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Author: Neoliberate

 

 

 

An exploration of different psychological temperaments in Don Quixote, Dante’s Inferno, and The Tale of Genji.

 

 

“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.” – Joseph Campbell

 

 

 

 

Introduction.

 

 

In this extended project qualification, I examine the primary texts, namely Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”, Murasaki Shikibu’s “The Tale of Genji”, and Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno”. Alongside these, I cite PhD MSc degree psychologist Richard B. Fisher’s “A dictionary of mental health” as my key source of the psychological conditions explored within the interpretations of each novel and its core themes, ideas, and possibilities. However, I first give introduction to my dissertation through a broad analysis of Friedrich Nietzsche, his psychological temperament, and descent into madness.

 

My goal is to achieve a better understanding of each novel and its significance in the role of exploring the human condition and the areas in which it becomes dysfunctional. Some such themes explored are the second section “Analysing the necessity of meaning in human suffering; evolution, recognition, and romance”, where I give a brief introductory outline of human consciousness, the role it has to play in our psychological understanding of the world/ ourselves, and the lack thereof. Within Don Quixote the concept of maniacal delusions of grandeur are touched upon with reference to conditions such as extreme extraversion and aggressive tendencies paired with schizophrenia. The Tale of Genji serves as a medium through which to shed light on narcissism, bipolar disorder, and hebenephria; all of which are common occurrences in the character of Lord Genji, a 10th century nobleman of the Japanese Imperial Court. Finally, religious concepts of sin and suffering, alongside redemption and salvation are illustrated in Inferno via a brief analysis of each circle of hell, and the many psychologically broken sinners contained within such a tormented pit of eternal suffering.

 

Understanding the abstract conditions of Nietzscheanesque psychosis in humans.
Within humans can sometimes be observed an innate pull towards the romanticisation of an otherwise menial life. If one can make washing the dishes a task laced with the overtures of love, hate, or any passion of emotion, then life becomes somewhat less like a chore. Washing the dishes ceases to be a mundane task of laborious boredom, and instead becomes an emotional reflection, a tragic withdrawal, or any other expression of life; and not just another sponge to spatula endeavour.

 

This withdrawal into romanticism is often the first step to madness in many, as is debated in the condition of Nietzsche and his descent from idle country living into a heroic exploration of the darkest depths of the human condition. We can here begin to understand the rationalisation of flawed human function, alluding to Nietzsche’s extensive isolation, into the tragic temptation of romanticisation; as according to Nietzsche’s closest personal friend Erwin Rohde — “now it is clear to me that the madness began with Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but what a madness and what fire and illumination he casts over the world!”

 

So what leads to such a devolution unto delusion? “As something which itself ‘disturbs’ the boundaries between thought and body, Logos (reason and language) and Bios (life), madness or a preoccupation with madness more easily finds its way into the philosophy which itself results from such a confluence, namely of a philosopher’s thought and life, of logos and bios.” (Evangelou, A., 2017.) From Springer’s evaluation we might assess that Nietzsche’s romantic pursuit of his own personal philosophies led to the decline in sanity for him, and eventual psychosis. It is the intertwining of the complexities present in the deepest depths of the human psyche with the ever present reality of the mundane that so thrusts the romantic forward into delusion, leading to the blurred lines between the internal workings of the conscious mind, and its lack of conscience toward the external world.

 

But where does this pull come from? For what do we feel the need to compensate for? If we remove ourselves from purely clinical analyses of Nietzsche’s illness, and posit it instead as the Nietzschean condition, one of purely cognitive spiritual decline, self imposed by the individual, we can begin to understand what the human psyche is truly capable of creating within itself. Namely, delusion stemming from four core causes:

 

• Romanticisation of the everyday
• Abstraction between present reality and philosophy
• Extreme psychological suffering/ emotional temperament
• Medical conditions

 

 

