[pt] O objetivo da dissertação é, a partir da obra de Maura Lopes Cançado, entender de que forma a escrita pode engendrar modos de fuga em uma situação aparentemente sem saída - como por exemplo, a internação em um hospital psiquiátrico, onde a escritora passou boa parte de sua vida. Hospício-deus é como Maura denomina esta sensação de clausura, que não se resume ao fato de estar internada, mas à outras experiências subjetivas, mais sutis e, por isso mesmo, mais difíceis de escapar. No entanto, é necessário fugir, pois é o próprio desespero de fuga e o desejo de evasão, que compõem a força motriz da sua escrita. Fez-se necessário neste trabalho, portanto, mapear a geografia do hospício-deus, em suas diferentes imagens, para elaborar através do diálogo entre o diário, a obra ficcional, e a leitura crítica, a melhor maneira de escapar a ele. / [en] The purpose of this work is, trough de writings of Maura Lopes Cançado, understand how literature is able to create ways of escape in situations where there are not, at least apparently, any exits, such as the confinement in a psychiatric hospital, where the writer spent most of her life. Asylum- god is how Maura called this sensation of enclosure, related also to other subjective experiences, more subtle and therefore more difficult to escape. However, it is necessary to flee, as it is the very despair of escape and the desire of evasion, the driving force of her writing. It was necessary in this work, therefore, to map the geography of this asylum-god to develop through the dialogue between the diary, the fictional work, and the literary criticism, the best way to evade.

In this thesis we consider cinema’s representations of mental images. Our central concerns are the formal aspects of the presentation of memory and imagination, and the various functions which the different types of mental images perform. While along the way we engage with a number of expedient theories, on the whole the argument is free of any over-arching theoretical approach, instead focusing largely on the evidence of the wide range of films — from different eras, genres and national cinemas — with which we engage. We begin with a consideration of filmic representations of memory, tackling such questions as: What exactly is a flashback? What different functions do flashbacks perform? What is the relationship between flashback and the mental images of memory? Identifying an inadequacy in current terminology, we here introduce the concept of ‘act of memory’ in order to distinguish between representations of the past which constitute an analogue of the mental images of memory and more properly subjective representations of mental images. In Part II we develop a taxonomy of the major forms of imagination. Here our discussion of imagination draws on cognitive and phenomenological theories of imagination, and the chapter on dreams draws substantially on Freud. In our consideration of the functions of the various sorts of mental images we establish a series of character types who are prone to experiencing mental images. Throughout Part II we argue that representations of mental images are often closely related to themes of madness — that many representations of mental images can be understood as traces of madness.

The aim of the study was to explore the constructions and meanings around madness/mental illness among a group of young professionals in order to broaden the dialogue around mental illness to include the voices of a certain section of the community. The current dialogue around mental illness is dominated by the view that madness/mental illness is the domain of scientifically trained professionals. The aim of the study was to explore the constructions of those not part of a mental health profession and those not suffering from mental illness and how these constructions may influence their behaviour towards those suffering from mental illness. The epistemological framework of the study falls into a social constructionist perspective. This epistemological approach allows for the exploration of previously taken for granted truths. When adhering to this approach the function of research is to explore a particular version of reality in an embedded context and language seen as the structuring aspect of social reality. From this approach a discourse analysis was done using the transcripts of audiotaped interviews with the participants. The four participants chosen for the study fell into the 23-26 years age group brackets, had finished tertiary education and have started working on a professional career. None of the participants have had any formal contact with mental health services or professionals or those suffering from mental illness. In the process of analysing the texts five discourses were identified and discussed. The first of these discourses was the scientific discourse around mental illness in which madness is constructed mostly as an illness with genetic, chemical or emotional causes. The knowledge and expertise of mental health professionals is seen as important to the general public as they seem to have little knowledge on the meaning of mental illness themselves. The second discourse that was identified was mental illness as the domain of professionals and mental institutions. Most of the respondents seemed comfortable with this idea and used distancing strategies in order to explain their non-involvement in the care of the mentally ill. Mental illness as individual experience was discussed next and in this discourse mental illness was seen as an exclusive experience to which few except the sufferer has access. The fourth discourse discussed was the mental illness as unknown discourse. In this discourse madness/mental illness, those suffering from it and the treatment thereof, is a mystery to those who are not part of these experiences. The final discourse discussed was the mental illness as bad discourse where those suffering from mental illness were constructed as dangerous, possibly violent, unpredictable and damaging. During the analysis of the data it was found that the majority of the respondents used techniques to distance themselves from involvement of the mentally ill and ascribed to the discourse that madness/mental illness is the domain of mental health professionals only. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Psychology / unrestricted

