Do the "sane" understand the "insane" or do the "insane" understand the "sane"?

Answer 1

There is an old cliche: "crazy People don't know they're crazy." And I think that applies here because take for instance the schitzophrenic person. Depending on when the auditory hallucinations begin, the person may feel that everyone can hear the voices or just hear them in general. It isn't until they are told that this isn't normal that they know.

Unless these hallucinations occur in adulthood and the person had no prior issues with them.

It would also depend on your definition of insane. Dahmer killed many male victims, kept their remains, and ate other parts of them. Would you consider him insane? He was put under strict pshychological review and analysis and the court appointed shrink found him to be fully competant.

But yet Andrea Yates suffered from schitzophrenia. She heard the devil speaking to her from her children's cartoons claiming that he was going to come and bring them to hell. You may be laughing, but she was extremely sick and she believed this was all going to happen. She drowned her 5 children (ages around 5 to infant) to get them to Heaven quickly as possible. Again, this was very real and plausible to her. But there are other factors weighing in on her case, but the main reason I wanted to make was though we, as society, consider Dahmer insane, he knew what he was doing. But we also viewed Andrea Yates to be insane and the courts found her to be incompetant, but yet she also knew what she was doing, simply because she showed remorse during her testimony.

So, it would all depend on your definition of insanity and the person you believe to be insane.

Answer 2

Great question. Every ego is insane. But, it is the "insane" who become that way reacting to the insanity of the supposedly "sane." Only if your sanity is real can you understand and help the "insane."

Answer 3

The insane understand the sane (sometimes), but the sane just don't get us... but that makes life more fun. Because of the confusion, we can bring fear to the conformists.

Answer 4

the sane understands the sane and the insane understands the insane!

Answer 5

Since insanity is a social concept the reality is both. Can I refer you to a bunch of 'savages', the Sioux who not only believd that those who were 'strange' were touched by God and therefore revered as holy but also, as they were clealry a thousand years or so ahead of us, accepted the reality of Gay people and did not descriminate againsy them or persecute them. I read the Royal College of Psychiatry's annual report 2 years ago that estimated over 80% of the population would need some form of mental health intervention in their lives. Sounds really rather normal does it not, so who says things like 'mad' in order to distinguish? The very people who are likely to be so very soon!

Answer 6

My first wife went insane as her mother did. She started wandering at night, talking to the trees and insects among other things.

She didn't understand anything and nobody understood her.

That is the nature of insanity - the blocking off and total locking up of all logic, sense and communication.

Answer 7

We are all insane! that is why we are all on 360? insanity is all a matter of opinion that is why so many Psychiatrist's are in therapy.

Answer 8

Insanity is only a legal term.

Answer 9

Is there any real -difference- between the two? To paraphrase Krisnamurti, "It is no measure of mental health to be 'well-adjusted' in a society that is profoundly fµcked up."

Doug

Answer 10

Nothing can't understand something. And vise versa.