What may yet still be a cause insofar as an amalgamation of all the listed causes above are concerned, due to the romanticisation of psychological damage/ delusion, is stated here by Molendijk as “[…] primary and secondary gain. That is, the direct and indirect benefits of ‘being morally injured’ may paradoxically perpetuate the injury. Of note, this is not a matter of malingering, but concerns a complex mechanism that generally occurs without the person in question being aware of it. Specifically, perceiving oneself as morally injured can help transform a self-image of ‘I am a monster’ into a less negative self-image of ‘I suffer from what I have done because I have a conscience’, even without having to carry a label of mental illness.” (Molendijk, T., 2022.) This summation of “moral injury” as an exaltation from one’s own psychological damage can be seen as a direct cause of delusion amongst those who have suffered both extreme psychological suffering, and potential medical conditions such as PTSD. To transform the image of oneself from being a monster for committing what would otherwise be a normal human reaction, to self idealising as an otherwise bedraggled character at the whim and mercy of fate and its fantastical temptations, people might yet deal with their experiences of grief and loss; soldier’s with their strenuous experiences of warfare, family members having lost a loved one to natural causes, or even those victims of natural disasters. By avoiding the grounded reality of their present circumstances in favour of externalising their self perceived tragedy, grief is not so much overcome by this hapless fantastication of normality, rather it is prolonged, and runs serious risk of leading to self delusion, and the eventual decline into a Nietzscheanesque Condition.

 

 

 

Analysing the Necessity of Meaning in Human Suffering; Evolution, Recognition, and Romance.

 

 

Humans suffer; it can be argued our natural state is one of survival, and to survive is to win the evolutionary battle. In modern times, perhaps this is given a different meaning, or one more abstract in its subtleties. However, suffering has been the primary condition of the human psyche since single celled amoebas floated arbitrarily in the primordial soup. So it might be stated that throughout history, mankind’s purpose on Earth is warfare, to paraphrase Job 7:1. Violence and anguish are intrinsically intertwined within the fathoms of our being, written deep into our genetic code, and tangled up in the morality we so cling to even as it changes before our eyes. Consciousness was not always a factor of what it meant to be “human” or Homosapien/ Neanderthal. Prior to the development of consciousness, or the metaphorical Fall from Eden, survival and the perpetuated continuation of the species had no requirement for meaning. It was a thing, that happened, and as such, continued. But we developed consciousness somewhere down the road, and with it, came the necessity of meaning. At this point, we suddenly required a reason to go on living; searching throughout all of our lives for that abstract purpose that gave substance to suffering. If we look at romance and the idealisation of tragedy as an evolutionary byproduct of this genetic adaptation instead of merely as a human designed concept, we might observe the qualities of romantic delusion within western society; that is a world to mind application of our psyche, ever present in the ongoing need for self acceptance of our self idealisations, rather than the tempering of our own faults to fit into the standards set by tradition. The addressing of mental health disorders, and their being recognised and accepted instead of shunned and disregarded as they were prior to mental health awareness perhaps shows progress in our understanding of such illnesses, exemplified here by Jahoda: “Many scientific investigators have thought about the psychological content of positive mental health. A review of their contributions reveals six major approaches to the subject: a. Attitudes of the individual toward himself; b. Degree to which person realizes his potentialities through action; c. Unification of function in the individual’s personality; d. Individual’s degree of independence of social influences; e. How the individual sees the world around him; and f. Ability to take life as it comes and master it.” – (Jahoda, M., 1958.) This progress is accounted for in modern scientific fields, and we can claim a firm understanding of the neurological makeup of the human brain. However science cannot give us the metaphysical meaning of a philosophical outlook toward the condition of our psyches. Our clinical recognition and acceptance of derision, often caused by PTSD, depression, or other mental conditions, does not give us substantial meaning when attempting to root out the causes of our own self imposed psychological torment. It is from this deduction that we shall explore the basis of the argument in question: can we begin to truly understand the metaphysical properties of the human psyche through its various manifestations of Romantic Tragedy throughout the ages? Through studying three key texts, namely Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Dante’s Inferno, and Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji, I will aim to hopefully explore the deeper substance within which the soul is conveyed in literature, and how it can be uncovered by a careful analysis of some of the greatest literary works in our history.

 

 

How is Delusion Romanticised in Don Quixote?

 

“How does it come that Don Quixote can continue to bestow the accent of reality on his sub- universe of phantasy if it clashes with the paramount reality in which there are no castles and armies and giants but merely inns and flocks of sheep and windmills?” (Schutz, A., 1976.) Don Quixote begins losing his sanity in his late fifties, after reading extensively about the grandiose tales of various knights and heroes (all fictitious), and upon such reading, increasingly associates his own sense of self identity with that of the accumulation of stories he holds within his memory. Due to the bland banality of his everyday life as a semi respectable noble, Don Quixote embarks on several “quests” to fulfil the blind ambition conjured by his evidently manic condition; setting out to free his “princess” from a (manifested) curse.

