Random Thought Process:
"Madness is the shadow"
1. I haven't read Carl Jung, but I assume the shadow is the rejected part of the self. Under that assumption, is madness rejected by most 'normal people' because the general population rejects their shadow?
2. If the shadow is the unintegrated aspect of self, I wonder what 'self' even is and then I thought about how language shapes our reality. Like 'self' seems like a word to contain and distinguish some nebulous thing that I can't quite put my finger on.
3. And then if one consciously accepts the non-shadow self, do they reject 'madness' because they can't consciously relate it to their own individual experience?
4. Mostly, I was writing down antonyms, because they kept popping into my head as I was thinking about the above quote.
Separation & Distinction
Self & Other
Individual & Collective
Order & Disorder
Health/Wellness & Unhealthy/Diseased
Normal & Abnormal/Anomaly
Universal & Personal
5. And then I went down the whole spiral that always happens to me when I get on these tangents, which is, as always:
What is 'real'?
6. I feel like collective agreement and head-nodding on personal experiences as 'universal' is basically what 'normal' is, but that's definitely an oversimplification and I don't really know if that means anything or chips away at the BS to get to the core of what I'm 'asking'.
Anyway, I have no idea where I'm going with this, but I want to ask something. Like I feel very deeply that I want to know something, but I can't even begin to articulate what I really want or what need I want fulfilled.