Going Sane, Adam Phillips

Shane Hergarty of the Irish Times interviewed Adam Phillips (20 December 2005), the author of a book about something society rarely does, which is to define sanity:

In Going Sane he writes of how relationships are 'not the kind of thing that one can be good or bad at, that one can succeed or fail at, any more than you can be good or bad at having red hair, or succeed and fail at being lucky.' He has not changed his mind. 'From my point of view, the way modern life is constructed and lived, you can't make a relationship work by an act of effort or will,' he says, 'The will can't do that work of imagination in a relationship, and when that happens people grow to hate each other even more,' he says. When a relationship feels like it's over, he believes, it is. We should accept that the man or woman of our dreams isn't someone we could actually have a relationship with, and learn to bear our frustrations. Although, given the implications revealed by Freud, actual sexual satisfaction would be catastrophic. 'The point about sex is that it isn't satisfying,' says Phillips, 'because that's what sustains desire.'

A lengthy discussion of the abscence in culture for this recommended state is followed by an illuminatingly densely-packed description of what healthy sanity is, in the last chapter:

"Sanity as a supposedly superficial quality is a caricature of normalcy. This sane person, viewed as a kind of cartoon character, is thoroughly reasonable, thoughtful, considerate, and well-balanced; but he is also, by the same token, two-dimensional, soulless and uninspired, a triumph of conformism over idiosyncrasy. Sane here means so well adjusted as to have no character; so in apparent harmony with himself and others as to have no special life. For the superficially sane, sanity means a life without conflict, a life of relative peace, a life without malice or greed...”

"...For the more deeply sane, whatever else sanity might be, it is a container of madness, not a denier of it. This sanity, once again in its cartoon form, often bears the wisdom that accrues from hardships endured and conflicts forborne. This sane person has felt and acknowledged but not ultimately been overwhelmed by the rigours of his nature. His sanity, such as it is, is both the cause and the consequence of not having conformed, of discovering his true nature through a refusal to comply. For the superficially sane, adaptation is their religion; for the deeply sane, adaptation is what corrupts them, and is experienced as a form of submission.”

An incisive review expands on the themes:
Going Sane: Adam Phillips’s Mad, Sane World « Couch trip