 

Quixote’s condition can be summarised by aggression, extreme extraversion, and hebenephric schizophrenia. Herein taking definitions from readings of Richard B Fisher’s “A Dictionary of Mental Health”, we can characterise each of these mental disorders as thus: 1. Aggression can be defined by the lack of or loss thereof for our own interests, and the stimulation gained by our self idealised passions. When we lose the ability to concentrate wholly on the bigger picture beyond the immediacy of emotion (usually prompted by stressful situations, reality induced boredom, or fantasisation of the otherwise mundane), we tend towards either a state of utter passivity, or extreme aggression. This is caused via the hypothalamus being stimulated by the primordial characteristics of the “fight or flight” response and we can see the application of this in Quixote’s several deluded interactions, namely in the chapter wherein he takes it upon himself to ride “valiantly” into “battle” against a group of “captors”, whom he believes have enslaved a hopeless damsel in distress within their carriage. His aggression is thus seen most prominently here as he injures those in the escort and tries, and fails, to rescue the lady being escorted within the carriage. This state is romanticised entirely by his own self deluded and self inflated ideal of heroism presented in Don’s bold declaration “You wicked wizards, you won’t be able to kidnap that lovely princess and her lovely ladies in waiting!” To which the escort replies with “Sir, we are two innocent friars; we haven’t kidnapped anyone!” 2. Extreme extraversion is shown throughout Quixote’s deeds amongst the lands of his imagined reality, illustrated by his almost unconscious interactions with Innkeepers, slaves, women, and, entirely unironically, windmills. The state of Don’s extraversion is characterised by Richard B Fisher as “turning of one’s interest and attention outward towards external things. Extraversion is one extreme on a continuum, the opposite end of which is introversion, the turning of interest and attention inwards towards self-contemplation.” Whilst neurosis is typically related with introversion, extraversion, the opposite end of the extremes shown presently in Quixote, is related with “hysteria” to label the term generally. Don Quixote becomes extremely excitable when presented with the spontaneity of real world events, which is a characteristic of outgoing people, however the extent of his hysteric condition is illuminated in his psychological need to overlay reality with the delusional romance of his own imagination. 3. Schizophrenia, overtly obvious in Don Quixote, is perhaps an amalgamation of the Paranoid and Hebenephric types. The Hebenephric Schizophrenic displays dreaminess, abstraction, and qualities of tragical derision. As Fisher states the condition “The patient becomes boastful, grandiose or pseudo-profound. He may talk for hours or write voluminously about the meaning of life or the paradox of good and evil, saying nothing.”

 

But does Don Quixote only exacerbate latent underlying mental health conditions, making them worse by the grandeur of his own delusion? Or is his life made more fruitful, bearing more colour and flavour because of it?

 

 

 

Drawing the Line Between Tragic Romantics and Delusionals in The Tale of Genji.

 

 

What is the difference between Shakespeare and a schizophrenic? Between Alexander the Great and a sociopath? Where is the line drawn between the poet and the neurotic?

 

A writer’s job is to find new words, or at least create new ways to utilise old ones. The poet takes such a task one step further, and finds new ways to disassemble them, breaking down their meanings and finding ways to abstract and imagine them anew. This presents a serious threat to the unguarded mind of the romantic whom is already predisposed towards ramblings about everything that take on meanings of nothing. Emil Kraepelin gives us an insight into the functioning mind of the delusional in his distinction between the two primary characteristics of schizophrenic behaviour: “hebephrenia, characterized by inappropriate emotional reactions and behaviour; and paranoia, characterized by delusions of grandeur and of persecution.” The tragic romantic might be inclined to write great fictions about extraordinary bouts of emotion; from heartbreak to grief, or ecstasy following from relief. However the very nature of prose and poetry is, as written by Murusaki Shikibu herself, “One word is never enough. The words are juxtaposed, piled up, and spread out so that the flavours of each mingle and combine, making a bouquet of images for the mind. […] In the whirl, when the mind can no longer travel in a straight line, poetry is created.” Murusaki Shikibu, author of the 10th century novel The Tale of Genji, writes extensively about her own works in “A String of Flowers, Untied”. Perhaps the most grounded within reality, Murusaki explores tragedy and romance from a sounder perspective. However she engages certain emotions to extremity at various points in the novel, namely during the fifth quire (chapter) where Genji falls in love with 10 year old Murasaki and kidnaps her from the residence, and the eleventh and thirteenth quires where Genji seeks reclusion from society in exile and withdraws into the inner recesses of his mind; however still exercising his obsessively delusional pursuit of love with his hosts daughter.

