrenia Memoirs and Graphic Memoirs: Between Self-Help Culture and (De)Stigmatization
Schizophrenia is one of the most misused and contested psychological terms in medicine and culture (Carlson). Consequently, myths have proliferated since Eugen Bleuler built on Emil Kraepelin’s concept of “dementia praecox” to define schizophrenia as the disentanglement of psychic functions resulting in ambivalent feelings, autism, and abnormal affectivity (Frith and Johnstone 28–30). For example, schizophrenia…
The Appeal of a Royal Procession, Diagnosed
What drove people to interrupt royal processions, could it be mental illness? What political purposes could a psychiatric diagnosis serve, could it be more than dismissing a petitioner?
Bordering the Line – A Three-Piece Creative Series (III)
Bordering the Line – A Three-Piece Creative Series tackling Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
Trump, Madness, Tricolon Crescendos
Pasquale S. Toscano // Madness is therefore defined to be a vehement dotage, or raving without a fever, far more violent than melancholy, full of anger and clamour, horrible looks, actions, gestures, troubling the patients with far greater vehemency both of body and mind, without all fear and sorrow, with such impetuous force and boldness…
Brave New World: Cyberpunk 2077’s novel depiction of mental illness
Steve Server // By now, many have heard of Cyberpunk 2077, even those not normally within the gamer-orbit. The early rollout of the game has been plagued by game-breaking glitches and unexpectedly poor graphics and performance. Beyond the controversial rollout—and underneath the typical blood and guts associated with violent role-playing games—Cyberpunk 2077 has something unique to say about mental…
‘Laughing At’: The Exploitation of Disability as Comedic Entertainment in Pre-Industrial Europe
James Belarde // “They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.” –Nathaniel Lee, 17th century dramatist, after being committed to Bethlem Hospital In late June 1340, the members of the French royal court found themselves in a tricky situation. France’s navy had just been decimated in the Battle…