Terrorism and Madness: Between Sympathy and Understanding

When I was researching the uses of madness in literature I came across a paradox from the philosophy of causality. If you are able to analyze the etiology, the causes, of madness, you can no longer claim that what you have analyzed is madness. You can’t claim that you have found rational causes and effects for a behaviour, and continue to claim that the behaviour is mad. Thomas Szasz , a trained and practicing psychiatrist, made a career out of denying the existence of mental illness. According to Szasz, madness was a “l egal fiction. ” Like other such fictions--things that could not be proven to exist--it was useful for institutions like hospitals, the courts, police forces, governments, and so on, to pretend that they existed, in order to establish procedures and policies for how to deal with particular situations, behaviours and people. In recent days and weeks and years, the distinction between madness and terrorism has become a matter of significant debate. Acts wh