 

Throughout the novel Genji pursues an almost idyllic state of love, attempting to transcend commitment in an effort to experience it in every possible state; through hate, anger, ecstasy, and even at the whim of moral corruption. Throughout various affairs with court ladies, priestesses, and Lady Murasaki, he ends up at his death becoming the poem itself, rather than the one holding the pen. Perhaps it can be speculated that Genji’s purpose in life was merely as a vessel for all the different ways in which love expresses its various forms; or perhaps his identity was simply lost during the course of his many romantic partnerships. Ultimately, The Tale of Genji explores not just the splendour of romance, but also the risk we run when sharing our souls with the hearts of others one too many times.

 

Lord Genji, although a fictitious character, exhibits many characteristics of narcissism and bipolar disorder. During his upbringing in court, he garners the nickname “The Shining Prince”, due to his well boasted handsomeness, on top of the sheer volume of compliments he receives in his early years. Causes of NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) are stated by the Mayo Clinic Journal: “Although the cause of narcissistic personality disorder isn’t known, some researchers think that overprotective or neglectful parenting may have an impact on children who are born with a tendency to develop the disorder. Genetics and other factors also may play a role in the development of narcissistic personality disorder.” From this we can deduce that Genji’s delusional obsession with romance likely stems from a psychological need to be validated as the one who attracts anything he wants, and potentially that the conceptual “love” spoken of so frequently in Murasaki’s novel is a warped idea of itself; Genji does not love, rather he desires, and from such desire, his mind becomes twisted to the point where he no longer wants, but requires.

 

So where is the line drawn between tragic romantics, and the purely psychotic? We can judge from Genji’s teenage life in the imperial court that love comes in waves, and surely presses its highs and lows on the mind of the beholder; however such acts are usually tempered in the psychologically sound by moral standards, by personal image, and from the risks we evaluate when engaging in otherwise self destructive behaviour. Lord Genji exhibits an almost total lack of care toward the above mentioned, acting purely at the will of his own psyche. Impregnating his stepmother, stealing a child to take as his wife, and the numerous love affairs he has outside of his marriage to Aoi no Ue can all be seen as wildly abnormal acts of impulse uncommon in the behaviour of mentally stable persons, and thus it can be implied from an analysis of psychological disorders that Genji was not just a dreamy romantic.

 

But does this mean his character was one solely of psychosis? Or is The Tale of Genji simply a tragedy of opportune circumstance, of a man blessed with all the characteristics needed to truly experience love in all its fruition?

 

Perhaps we live in an era where Genji’s endeavours are to be frowned upon, and even during the 10th century, certain of his actions were morally corrupt; but we can also see a man, all too human, exercising the innate capacity for connection that we often so rarely come across ourselves. However, The Tale of Genji perhaps tries to convey the point that too much love is worse than too little, and that to share our souls one too many times is to in the end become only fragments of the individuals we once were.

 

 

 

Dante’s Inferno: The Exacerbation of Personal Torment by Excessive Satiation of the Psyche.

 

 

Do we suffer more in imagination than in reality? To what extent do we self impose our emotional anguish due to the pressure of social shame? If we suffer enough in our minds, do we lose our identity to the remorselessness of our own sin?

 

Dante’s Inferno explores the key psychological elements of agony that we impose upon ourselves, and are imposed on us by society. Dealing with the paradox of free will during the pilgrimage through Inferno, Dante (both the writer, and the name of the protagonist in The Divine Comedy) is shown by his guide Virgil the extent to which mankind has the capacity to misuse its “freedom to” and disregard its “freedom from” in order to pursue pleasure in all of its worst excesses. It can be thought of from reading Dante’s great novel that his underlying message was that the human desire for excessive hedonism in all aspects is fundamentally the root cause of all sin within the world. That without a “pious” conscience (e.g. a moral code, a religious foundation, or a value structure), we fall prey to the primal urges of our psyche and lose ourselves in consumption, as Adam & Eve had so done upon actualising their freedom from God.

 

“Emotional suffering is partly about pain; for example, sinners dread the Last Judgment and the maximal pain that they will then forever experience as reembodied souls. The ubiquitous shadow of dread is but one element in a stunningly rich palette of negative emotions in Hell. The myriad feelings that sinners variously suffer are strong, subtle, and complex, just as emotions are the colors, tones, and texture of experience. Concepts from psychology may help elucidate the emotions in Inferno.” (John Alcorn, Trinity College). Alcorn illustrates here that the sufferings of sin are comparable to that in our experience of everyday sensations; that, within our experience of social engagements, events, and actions, we draw from them reactions of emotion. When we meet new people, our impressions of them can oftentimes be overcome by intrusive thoughts of anger, lustful desire, jealousy, pride, or any other negative impulses. Likewise, in our actions, we are prone to spontaneous bouts of gluttony, of overindulgence, and other acts of hedonism. Alcorn draws light to the feelings that come after this; of which Dante’s Inferno can be interpreted as the imagined punishments that will befall us after the fact.

