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‘Finding out what lies beyond the borders of the Shire’: Applying Tolkien’s fantastic texts in and to madness — the transgressive experience of psychotic thinking

— Alke Haarsma-Wisselink, independent scholar

Paper given 6 July 2022 at IMC 2022 Session 1133

In The Hobbit, Gandalf plucks Bilbo from his comfortable armchair, sending a bunch of unruly dwarfs to knock on his door. At first, Bilbo tries to hold them off, but waking up the next day feeling their absence: he runs! Positively rushes! Breaks out! In leaving the Shire, his fellow citizens shake their heads. Bilbo reaches a certain point of no return’. This is reminiscent of the call of madness, and we could apply Bilbo-crossing-the-border to the lived experience in psychosis. In psychiatry the preferred stable armchair’ state of the soul is called euthymia, and transgressing to mental modes of mania and madness — losing oneself in delusions: wild associative thinking, and hallucinations: sensing things non-common-sensical — is considered dis-ordered. As a cultural scientist and an expert by experience’ in psychosis, combining inside and outside perspectives, I propose: let us share in an adventure and explore the common domain of Madness and Faërie, the perilous realm of Fairy-Story.

permalink 🔗︁ https://sam.tolkienists.org/019r/
date recorded 📅2022-01-24
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