A mind-blowing examination on how society is now dealing with the incredible surge of ideas and choices, driven by population growth, technology and social interaction. It is a provocative exploration of both the innovators and methods that have been empowered to create the transformative ideas, that frame our world. As the speed of our ideas infinitely accelerates, and the impact of them becomes increasingly powerful, it asks whether we are best placed to make the right choices for future generations. Or will our ideas fail, create confusion and drive division? Will emerging technology ultimately, generate its own independent ideas, and then action the ones that will govern the future of humanity. Will ideas evolve to not obey our commands and live completely out of our control? Welcome to the Insanity of Ideas.

This book is an introduction to the uncertainties and incongruities about madness. It is aimed at all of those who are curious about this subject whether out of general inquisitiveness or because it is part of a formal course of study. Using case studies of real people in order to explain, humanise, and bring to life the subject, Peter Morrall critically analyses how madness has been and is understood, or perhaps misunderstood. By contrasting past and present people who have been perceived as mad and/or perceive themselves as mad, Morrall presents core ideas about madness and critiques their would-be robustness in explaining the specific madness of the person in question, as well as their general relevance to madness overall. Unlike many of its contemporaries, the book does not adhere to a perspective, but rather remains skeptical about the ideas of all who profess to understand madness, whether these emanate from sociology, psychology, psychotherapy, anthropology, ‘anti’ psychiatry, or the biological sciences of contemporary ‘scientific-psychiatry’. This book will inform and stimulate the thinking of the reader, and challenge those with preconceived ideas about madness.

First published in 1975, Madness and Morals presents the major preoccupations of nineteenth century society concerning insanity, its problems, and implications. In the introduction to the collection, Vieda Skultans traces developments and changes in the ideas about the insane and their treatment during the nineteenth century. She shows that two contrasting themes dominated writing on the subject: the relative weight to be attributed to physical and moral causes of insanity; and the emphasis on hereditary endowment or the ‘tyranny of organization’. The eighty years covered by this book produced a wide and varied literature on insanity, and the psychiatric texts reproduced, by English writers in the field are grouped under three sections: Outlines of Insanity; Psychiatric Romanticism; and Psychiatric Darwinism. These are written by physicians, administrators of the asylums and hospitals, editors of specialist publications, and others with wide experience in the field. These writings have a special relevance to the social history of the nineteenth century, for they demonstrate how psychiatric thinking reflects the contemporary moral outlook, forming a part of the total social fabric of society. This book will be useful for scholars and researchers of mental health, psychology, and psychiatry.

What is there is only a limited amount of sanity in the world and the real reason people go mad is because somebody has to? What if a mysterious tribe in the Amazon rainforest turn out to be the most boring people on earth? What if the afterlife is nothing more than a London suburb, where the dead get new flats, new jobs, and their own telephone directory? These are the sort of truths that emerge in this collection of stories by one of England's most gifted writers. In The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Will Self tips over the banal surfaces of everyday existence to uncover the hideous, the hilarious, and the bizarre. Psychiatry, anthropology, theology—and literature—will never be the same.

Thomas Edison famously said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Every day, new solutions, revolutionary cures, and artistic breakthroughs are conceived and squandered by smart people. Along with the gift of creativity come the obstacles to making ideas happen: lack of organisation, lack of accountability and a lack of community support.Scott Belsky has interviewed hundreds of the most productive creative people and teams in the world, revealing a common trait: a carefully trained capacity for ideas execution. Implementing your ideas is a skill that can be taught, and Belsky distils the core principles in this book.While many of us obsess about discovering great new ideas, Belsky shows why it is better to develop the capacity to make ideas happen - using old-fashioned passion and perspiration. Making Ideas Happen reveals the practical yet counterintuitive techniques of "serial creatives" - those few who make their visions a reality.

This poetry collection discusses the Iraq war and some of the ominous implications of that serious step taken by the Republican administration. The collection includes six poems from the author's book on the Vietnam War, as well as a new group of poems discussing the power of the greedy soul or 'the rapacious soul.' Another five poems are in the ghazal form, including 'Call and answer, ' one of the first poems written against the Iraq War.

A spooky fantasy filled with terrifying ghost stories from a real-life asylum.

Is insanity a myth? Does it exist merely to keep psychiatrists in business? In Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences, Dr. Szasz challenges the way both science and society define insanity; in the process, he helps us better understand this often misunderstood condition. Dr. Szasz presents a carefully crafted account of the insanity concept and shows how it relates to and differs from three closely allied ideas—bodily illness, social deviance, and the sick role.

Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 - from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the "insane" and the rest of humanity.