The Intelligence of Madness, Part One: Who Gets Called Insane?

The Intelligence of Madness, Part One: Who Gets Called Insane?

From back from the borderline by mollie adler

May 12, 2026 · 60 min

About this episode

The episode explores the concept of madness and its historical context, questioning societal definitions of sanity and the experiences often labeled as pathological.

Part One of a two-part series on madness, psychosis, and the thin line between breakdown and revelation. Sanity has always come with rules. Speak “correctly.” Show up to work and produce. If you hear a voice, see something other people don’t, or start asking questions that unsettle the people around you, there’s a shift, even if it’s subtle. Concern arrives, then usually a diagnosis. Then the extreme pressure to “return to normal” as quickly as possible. In this first installment, I begin with Friedrich Nietzsche’s mental breakdown in the streets of Turin and follow the history of madness through asylums, psychiatry, mysticism, and depth psychology. We look at depersonalization, hearing voices, spiritual emergency, and the long record of human beings crossing into states of consciousness that modern culture has little patience for. Much of what we call sanity is actually more like “social fluency.” Knowing when to smile (and when to stay quiet) and how to say “I’m fine” while inside, you’re completely falling apart. Older cultures sometimes treated these states as initiations , while the “modern” West has tught us to treat them as symptoms to suppress. This episode asks who gets…

People in this episode

Host: Mollie Adler

Topics covered

  • madness
  • psychosis
  • mental health
  • sanity
  • cultural perceptions
  • spiritual emergency

Keywords

  • madness
  • psychosis
  • sanity
  • mental breakdown
  • cultural perceptions
  • spiritual emergency
  • depth psychology

More episodes of back from the borderline

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the back from the borderline podcast page.