Mental Illness in Fiction - Literature

Literature

• Ajax, circa 450 - 430 BCE; tragedy by Sophocles
• Hamlet, circa 1600; tragedy by William Shakespeare
• Don Quixote, 1605/1615; two-volume novel by Miguel Cervantes, involves a man who takes everything he reads in books as fact, and he assumes the roles of the protagonists. Coincidentally, he read fictional chivalry novels, and thinks himself a knight.
• The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774 epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Faust I, 1808 tragedy by Goethe. The collision of a natural love-desire with her conscience and with the norms of the society around her evokes radical inner conflicts for the female hero Margarete.
• The Bride of Lammermoor, 1819 historical novel by Sir Walter Scott
• Diary of a Madman, 1835 farcical short story by Nikolai Gogol
• Lenz, 1836 novella fragment by Georg Büchner depicting the unfolding of mental disorder with the German poet Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz
• Madame Bovary, 1856 novel by Gustave Flaubert
• Alice in Wonderland, 1865 novel by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
• Crime and Punishment, 1866 novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886 novella by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Hunger (Sult in the original Norwegian), 1890 novel by Knut Hamsun depicting a man whose mind slowly turns to ruin through hunger
• Ward Number Six, 1892 short story by Anton Chekhov
• The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or The Roly-Poly Pudding, 1908 children's book by Beatrix Potter. Tom Kitten comes out of his ordeal with a crippling phobia of rats, and possible Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as well.
• Remembrance of Things Past, 1913-1927 seven-volume novel by Marcel Proust
• Swann's Way, 1913 work by Marcel Proust
• Flight into Darkness (German original: Flucht in die Finsternis), 1931 novella by Arthur Schnitzler
• Tender is the Night, 1934 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The A.B.C. Murders, 1936 detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie
• Of Mice and Men, 1937 novella by John Steinbeck
• And Then There Were None, 1939 detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie
• The Royal Game (or Chess Story; Schachnovelle in the original German), 1942 novella by Stefan Zweig, depicting a monarchist who develops, and then cannot again shed, the custom to separate his psyche into two personas, having been urged to maintain his sanity by playing chess against himself in solitary confinement
• Earth Abides, 1949 post-apocalyptic science-fiction novel by George Stewart, deals with the human reactions to living when nearly everyone else died.
• The Catcher in the Rye, 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger
• Lover, When You're Near Me, 1952 science fiction short story by Richard Matheson on a man being traumatically steered in his will by a woman of a dull extraterrestrial race who covets him sexually
• Dear Diary, 1954 science fiction short story by Richard Matheson. Diary entries from the years AD 1964, AD 3964, and LXIV (=64) all show the same dissatisfaction with the current situation and the same desire to live either some thousand years later or earlier, that from 3964 also due to the unpleasant inventions of another inhabitant of the writer's plastic skyscraper, which enable him to see her through the walls.
• The Two Towers, 1954 high fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Mind Thing, incomplete 1960 science fiction serialization, later published as a novel, by Fredric Brown. An extraterrestrial being has been sent to Earth as a punishment and tries to influence people's and animal's minds so that they would help it creating the technical means it needs to return home.
• To Kill A Mockingbird, 1960 novel by Harper Lee
• Unearthly Neighbors, 1960 science fiction novel by Chad Oliver. The anthropology professor Monte Stewart and the linguist Charlie Jenike get tough towards each other on a hot day after having killed a member of a race between apes and men on a planet of Sirius, together, in revenge for a deadly attack of the man's tribe onto their wives and a colleague. Jenike totally loses his mind and drowns himself in a nearby river, shortly after.
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1962 novel by Ken Kesey about the treatment of mental illness
• Nilo, mi hijo - a 1963 play by Antonio González Caballero
• The Bell Jar, 1963 novel by Sylvia Plath, a fictionalised account of Plath's own struggles with depression
• Clans of the Alphane Moon, 1964 science-fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. Largely set on a world in which a lost group of former psychiatric patients have organised themselves into caste-like groups along psychiatric diagnostic lines, forming an unusual but functional society.
• I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, 1964 autobiographical novel by Joanne Greenberg
