'Five Portraits of the Insane' by the nineteenth century French artist Théodore Géricault are said to be all that remain of originally ten commissioned portraits of insane patients. Each painting depicts a particular mental condition, a so-called monomania including a kleptomaniac, a woman mad with envy, and a child kidnapper. Almost nothing is known about these portraits, but they raise a multitude of questions. Who are these people? In what way are they insane? What and where are the five missing madnesses? Intrigued and inspired by an absence, Tan decides to go in search of them. Pairing personal impressions with formal analysis and archival research, the essay ventures far beyond the boundaries of art history.

The annual NCAA Basketball Tournament, which has become known as “March Madness” has emerged as a major sports event, matched only by the Super Bowl and the Olympics. In Madness, Mark Mehler and Charles Paikert tell the stories behind the ten most compelling and memorable championship games in tournament history, from North Carolina’s triple-overtime victory over Wilt Chamberlain’s Kansas Wildcats in 1957 to Duke’s heart stopping victory over underdog Butler in 2010. As a bonus, five more games that just missed the cut are also examined. Madness goes beyond the games to tell the the backstories of these classics, each entirely unique unto itself. For example, Jim Valvano taking his impossible dream of a national title and making it come true for the 1983 North Carolina State Wolfpack; Rollie Massimino turning spaghetti and clam sauce into inspiration for his underachieving 1985 Villanova team; and Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, breaking down in tears while taking a Broadway curtain call in front of a wildly-applauding audience who two hours earlier didn't know who these two guys were decades after their head-to-head matchup in 1979. Some of these stories also resonate far beyond the basketball court, including the 1966 triumph by the Texas Western Miners, which helped chisel away the college basketball color line and stamped their victory as "Glory Road." Over sixty years of college basketball history is brought to life in this must-have for all basketball fans.

'Little madnesses' are our most deeply felt enthusiasms, investments and attachments in the sphere of culture. The term was coined by the child psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, whose work on transitional phenomena grew out of his naming of the transitional object, and extended into preliminary explorations of the crucial role played by cultural experience in a life that feels satisfying. In our socially and culturally sanctioned little madnesses, everyone can find relief from the burden of having to maintain a clear boundary between inner and outer worlds, fantasy and reality, because it is in the space between them that we can find the enthusiasms and passions that excite our creative imaginations. This idea offers intriguing pathways towards understanding how we can engage effectively with the world at a public, social level without setting aside our inner lives, our emotions and our most deeply felt attachments. In Little Madnesses, writers, artists, scholars and experts in a range of fields and disciplines explore the idea of transitional phenomena and consider its potential to extend and deepen our understanding of cultural experience in mental and social life, focusing on the importance of space, place and boundaries in cultural experience; on how we can negotiate media use and cultural identity; and on the aesthetic and creative aspects of cultural experience. Topics covered include cult films, computer use, installation art, trips to the cinema, museums and galleries, the agony and ecstasy of making art and the significance of life stage in cultural experience.

Collection of true stories of people who lived through the Cultural Revolution in China from 1966 to 1976.

The philosophy of psychosis and the psychosis of philosophy: a philosopher draws on his experience of madness. In this book, philosopher and linguist Wouter Kusters examines the philosophy of psychosis—and the psychosis of philosophy. By analyzing the experience of psychosis in philosophical terms, Kusters not only emancipates the experience of the psychotic from medical classification, he also emancipates the philosopher from the narrowness of textbooks and academia, allowing philosophers to engage in real-life praxis, philosophy in vivo. Philosophy and madness—Kusters's preferred, non-medicalized term—coexist, one mirroring the other. Kusters draws on his own experience of madness—two episodes of psychosis, twenty years apart—as well as other first-person narratives of psychosis. Speculating about the maddening effect of certain words and thought, he argues, and demonstrates, that the steady flow of philosophical deliberation may sweep one into a full-blown acute psychotic episode. Indeed, a certain kind of philosophizing may result in confusion, paradoxes, unworldly insights, and circular frozenness reminiscent of madness. Psychosis presents itself to the psychotic as an inescapable truth and reality. Kusters evokes the mad person's philosophical or existential amazement at reality, thinking, time, and space, drawing on classic autobiographical accounts of psychoses by Antonin Artaud, Daniel Schreber, and others, as well as the work of phenomenological psychiatrists and psychologists and such phenomenologists as Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He considers the philosophical mystic and the mystical philosopher, tracing the mad undercurrent in the Husserlian philosophy of time; visits the cloud castles of mystical madness, encountering LSD devotees, philosophers, theologians, and nihilists; and, falling to earth, finds anxiety, emptiness, delusions, and hallucinations. Madness and philosophy proceed and converge toward a single vanishing point.

In the mid-1800s, a utopian movement to rehabilitate the insane resulted in a wave of publicly funded asylums—many of which became unexpected centers of cultural activity. Housed in magnificent structures with lush grounds, patients participated in theatrical programs, debating societies, literary journals, schools, and religious services. Theaters of Madness explores both the culture these rich offerings fomented and the asylum’s place in the fabric of nineteenth-century life, reanimating a time when the treatment of the insane was a central topic in debates over democracy, freedom, and modernity. Benjamin Reiss explores the creative lives of patients and the cultural demands of their doctors. Their frequently clashing views turned practically all of American culture—from blackface minstrel shows to the works of William Shakespeare—into a battlefield in the war on insanity. Reiss also shows how asylums touched the lives and shaped the writing of key figures, such as Emerson and Poe, who viewed the system alternately as the fulfillment of a democratic ideal and as a kind of medical enslavement. Without neglecting this troubling contradiction, Theaters of Madness prompts us to reflect on what our society can learn from a generation that urgently and creatively tried to solve the problem of mental illness.

Terri Cheney ripped the covers off her secret battle with bipolar disorder in her New York Times bestselling memoir, Manic. Now, in this "stigma-buster" and "must-read", she blends a gripping narrative with practical advice (Elyn Saks). Cheney flips mental illness inside out, exposing the visceral story of the struggles, stigma, relationship dilemmas, treatments, and recovery techniques she and others have encountered. Sometimes humorous, sometimes harrowing, Modern Madness is the ultimate owner's manual on mental illness, breaking this complex subject down into readily understandable concepts like Instructions for Use, Troubleshooting, Maintenance, and Warranties. Whether you have a diagnosis, love or work with someone who does, or are just trying to understand this emerging phenomenon of our times, Modern Madness is a courageous clarion call for acceptance, both personal and public. With her candid and riveting writing, Cheney delivers more than heartbreak; she promises hope.