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grafixten
(Unregistered)
02/20/03 06:56 PM
66.31.140.140
Hesse- Sane or insane? Reply to this post

Just looking for answer's.

Todd



Lex
(Unregistered)
02/20/03 11:46 PM
152.163.188.165
Re: Hesse- Sane or insane? new [re: grafixten]Reply to this post

Depends on your definition of "sane" and "insane." ... And whether or not you believe that these two realms exist.

Jung, since heçs the topic of discussion today, wouldn't have labeled anyone by such terms ...

What most mainstream society sees as èinsane,î Jung would have argued as a èneurosisî that developed from unconscious repression. Now this is purely hypothetical, my own twisted interpretation of things, but if you look at Hessesç literature there seems to be a strong sense of lacking repression. Most of the characters that I have come across appear to be completely aware/in touch of their feelings, emotions, and thoughts ú more importantly, Hesse speaks through all the manipulations and effects of socialized norms, views, and existential conformity Ÿ In my opinion, Hesse did not have the ability to repress Ÿ and thatçs what made him a genius; he saw what most cannot grasp or emotionally tolerate. Further, if sanity is based on the premise of repression, than Içd say that Hesse was most assuredly sane.

For the sake of providing the èsanityî discussion with as little bias as possible, Içm providing two more perspectives for you Ÿ both of which can be argued as a relative association to Hesse:

1. èI take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide Ÿ or who has never been driven to madness, at least once, by the onslaught of conflicting ideas.î
- William James
2. èFor every genius you cite whose greatness seems to have sprung from a neurosis, I will undertake to cite similar acts of greatness without neurosis Ÿ The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those that do something about it.î
- B.F. Skinner




Anonymous
(Unregistered)
03/14/03 07:06 AM
65.40.192.195
Re: Hesse- Sane or insane? new [re: grafixten]Reply to this post

your spelling on hesse is incorrect



Lex
(stranger )
03/14/03 10:37 AM
152.163.188.165
Re: Hesse- Sane or insane? new [re: Anonymous]Reply to this post

Would you care to elaborate?



tgeorgescu
(stranger )
10/12/04 01:55 PM
217.122.192.222
Re: Hesse- Sane or insane? new [re: Lex]Reply to this post

I already said it elsewhere:

To manage culture and civilization, you need sane people. To produce them, you need neurotics!

Tudor Georgescu




mental inestable
(Unregistered)
10/13/04 01:48 PM
204.126.64.254
Re: Hesse- Sane or insane? new [re: tgeorgescu]Reply to this post

I think that final answer is very precise although it doesn't answer whether hesse was sane or insane.I beleive we as humans are not close to such answer yet we still have to explore because not even the language of philosophers or great psicologists or anyone who may be doctorated in the exploration of the psique it is still sure of what the two opossite sides are.We still can of course in the meantime place a bet of the significance of these two variations.
My personnal opinion for today standards would be that he was somewhat insane whitch would decline the option of being sane.



Anonymous
(Unregistered)
11/07/04 12:11 PM
217.122.192.222
Re: Hesse- Sane or insane? new [re: mental inestable]Reply to this post

Bible commentators already noticed that the mother and the brothers of Jesus came to Him while He was publicly preaching, only to remove such a Madman which made them ashame with His ridiculous teaching, to move Him to whatever place they had, and we now have the insane asylum instead of it.

Paul, also, he says outright that he is a madman. More than that, Paul recommends without any trace of a doubt that whoever is wise, according to the world, should become a madman in order to reach true wisdom.

So, if these great men of spirit, they got called Belial and Baphoment, the more will get us, their poor and sinful followers, we will get called devils and madmen.

There is an irreconciliable opposition between worldly wisdom and Christian "madness"! And everybody will have to choose on who's side he/she is.

Tudor Georgescu




Anonymous
(Unregistered)
11/07/04 02:18 PM
217.122.192.222
Re: Hesse- Sane or insane? new [re: Anonymous]Reply to this post

I will quote Leonard Sax's What was the cause of Nietzsche's dementia?, Patients, Journal of Medical Biography 2003; 11: 47-54.

=====BEGIN QUOTE=====

[Nietzsche's sister] She chose the most notorious science writer of her day: Dr Paul Julius Moebius. It was a curious choice. Moebiusç modus operandi was to take a famous historical figure and show that the celebrity was ‚‚reallyçç insane. His principle was simple: ‚‚the farther one is from the average, the farther one is from normalityçç (‚‚je mehr sich einer vom Durchschnitt entfernt, um so mehr entfernt er sich von der Normalitaetçç)43.

=====

Podach responded to Lange-Eichbaumçs criticism in equally harsh terms. He quoted passages from Lange-Eichbaumçs book Genius, Insanity and Fame in which Lange-Eichbaum had said that Shakespeare was a psychopath, and that Jesus was a ‚‚mental caseçç. Such verdicts, Podach wrote:
show how the smallest psychiatric frog can puff itself up to attain Shakespearian or Christlike dimensions . . . [and] only confirm the argument that ‚‚pathographyçç employs the inadequate conceptions of clinical psychiatry whenever it deals with personalities it cannot understand.54"

=====

‚‚How do we know,çç wrote Isadora Duncan, ‚‚that what seems to us insanity was not a vision of transcendental truth?ç

=====END QUOTE=====

Tudor Georgescu




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