 

Equilibrium and the concept of theological balance are prevalent throughout Dante’s journey, with Virgil potentially being interpreted as the moral conscience that guides all our actions in life as he guides Dante’s emotions through their quest. What separates Dante from the rest of the sinner’s within the nine circles of hell is his foundation for sanity. He has end goals, a “destination” to reach. He is pursuing redemption in his claim to Beatrice, his wife who resides in Heaven patiently awaiting him, and salvation from his owns sins after the atrocities he never freed himself from during his campaign in the Crusades. The stark difference presented here in the absolution from sin that Dante is offered through his journey to Heaven, and the sinners committed to each circle for eternity, is that Dante is psychologically sound of mind in his temperament; he is able to find an equilibrium between being swallowed by the weight of his own personal darkness, and trying to free himself from its temptation. “In the Inferno, Circles Two through Five of Hell are assigned to people who are guilty of sins of incontinence. This means that they lack moderation, discipline, or restraint in one or more areas of their lives. These circles contain sinners who are lustful, gluttons, spenders or hoarders, and ”wrathful” or ”sullen.” These people exhibit either excess or negligence when it comes to sex, food, money, or anger.” (Dante’s Inferno Fourth Circle of Hell: Punishments & Description, 2018). Such traits, written in a romanticised context by Dante Alighieri, are what would be diagnosed as in the modern age to be obsessional delusion, traits of obsessive compulsive disorder, and sado-masochism. Throughout our lives we are certain to take the wrong path, to do morally bad things, and enact the lesser judgement of our conscience when reason and rationality leave our will. However, in the Judeo-Christian worldview, such an “innate compulsion toward sin” can be overcome through the acts of faithful service to a higher standard of morality. Dante represents the “Everyman archetype”, that which encompasses as broad a spectrum of human experience within the character. Although Dante is far from perfect during his time in Inferno, his willingness to confess his own sins of Lust and Pride when finally reunited with Beatrice is common of the psychologically healthy individual (those which recognise amoral/ socially unacceptable traits within themselves and correct accordingly). But it is the archetypal sinners of Inferno that are portrayed as the embodiments of their exact sin and its fruitions come to life (or death, what have you). Fisher defines obsessive disorders as “Preoccupation with an idea, emotion or movement which compels expression despite subjective resistance.” So we might observe from the Circles of Inferno such as the second, third, and fourth (Lust, Gluttony, Greed), that each man and woman posited within such an eternally agonising state of torment has done so of their own volition; ignoring their moral conscience in order to express the will of their own selfish desires in spite of “subjective resistance”. In the seventh and eight (Violence, Fraud), Fisher’s definition of sado-masochists is applicable to the sinners stuck in these two circles of torment — “Masochism means behaviour in which cruelty gives satisfaction to the recipient. Sadism means the use of cruelty to gratify the user.” More modern psychoanalysis has widened the definitions to include aggression and pleasure from submission. The sinners we see in these circles of Dante’s Inferno are sadomasochists of the utmost extremity; those who have committed such heinous acts against the moral standard without remorse. The symbolic premise presented by these circles is that having an intrinsic moral code by which one adheres to indefinitely is the primary foundation upon which sanity is grounded. Without such a code, or standard to hold oneself to, humans lose themselves to the horrific extent upon which vice is able to grip us and wrench us from the freedom that morality provides us with. All nine circles of hell are metaphorically representative of the suffering which comes from our own guilt or shame toward reprehensible immorality. If we lose ourselves to the shame of our actions, a downward psychological spiral encases us within the guilt of our own actions. Devoid of any moral security, we fall to nihilistic tendencies and eventually we become the architects of our own self destruction, bringing down all those subject to the whims of our amorality; we die, and Inferno becomes a reality.

 

 

 

Conclusion.

 

 

Has the question been answered? Do we find ourselves on a better footing upon which to evaluate the root causes of our own psychological maladies? Through briefly introducing Nietzsche and his infamous condition of psychological insanity, we have come to understand that mental illness and its consequences are perhaps far more esoteric and abstract than we once thought. Coupled with our understanding of societal mental health progression as outlined by Jahoda, M, and an account of self inflicted moral injury by Molendijik, T, we come to see that psychological disruption to the human psyche arises oftentimes as a response to our own environment and external circumstance. However, such modern physical interpretations clearly are not able to give us the full picture.

