SARTRE AND THE PROBLEM OF MADNESS

DAVID MACKEY
In I.a Chamhre, one of Sarlre's short stories
in the collection Le Mur. tlie central character,
Pierre. is haunted by grotesque flying statues,
and his wife, Eve, wonders whether what Piern.'
is going through (popularly called madness) is a
passive alflictil')n or whether it is something he
('xperiences voluntarily:
Somelimes E\'e Iud the impfl'ssion lhal despile
himself Pierre was invaded by an unhealthy swarm
of tholl~hls ~nd visions. Blir al other limes Pierre
seemed 10 invent them. "He suffers. BUI how
far does he believe in Ihe statues . . . 7" I

This question, which continues to preoccupy Eve,

is not as straightforward as it sounds.
In his main work on the imagination,

1:lmaginaire, flsychologie phbwmenologiqllede

l'imagination,published by Gallimard in 1940,

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

Volume 1, Issue 2, 1970
really a form of play-acting, and Sartre likrl1~
him to an actor, choosing different costUl1lL',
and playing different roles. Sartre does not l11e;11l
by this that his play-acting is mer..' shamming
the schizophrenic has good reason for beha\'in~
as he does - but there is no question of his bl'in;:.
genuinely deluded either. He knows only to,)
well that any contact with reality makes far to,)
many demands upon him and this in fact i~ thl'
root cause of his flight into phantasy.~
In La Chambre, a similar awareness of tlh'
demanding nature of external reality lies behind
Pierre's obsession with the flying statues. Most
people, Pierre says, grab at objects instead p(
approaching them with caution and respect.' fir
evoking the flying statues and the horrifyin~
pieces of flesh which he imagim's clinging ttl
them, Pierre appears to be acting out this contlict
at will. At times, however, Pierre's madness is
presented by Sartre as involuntary. Towards the'
end of the story, there are signs that Pierrc'~
thinking is becoming disjointed and he j-;
beginning to confuse phantasy and reality. l!t,
says to Eve: You arc too beautiful; it distrach
me. If it weren't a question of recapitulation .. .'

Sartre attacks what he believes is the traditional

view of madness. According to this view, madmen are the helpless victims of highly vivid
images which impose themselves on the mind
and create genuine illusions. This is fundamentally mistaken, Sartrc argues, because it is based
on a completely misguided conception of what an
image really is. Images arc not more or less vivid
likenesses of things, images arc acts of consciousness intended to eVQke objects which are absent,
Sartre does- not consider that this view oj
and they arc freely created' by ourselves from delusion in any way conflicts with his account
what we already know and already feel about of madness as an essentially voluntary activit\'.
these objects. It simply docs not make sense, Hallucination, for Sartre, occurs at an advancL'd
therefore, to speak of images imposing them- stage of madness, and Sartre deals with it ill
selves on the mind or being mistaken for real L'lmaginaire as a separate problem under tIll'
things, no matter how disturbed the mind of a heading Pathologie de l'Imagillatioll. In thi'
madman may be.
chapter, Sartre is concerned above al\ to mak,'
Madness, Sartre believes, is not a passive two points clear. First, delusion, although il
affliction at all, madness is essentially a volun- takes place against the will, is still an active and
tary activity. The daydreaming of the schizo- not a passive process. Hallucinations do n(lt
phrenic, for example, is not a torrent of images, drive a person mad by disrupting the nnrm;d
as psychologists have generally supposed but a functioning of his thought-processes in Sllllll'
series of empty rituals where everything is way or other; on the contrary, hallucinations :11l'
imagined and determined in advance by the the active creations of thought which has alreadl
schizophrenic himself. Much of his behaviour is disintegrated. Secondly, delusion does nIH
J. Le Mllr. Gallimard 1939, p. 62.

L'lmaginuire. pp. 189-190.

