STRONG IMAGINATION: madness creativity and human nature

• Peso del producto : 265 g
• Tapa blanda : 248 páginas
• ISBN-13 : 9780198508762
• Dimensiones del producto : 1.32 x 12.85 x 19.84 cm
• Editorial : OUP Oxford; New Ed edición (7 marzo 2002)
• Idioma: : Inglés

Madness is the central mystery of the human psyche. Our minds evolved to give us a faithful understanding of reality, to allow us to integrate into our communities, and to help us to adapt our behaviour to our environment. Yet in serious mental illness, the mind does exactly the opposite of these things. The sufferer builds castles of imaginative delusion, fails to adapt, and becomes a stranger among their own people. Mental illness is no marginal phenomenon: it is found in all societies and all historical epochs, and the genes that underlie it are quite common. Furthermore, the traits that identify the madman are found in attenuated form in normal thinking and feeling. The persistence of madness, then, is a terrible puzzle from both an evolutionary and a human point of view.