Coping with - and resisting - fear of madness through mad intersubjectivity

Abstract

This paper focuses on the ‘fear of madness’ as arguably the most debilitating aspect of mad experience. It is necessary to see this ‘fear of madness’ as situated within contextual factors; within dominant social responses to madness that frame madness as something to be feared – the ultimate ‘Other’. My work concerns the social contexts for madness and how they weave into what madness is; how the ways that society frames and responds to madness affect the ontology of mad experience. With this in mind, coping with the fear of madness requires addressing this fear, as well as its social context. It is embedded in dominant responses to madness through stigma, taboo, erasure, correction and control. Here, I approach mad people’s coping mechanisms through thinking about how we can co-create different ways of being with madness that de-escalate this fear by countering some of these Othering assumptions, precisely through such relational processes. I draw on some parallel contexts and ‘mad world’ examples as scaffolding and inspiration for approaching madness from a point of sharedness and ‘being with’ that challenge this fearful rhetoric.