3. LI' Mllr. p. 57.

4. Ibid. p. 67.

80

consist in mistaking images for real objects. Hal- disturbance imposed upon us, emotion is an act
lucination is a twofold operation which depends of consciousness, a particular way of apprehendon a lapse of memory due to a disturbed state ing objects. By means of emotion we transform
of mind. The madman does not confuse pban- situations which are too demanding in order to
tasy and reality as such, he forgets that he has avoid having to' face up to them fairly and
imagined, for example, the devil standing in squarely. Bursting into tears, for example, is
front of him and believes he has just seen him often a way of shirking our responsibilities b:'
in t he flesh.
~'xaggerating the dit1lculties we are faced with.
This seems to answer Eve's question satisfac- Emotion, Sanre believes, is essentially a form
torily. Madness is never a passive affliction of play-acting. But Sartre then goes on to say that
caused hy ~, swarm of images invading the mind, rl'al emotion is quite another matter, for in real
madness is always an active procedure, some- emotion the qualities we confer upon objects are
times voluntary, sometimes involuntary. In La taken to be real, and we are overwhelmed by the
CllCIlIlhre, these two stages of madness coincide emotion against our will. This distinction seems:
with Pierre's purposive invention in the earlier unnecessary. Every minute of our waking lives
part of the story and the breakdown of hilt the world appears to us furnished with emotive
thought in the later part of the story. Exactly qualities: . it. is a gay or drab place to live in.
when this change-over takes place is, of course, But as Sartre says, we are not normaIly aware
that this distortion depends very largely on ourleft deliberately ambiguous.
But this ambiguity in tbe short story corres~ selves. The fact that on occasions we are seriously
ponds to an ambiguity in Sartre's thought which taken in by what we ourselves create does not
is perhaps less acceptable. Having begun by dis- seem, therefore, to caIl for a special exrlanation.
tinguishing between madness as voluntary playIn the same way, Sartre believes that the world
acting and madness as delusion, Sartre is very is always, or nearly always, transformed by what
uncertain how to apply this distinction. Else- we imagine. If this is true, then the phantasy of
where he compares the condition of the schizo- the schizophrenic is probably not a deliberate
phrenic to that of a person asleep,' and on another flight from reality in the sense that he is always
occasion he speaks of the"involuntary prolifera- aware that it is. What' IS in question is not so
tion of his images".6 Equally ambiguous is much his attitude towards his own images and,
Sartre's belief that hallucination depends on the on the other hand, his attitude towards external
breakdown of thought and memory. In l.a reality, for the two are hardly separable. What is
Chamhre, the first sign that Pierre's thought is in question is his attitude towards the world"in
disintegrating seems to occur after hallucination general. Similarly, on this showing, hallucination
and not before it, and Pierre seems to be terrified . and perception ought not to be thought of as
by the flying statues both before and during their separate either, in which case no special explanaappearance. These confusions arise as a result of tion seems necessary to account for the madSartre's philosophy of the freedom of the will, man's failure to distinguish between them
',vhich, when carried into the realm of psychology, (which is not, of course, to deny that the breakraises all sorts of difficulties. A similar distinc- down of thought and memory is an important
tion between what is voluntary and what is factor in hallucination). This view of madness,
involuntary lies behind Sartre's theory of the which cuts across Sartre's conception of free
emotions, which has many close parallels with will, would seem to be much more consistent
his theory of madness, and contains the same with his own theory of the imagination. It is a
ambiguity.
view put forward by Merleau-Ponty in La
In his Esquisse d'une Theorie des Emotions, Phenomenoiogie de ia Perception in 1945: we
published in 1939, Sartre attacks the view that are taken in by hallucinations, Merleau-Ponty
emotion is something we succumb to. Emotion, says, because at every moment of our lives we
Sartre argues, is not any sort of physiological all distort the world in a similar way.
5. L'/maginaire. p. 216.
Ii. Saint Gellet. Comedien et Martyr, Gallimard 1952. p. 317.
7. La Phenumenologie de ta Perceptioll. Gallimard 1945, p. 394.

81

Eve's question can only he answered, therefore, in part. Madness is never in the strict
sense of the word an affliction. The madman acts
out in phantasy the conflicts which he encounters in reality. If he is a "victim", equally he is
his own "executioner". But just how far madness

is voluntary play-acting and how far gCllllilh'

delusion is impossible to decide. There is, i:
seems, no such dividing-line.
University of Lec(i-;.