“Sometimes family weirdos just get a bad rap.” — Mirabel, Disney's Encanto (2021) "But between the impossible and the trivial, there may be a way that is both feasible and significant..." writes R.D.Laing, the daring explorer of human mind in his collection of thought provoking essays, The Politics of the Family, as he navigates through…
Much madness is Divinest Sense
This small poem puts forth an interesting question regarding abnormal behavior. The poem is a lament about how ab'normal', defined as anything 'away from normal' becomes problematic, when normality is often majoritarian. What is normal for the spider, might be chaos for the fly. Besides, "Normality is a paved road: It's comfortable to walk, but…
The Myth of Mental Illness
In 1960, The American Psychologist published a highly controversial and daring paper from the Hungarian- American Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz- The myth of mental illness. In an age when mental illness was much more stigmatized than it is now, Szasz's dissent is in every bit the voice of the devil's advocate. Yet, in it's all provocative…
AK reads 