Madness Art and Society

<p>How is madness experienced treated and represented? How might art think around – and beyond – psychiatric definitions of illness and wellbeing? </p><p>Madness Art and Society engages with artistic practices from theatre and live art to graphic fiction charting a multiplicity of ways of thinking critically <i>with</i> rather than <i>about</i> non-normative psychological experience. It is organised into two parts:</p><ul> <p> </p> <li>‘Structures: psychiatrists institutions treatments’ illuminates the environments figures and primary models of psychiatric care reconsidering their history and contemporary manifestations through case studies including David Edgar’s <i>Mary Barnes </i>and Milos Forman’s <i>One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.</i> </li> <p> </p> <li>‘Experiences: realities bodies moods’ promblematises diagnostic categories and proposes more radically open models of thinking in relation to experiences of madness touching upon works such as Richard Kelly’s <i>Donnie Darko </i>and Duncan Macmillan’s <i>People Places and Things</i>.</li> </ul><p>Reading its case studies as a counter-discourse to orthodox psychiatry <i>Madness Art and Society </i>seeks a more nuanced understanding of the plurality of madness in society and in so doing offers an outstanding resource for students and scholars alike. </p>