Hello, thanks for listening to this Darma podcast. I hope you consider that in accordance

with the Buddhist tradition all of my work as a teacher is offered without charge and

supported entirely by donations only. If you'd like to support this work, you'll find a paypal button on darmapunk NYC.com.

Madness. It's all madness.

Am I crazy is one of the most frequent questions typed into Google apparently, of the

four major anxieties that people experience. The first three being

annihilation of fear of death or being physically overwhelmed. Separation anxiety, that means being disconnected from attachment figures, people we love.

Neurootic anxiety is the fear of being ostracized due to something inherent to our personality.

And then there is dementophobia, which is I like to refer to as decompensation anxiety.

Dementophobia is the fear of losing one's mind, that insanity will cause abnormal behavior leading to ridicule loss of autonomy,

institutionalization and so forth.

And of course, people who do have Dementophobia

as a ongoing concern have generally family or personal histories of institutionalization, which can worsen the fears significantly.

And so part of tonight's talk is about demythologizing what we conceive of going mad.

Interesting perspectives on why we even have conceptions of insanity and going mad.

What purpose does it serve?

Insanity as a ongoing cultural theme.

But let's dive in.

When we think about going mad or madness or insanity,

we're probably not thinking about let's say depressive states of Anadonia which

means we're not motivated to do anything. We're probably not thinking about run of

the mill anxiety disorders where people do have ongoing worry or

...