 

It is from here that the focus of the essay shifted to looking at Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”. Explored here was the theme of manic romantic delusion, alongside Quixote’s extraverted temperament and his frequent bouts of aggression. He self induces all of his problems, and only out of sheer and utter boredom does he embark upon a quest of insane and ridiculous proportions in a self idealised romanticisation of the mundane. What we learn from this is that although reality can at times feel stagnated, repetitive, and even at points merely feel like the motions thereof, we must keep a firm grip on it and never lose sight of the present condition unto which reality exists; insanity, self imposed, arises most prominently when we let our imagination take precedence over the facts.

 

Within Murasaki’s “The Tale of Genji” we learn the tragedy that comes with too much power and too little hold on it. It is said that absolute power corrupts absolute, and when paired with narcissistic tendencies, lofty ideals of self grandeur, and an extreme capacity for obsession, we see clearly the downfall of Lord Genji and how pride truly does come before a fall. Throughout his various loves during the course of the novel, and his compulsions to write about them, Genji exhibits himself as a somewhat self obsessed idealist, wishing to absorb his surroundings into his experience to the utmost. However, the lesson to be learnt here about the causes of such conditions as Genji’s might be found in his upbringing, in his experience of loss and tragedy, of all the more extreme emotions in this life, and the reactions to undesired actions. We must put aside our pride, and learn responsible relationships with both ourselves and others if we are to avoid extremity in our volition. For Lord Genji’s actions were no accidents, all were causes of his own bad tempered will. However, should we come to recognise our own shortcomings, then we can avoid being blindsided by the ego, and ultimately, destroyed by the havoc it could wreak on our psyche.
Finally, Dante’s “Inferno” serves to illustrate the importance of having a reality grounded “code” to which one might hold a firm grip on the mind. What Alighieri seems to be saying with his Divine Comedy is that the capacity for great evil and self destruction is present within each of us. All men of mortal coil are prone to ruin via one’s own devices. The hands that make us are also the hands that divide us. Should we allow our minds to become enslaved to neurotransmitters such as dopamine or endorphins, then we also allow our entire neurological makeup to subtly shift over time. Our desires become less morally centred and far more dependent on gratification of the ego. The nine circles of hell and the cardinal sins (lust, pride, gluttony, etc) are personifications of ill wrought mental disorders, namely sado-machosism, depression, and addiction. The conscience hereby becomes overruled in the pursuit of pleasure, and we lose sight of our own psychological health in favour of satisfying a broken mind.

 

In conclusion, the extent to which we can come to understand our own psychology, outside of the purely clinical, via a psychological understanding of Romance & Tragedy throughout the ages. Through learning about how humans within various time periods have understood and grappled with the multiplicity of our expansively complex condition, without the revelations of modern neuroscience and psychotherapy, we have found the beginnings of a wealth of knowledge toward better engaging with our own psyche, and what to seek out when all else fails. Art reflects consciousness, and consciousness reveals the world to us. Through an understanding of Romantic Tragedy, we too might come to learn, as all the great poets, philosophers, and painters have through their own profound works, that life is a story, of which we are the writers. But the problem arises when we lose sight of the pen, and allow the poem to write itself.

 

 

Author: Neoliberate

 

References

(Richard B. Fisher, 1980. A Dictionary Of Mental Health.)

(Evangelou, A., 2017. Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida. Springer.)

(Molendijk, T., 2022. Warnings against romanticising moral injury. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 220(1), pp.1-3.)

(Jahoda, M., 1958. Current concepts of positive mental health.)

(Schutz, A., 1976. Don Quixote and the problem of reality. In Collected Papers II (pp. 135-158). Springer, Dordrecht.)

(Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Emil Kraepelin”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 3 Oct. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emil-Kraepelin. Accessed 19 January 2023.)

(Shikibu, M., 2001. A String of Flowers, Untied…: Love Poems from The Tale of Genji. Stone Bridge Press.)

(https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20366662)

(Alcorn, John. (2013). Suffering in Hell: The Psychology of Emotions in Dante’s Inferno. Pedagogy. 13. 77-85. 10.1215/15314200-1814197.)

Dante’s Inferno Fourth Circle of Hell: Punishments & Description. (2018, October 18). Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/dantes-inferno-fourth-circle-of-hell-punishments-description.html.