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| NEW INTERNATIONALIST 209 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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THIS MONTH'S THEME | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Learning
to live with The
madness of hunger Images
of madness
Fear and
freedom 'Do
what they say, Sello
and Medusa Asylum
for Mr H The
good doctor
Simply - understanding distress The same
difference |
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THE FEAR OF MADNESS |
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| FROM THIS MONTH'S EDITOR | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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That was a few weeks ago, Good Friday, when it wasn't much more than bits of paper and a computer disk. So I went to the doctor with my disk. 'Doctor,' I said, 'the computer has eaten my magazine.' 'Oh dear,' he said, the slightest hint of a wry smile playing around his lips. 'Let's see what we've got here.' He took it into his surgery. I sat anxiously in the waiting room. What had I done wrong? Should I have written MADNESS on the disk? Was that needlessly provocative? Was this some kind of revenge? Computers are always right... But not in this case - the computer had done something to itself. My dozen or so neat files (articles for the magazine) were now 60 'chains', random chunks of NI No. 209 text strewn about the place. Somehow I'd have to put them back together again. Some magazine themes, I suspect, take on a life of their own. They are monsters, the Houdinis of journalistic treatment, forever struggling to escape. If you tie them down they squeeze out when you aren't looking and head off in directions you didn't mean to go. It's tempting to follow, especially when your subject is madness. Many of my friends will probably not be happy that I've resurrected the arcane term 'madness'. They are interested mostly in mental health and they work with great skill and energy to promote it. But I know most of them now feel that they are up against largely political odds, that few people care. I think the general lack of support for their work has more to do with fear - fear of mentally-ill people and fear of madness itself. And it's that fear which this issue of the NI seeks to tackle. By nature I'm a sentimental romantic. I spend too much time thinking about things as I want them to be, trying to make them into a story ('a romance') that never quite fits the facts. But I don't think it's just sentimental to imagine that the thousands of people who spend so many lonely years in institutions for the 'insane' are in some way sacrificial - hostages given to madness so that the rest of us can get on with our lives. We can believe we are sane so long as we are not like them. And to be honest, if mad people must be locked away (whether in institutions or in a drugged stupor), I'd be much happier locking up the psychopaths, megalomaniacs and power-crazed, self-seeking lunatics who want to rule the world (and all too often do) than the captives we let madness take day by day without a second thought. Anyway here it is, the MADMAG, as it's been dubbed during the production process. Two people, David Kessler and Suman Fernando, both psychiatrists, have been more help with it than perhaps they know. With just a few days left before we go to print, I hope it doesn't have any more stunts up its sleeve, one final bid to make for freedom. |
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David Ransom
for the New Internationalist Co-operative |
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Letters
FRONT COVER ILLUSTRATION: Alison Dunn |
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Can't
find directory. The computer was speaking to me. Computers only speak to me
when something's gone wrong. It was refusing to obey my commands. In fact
it had eaten this magazine.