• A Wrinkle in the Skin, 1965 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by John Christopher. The hero and a boy meet a captain who has lost his mind, in his ship on the bottom of the English Channel that has fallen dry through an earthquake. They are welcomed heartily, but forbidden to take any food with them, when they leave.
• The Bird of Paradise, 1967 work by R. D. Laing, often available with his non-fiction essay The Politics of Experience about schizophrenia and hallucinogenic drugs
• The Ethics of Madness, 1967 science fiction short story by Larry Niven
• Bedlam Planet, 1968 science fiction novel by John Brunner. A crew of astronauts tries to live on the animal and vegetable food growing on a planet of Sigma Draconis, which evokes mental disorder, but also sets free survival instincts that have so far been hidden.
• The Sword, 1968 fantasy short story by Lloyd Alexander.A king who yields to anger, with lethal results, in a moment of weakness. As he grows worse and worse, he also develops a severe case of paranoia, fearing assassination and other revenge plots around every corner.
• Knots, 1970 work by R.D. Laing
• Sybil, 1973 novel by Flora Rheta Schreiber
• Breakfast of Champions, 1973 novel by Kurt Vonnegut
• Woman on the Edge of Time, 1976 novel by Marge Piercy
• The Cat Who Went Underground, 1989 detective fiction novel by Lillian Jackson Braun
• Doom Patrol, a comic book series originating in 1963. During Grant Morrison's 1989 - 1993 run it included the multiple personality affected Crazy Jane and several other characters either insane or in possession of greater truths.
• Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command, 1991 trilogy of novels by Timothy Zahn
• Mariel of Redwall, 1991 fantasy novel by Brian Jacques
• Regeneration, 1991 novel by Pat Barker, based on the historical experiences of the poet Siegfried Sassoon, explores shell-shock and other traumatic illnesses following World War I
• Amnesia, 1992 novel by Douglas Anthony Cooper
• She's Come Undone, 1992 novel by Wally Lamb
• Girl,Interrupted, 1993 novel by Susanna Kaysen
• Effie's Burning, 1995 play by Valerie Windsor
• Maskerade, 1995 comic fantasy/detective fiction novel by Sir Terry Pratchett
• Myst: The Book of Atrus, 1995 novel (re-released in a 2004 omnibus) by Rand and Robyn Miller with Dave Wingrove
• Fight Club, 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk
• The Green Mile, 1996 serial novel by Stephen King
• Enduring Love, 1997 novel Ian McEwan
• Glimmer, 1997 novel by Annie Waters
• I Know This Much Is True, 1998 novel by Wally Lamb
• The Underground, 1998 science fiction book by K. A. Applegate. A form of oatmeal is found to drive extraterrestrial body-snatchers insane.
• Cut, 2000 novel by Patricia McCormick
• Oxygen and The Fifth Man, 2001 and 2002 science fiction duology by Randall S. Ingermanson and John B. Olson.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, 2003 novel by Mark Haddon, written from the point of view of an autistic child
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2003 fantasy/bildungsroman novel by J. K. Rowling, includes a scene with a couple who both have profound dementia resulting from prolonged torture.
• The Unifying Force, 2003 science fiction novel by James Luceno
• The Good Patient: A Novel, 2004 novel by Kristin Waterfield Duisberg
• Set This House in Order, a 2004 novel by Matt Ruff. Revolving around a romance between two characters with multiple personalities.
• Hello, Serotonin, 2004 work by Jon Paul Fiorentino
• High Rhulain, 2005 fantasy novel by Brian Jacques
• Human Traces, 2005 novel by Sebastian Faulks
• Love Creeps, 2005 novel by Amanda Filipacchi
• Darkness Descending, 2007 novel by Bethann Korsmit about a man who suffers a mental breakdown and various other mental problems, and the people who help him to overcome the obstacles in his life
• All in the Mind, 2008 novel by Alastair Campbell which draws on the author's experiences of depression and alcoholism
• Atmospheric Disturbances, 2009 novel by Rivka Galchen
• Diving into the Wreck, 2009 collection of poetry by Adrienne Rich
• Radiant Daughter, 2010 novel by Patricia Grossman
• Blepharospasm, 2011 novel by Harutyun Mackoushian
• A Better Place, 2011 novel by Mark A. Roeder
• Saint Jude, 2011 novel by Dawn Wilson

"It has only recently been recognized that valuable new facts and insights are vouchsafed by a study of Freud's relationship with Arthur Schnitzler. That Schnitzler, the Viennese physician-poet and contemporary of Freud's, wrote strikingly "Freudian" plays and stories has, of course, long been common knowledge. For many years it was widely assumed that Schnitzler was merely one of the earliest and most perceptive of Freud's many literary disciples. In 1953, however, it was demonstrated that the relationship was more complicated, that in fact Freud and Schnitzler had not only read one another's early publications but had then regularly read one another's works as they appeared; that Schnitzler had eventually referred to Freud as his "double"; and that Freud, late in life, had called Schnitzler his "psychic twin, " and described him as a pioneer and independent master of depth psychology."