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The aim of this dissertation is to critically examine the representation of female madness in The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys, and Surfacing, by Margaret Atwood, with a particular emphasis on the depiction of madness as a form of revolt against the oppression of women in patriarchal societies. I focus specifically on the textual construction of female insanity in three twentieth-century reading of these depictions in relation to an influential contemporary example of Western psychological discourse, namely The Divided Self (1960). Drawing on the work of Western feminist scholars such as Elaine Showalter and Lillian Feder, I engage with the broader questions of the female malady and dilemma. I pay attention not only to the various tropes, metaphors and images which are employed in the representation of madness, but also give attention to the explanations of madness that are offered in each text as well as the ways in which the various stories of madness are resolved. In the introduction, I offer an overview of the history of madness (and female madness in particular) and consider the importance of Laing and the antipsychiatry movement in challenging conventional definitions. In Chapter 1, I explore the depiction of madness in The Bell Jar, with the focus on the protagonist, Esther, whose madness, I argue, is represented as a conflict between female creativity and mid-twentieth century feminine ideals. In Chapter 2, I discuss Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel which gives a voice to the madwoman in the attic in Charlotte Jane Eyre. I argue tha rather that a particular construction of madness that of the stereotypical wild madwoman is imposed upon her. In addition, I argue that her madness is presented as the result of being abandoned and cast as insane by her husband, whom she marries as part of an economic exchange. In Chapter 3, I explore the ways in which, in Surfacing madness is attributed both to her abortion as well as to the realisation of her own complicity in the patriarchal oppression of women and nature. In all three novels, I suggest, female madness is represented sympathetically as a reaction to, and revolt against patriarchal oppression. In addition, I argue that each novel makes a contribution to an emancipatory feminist politics by suggesting several routes of transcendence or escape. In my concluding chapter, I draw on the previous discussion of the various ways in which madness is figured in the novels in order to show how, in contesting stereotypical views, the three authors must create new vocabularies and metaphors of madness, thus engaging with patriarchal language itself. In this way, they not only contest normative constructions of the female malady but also bend patriarchal language into new shapes. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / English / MA / Unrestricted

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This study uses a narrative analytic approach to explore the similarities and differences between pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment firsthand accounts of madness in order to answer the question; what is the relationship between madness, narrative, understanding, identity and recovery? Drawing on the work of Foucault, the research traces the historical and cultural development of conceptualisations of reason and unreason, the rise of psychiatry and the marginalisation of the voice of madness. I argue that this marginalisation is continued in narrative research where the focus is on the stories of the physically ill, rather than madness. The narrative method provides a means of giving space to these marginalised voices and it is Bakhtin¿s constructs of dialogicism, polyphony, unfinalizability and the chronotope that provide the tools for the narrative analysis of two female English writers; Margery Kempe and Mary Barnes. The analysis highlights three critical issues in relation to firsthand narratives of madness. First, the blurred boundaries between madness and mysticism and the role of metaphor in understanding distressing experiences. Second, the complex, multi-dimensional nature of subjective timespace that challenges the linear assumptions underlying both narrative and recovery, which, I argue, demands a radical reconceptualisation of both constructs. Third, the liminal social positioning within the analysed accounts is closely related to Bakhtin¿s notion of unfinalizability, a form of being that enables the search for meaning and the transformation of the self. Insights can be gained from this research that may place stories and understanding central in contemporary healthcare. / School of Health Studies at the University of Bradford.

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At a time when the rest of Canada, and indeed much of the Western World, was looking for alternatives to large custodial mental hospitals, people in the Western Canadian province of Saskatchewan celebrated the opening of one of the country's largest asylums. The province remained committed to the institution throughout the interwar years, offering few alternatives for people deemed insane or mentally defective. People on the outside often saw the asylum as an economic boon, a marker of civilization, or as an institution that was crucial for protecting the health and safety of the public. Patients and their families, however, struggled against an institution where patients were subjected to a broad range of indignities. By carefully considering Saskatchewan's regional social and political culture, I examine the values that were projected onto the asylum by those on the outside and the boundaries that were established between the patients and the public that enabled the public to see the asylum as necessary despite widespread patient suffering. I argue that the public accepted the Weyburn Mental Hospital first as a monument worthy of celebration and then as a necessary, though perhaps regrettable, tool for segregation. The asylum in the interwar years is best understood as a political rather than a medical institution, where politicians and the asylum administration cultivated an image for the institution that conformed to regional values. The government and the media defined the patient experience for a curious public, portraying the institution and its patients in a way that not only legitimized the asylum but that also assigned it meaning far beyond its stated medical function. The values associated with the asylum changed over time, but were always guided by political concerns and were always facilitated by manipulating the relationship between the asylum, its patients, and the surrounding community.