Sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the idea that those who study madness may share some of the same tendencies as their subjects, and that ordinary people are increasingly defined by their extreme behaviors.
Jon Ronson's quote suggests that the researchers and professionals involved in studying mental health and madness may themselves exhibit obsessive traits, blurring the lines between the observer and the observed. It also reflects a societal trend where individuals are increasingly judged or defined by their most extreme behaviors, implying that everyone has their 'mad' moments, and that such traits are becoming a significant part of personal identity.
In practice
In a discussion on mental health, one might quote Ronson to emphasize the complexities of studying 'madness'.
Suddenly, madness was everywhere, and I was determined to learn about the impact it had on the way society evolves. I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?
Nothing uniquely bad has happened to me in my personal life, but all the regular little bad things have accumulated to make me a neurotic person. And these adventures are my way of trying to make sense of that.
I wondered if sometimes the difference between a psychopath in Broadmoor and a psychopath on Wall Street was the luck of being born into a stable, rich family.
We know that the great majority of people have a strong need for authority which it can admire, to which it can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats it.
More and more research is suggesting that, far from being simply encoded in the genes, much of personality is a flexible and dynamic thing that changes over the life span and is shaped by experience.
If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
Rather than giving people an inflated view of themselves, we need to give them concrete reasons to feel good about themselves.
Last time I talked to her she didn't sound like herself. She's depressed. It's awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they're no good.
Both dreams and neurotic dream-states have as their function the avoidance of displeasure, but the dream-states also serve to provide a positive pleasure gain.
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