32. On the Fear of Insanity

Most people fear contact with the insane - a fact which influenced the past, and sometimes present, wish to shut them away where they can be if possible forgotten. But some primitive cultures have felt them to be especially wise or holy, and even civilized nations have sometimes chosen them as leaders.

This ambivalent attitude can be analytically explained on the assumption that there is always a mad part of the self - though in different degrees in different individuals - for which actually insane persons can easily come to stand. Moreover, the mad part is often felt to be more powerful than the sane part. It can be got rid of by projection, as its external representative can be banished to a mental home; and perhaps it can sometimes be succumbed to out of a mixture of fear and a desire to share its power.

With these general considerations in mind it may be of interest to examine the dream of a patient who had just been disturbed by actual contact with a friend who was having a psychotic episode:

‘The dreamer became aware, to his dismay, that a pair of cockatrices or salamanders were nesting nearby. Their offspring would be vipers which would spread everywhere and threaten everything. At first the nest could be seen high up in a tree through the right window. A friend was preparing to shoot the breeding couple - it being vital that they should be destroyed in one shot; as, if only wounded, they would disperse into many unknown places and fatally increase the danger. But much to the friend's annoyance, the dreamer stops him shooting, and asks another friend who is a doctor to do so. And by this time the nest could be dimly seen low down through the left window. Then there was a close-up view of the nest. The cockatrices or salamanders were like two great rounded slugs slightly curved in towards each other. They were just moving, or quivering in a terrifying manner which was hard to describe. And the horror