Madness and Liminality: Psychosocial and Fictive Images

Abstract

In this chapter, psychosocial analyses (Gadd and Jefferson, 2007) are used to explore representations of madness and liminality. We focus our attention upon filmic representations to generate new knowledge and understanding of the poetics and possibilities of transgressive imaginings of madness in the context of mediated constructions of deviance, care and control. This chapter examines a film by Janice Haaken (clinical psychologist, professor of psychology, feminist and film-maker) Guilty Except for Insanity¹ to explore psychosocial constructions of deviance, care and control in the lives of some of the inmates of Oregon State Hospital for the criminally insane in Portland who pleaded ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’. We subsequently make an argument for the transgressive, transformative potential of film-making and psychosocial criminology by drawing upon the work of Scheff (2010) and Lorenzer (2002).

Madness has historically ‘proved to be the grand transgressor’.

Jenks (2003, p. 135)