Trying to define the meaning of sanity

ADAM PHILLIPS repeatedly makes the point in his new book that sanity is the “weak antagonist” of madness, and that although we have richly textured accounts of psychic suffering, when it comes to defining sanity, the Western tradition has had little of interest to say except that it’s the opposite of madness. We like our literary and cinematic characters to behave excessively and we tend to associate intelligence with a propensity for neurosis.

In “Going Sane,” Phillips’ 11th book, the British psychoanalyst notes that we tend to invoke the idea of sanity in turbulent times, as if to remind ourselves of a safe harbor, a sound foundation in a world that seems to be spinning out of control. But what is sanity, and what do we expect it to do for us?

Phillips tries to develop a contemporary definition of sanity. He begins at infancy, when humans are supposed to have no control over their bodies, before there is an awareness of “self.” What is mad for the adult is normal for the child, and the author writes admiringly of the appetite-driven world of infants before they are forced to manage their desires, forced to take pleasure in mastering (delaying, plotting) their pleasures. Part of maturing is learning to no longer feel the turbulence of childhood, and Phillips acknowledges the loss of intensity, the loss of sensitivity that this requires. At what cost sanity?

No psychoanalytic account of sanity would be plausible without considering sex. Phillips’ chapter, “Sane Sex,” is the book’s strongest. He recognizes that talk of madness and sanity is really talk about desire. Desire, he says, is never transparent to oneself or others because it is formed in large part through a series of renunciations (often unconscious ones), and going “sane” must mean finding ways to accept these renunciations, or at least to live with them in socially acceptable ways.

This seems to be most difficult in adolescence, which he calls “a crisis -- a madness one could say -- because the adolescent is trying to work out whether life is worth living.” Adolescents are taught that it is good to be law abiding but soon they realize that following the law often means not getting what you want. It’s a period of madness parents tolerate because they don’t expect it to last too long. Sanity, he notes, is a story told by survivors.

The most striking examples of what might be considered contemporary madness, Phillips writes, are autism and schizophrenia. He finds that these states can be described as radical failures of recognition and of communication, something that is always a possibility for all of us. Whereas the sane person manages to ignore or forget about this possibility, it can determine the very reality of the mad person. Is sanity merely the ability not to be driven crazy by questions of whether our lives are real and worthwhile? Can sanity have more to it then just a defense against the realities and painful potential of the world?

After an odd detour through what he calls the “money mad,” or the pursuit of wealth over all else, Phillips offers a detailed description of what sanity can mean today. He notes that sanity tends to be the word used to describe a preferred state of mind. It is also one with an awareness of the ever-present capacity for madness. He calls this being “deeply sane,” which sounds rather like being a “radical moderate.” Sigmund Freud once said all he could hope to do was to convert hysterical misery to common unhappiness. Perhaps to sell Phillips’ book in happy-mad America, a country where “positive psychology” is promoted and online happiness questionnaires reek of snake oil, the subtitle “Maps of Happiness” has been added.

But there are no such maps in this slim volume. There are only reminders of how easy it is to fall apart, and how hard it is to describe what it means to hold things together.

Michael S. Roth is president of California College of the Arts and author of “The Ironist’s Cage: Memory, Trauma and the Construction of History.”