Madness and Cultural Representation Theatre, Film and Literature Since 1970

How is madness experienced, treated, and represented? How might art think around � and beyond � psychiatric definitions of illness and wellbeing? Madness, Art, and Society engages with artistic practices from theatre and live art to graphic fiction, charting a multiplicity of ways of thinking critically with, rather than about, non-normative psychological experience. It is organised into two parts: �Structures: psychiatrists, institutions, treatments�, illuminates the environments, figures and primary models of psychiatric care, reconsidering their history and contemporary manifestations through case studies including David Edgar�s Mary Barnes and Milos Forman�s One Flew Over the Cuckoo�s Nest. �Experiences: realities, bodies, moods�, promblematises diagnostic categories and proposes more radically open models of thinking in relation to experiences of madness, touching upon works such as Richard Kelly�s Donnie Darko and Duncan Macmillan�s People, Places, and Things. Reading its case studies as a counter-discourse to orthodox psychiatry, Madness, Art, and Society seeks a more nuanced understanding of the plurality of madness in society, and in so doing, offers an outstanding resource for students and scholars alike.