insanity

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Lack of mental soundness

Nouns

1. insanity, lunacy, derangement, craziness, feeblemindedness; abnormal behavior, pathology; affective disorder; nervous breakdown; antisocial, compulsive, cyclothymic, passive-aggressive, or psycopathic personality, character disorder; manic depression, bipolar disorder; neurosis, anxiety; hypochondria, psychosis, psychopathy, schizophrenia, hebephrenia, split or multiple personality, paranoia, dementia praecox, psychosexual disorder; autism; madness, mental illness, abnormality, aberration; posttraumatic stress disorder, battle or combat fatigue; seasonal affective disorder, SAD; dementia, frenzy, raving, delirium, hallucination; mass hysteria; lycanthropy; rabies, hydrophobia; Oedipus or Electra complex; disordered reason or intellect; diseased, unsound, or abnormal mind; idiocy, imbecility; anility, senility, dotage (see age). Slang, blue devils. See unconformity, folly.

2. (symptoms) vertigo, dizziness, swimming, disorientation; sunstroke, moon-madness; [nervous] breakdown, collapse; euphoria, mania, hysteria; paranoia, fixation; amnesia, fugue; delusion, hallucination; infantilism; insomnia; melancholia; koro; malaise; persecution complex; defense mechanism, denial, displacement, negation, procrastination, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression, substitution.

3. (obsession) mania; monomania, megalomania, nymphomania, satyriasis, bibliomania, pyromania, logomania, theomania, kleptomania, dipsomania, Anglomania; delirium tremens; hypochondriasis, melancholia, hysteria (see dejection); obsession, fixation; shell shock; phobia (see fear). Slang, hangup.

4. (insane person) madman, madwoman, maniac, bedlamite, lunatic; demoniac, dipsomaniac, megalomaniac; neurotic, psychotic, psychopath, schizophrenic, catatonic, paranoiac; idiot, imbecile, cretin, moron, lunatic; Jekyll and Hyde. Informal, couch case, lunatic fringe. Slang, nut, crank, loon[y], bat, bug, screwball, oddball, case, crackpot, fruitcake, mental, space cadet, wacko, loony tune.

5. (hospital for the insane) [insane or lunatic] asylum, sanitarium, sanatorium, mental hospital or institution, [mental] home, bedlam (archaic), madhouse; psychiatric ward; halfway house; straitjacket, padded cell. Slang, nuthouse, nut factory, nuthatch, bughouse, loony bin, booby hatch, funny farm, psycho ward, snake pit, nuttery.

6. (doctor who treats insanity) psychiatrist, alienist (see intellect).

7. psychology, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, bioenergetics, metapsychology, parapsychology, psychobiology, psychopathology, psycho-physics, psychophysiology, somatopsychology; associationism, behaviorism, cultural relativism, functionalism, gestalt, nativism, personality theory, transactional analysis, structuralism.

Verbs

1. be insane, be out of one's mind; lose one's senses or reason; lose one's faculties or wits; go mad, run mad or amuck, rave, rant, dote, ramble, wander; drivel; take leave of one's senses, go into a tailspin or nosedive, break or crack up, go to pieces; lose one's head. Informal, come apart at the seams. Slang, have a screw loose, have bats in the belfry, not have all one's marbles or buttons; go off one's nut or rocker, go postal, see things, flip [one's lid], flip or freak out, wig out.

2. drive mad or crazy, craze, distract, shatter, unhinge, madden, dement, addle the wits of, derange; infatuate, obsess, turn the brain, turn one'shead, go to one's head.

3. commit, put away, institutionalize, lock up (see restraint); certify.

Adjectives

1. insane, mad, lunatic; crazy, crazed, non compos mentis, unhinged, unbalanced, disturbed; paranoid, manic; criminally insane, psychopathic, psychotic, psychoneurotic, manic-depressive; not right, touched; bereft of reason; unhinged, unsettled in one's mind; insensate, reasonless, beside oneself, demented, daft; frenzied, frenetic; possessed [of a devil]; far gone, maddened, moonstruck; scatterbrained, crack-brained, off one's head; maniacal; delirious, irrational, light-headed, incoherent, rambling, doting, wandering; amuck, frantic, raving, stark mad, staring mad. Slang, overdrawn, crazy as a bedbug or a loon, loco, psycho, nutty [as a fruitcake], screwy, gonzo, meshugga, out to lunch, kooky, wacky, wacko, whacked out, dementoid, gomer, loony tunes, bananas, off the wall, ape[shit], around the bend, off one's trolley or rocker, freaky, bonkers; tetched, pixilated, bughouse; mental (Brit.).

2. (acting as if insane) rabid, giddy, dizzy, cuckoo, daft, vertiginous, wild, slap-happy; mazed, flighty; distracted, distraught; mad as a hatter or March hare; of unsound mind; touched [in one's head], not in one's right mind; in a fog or haze; out of one's mind, head, senses, or wits; on the ragged edge. Informal, daffy. Slang, off one's nut, haywire, barmy, balmy, zoned.

3. (obsessive) fanatical, obsessed, infatuated; odd, eccentric (see unconformity); hipped; hypochondriac; idiot, imbecile, silly.

4. monomaniacal, kleptomaniacal, etc. (see Nouns 3).

Adverbs — insanely; like one possessed; maniacally, etc.

Phrases — whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

Quotations — There is a pleasure sure, in being mad, which none but madmen know! (John Dryden), Is there no way out of the mind? (Sylvia Plath), Even paranoics have enemies (Delmore Schwartz), When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained (Mark Twain), We are all born mad. Some remain so (Samuel Beckett), There is no great genius without some touch of madness (Seneca), Sanity is very rare (Emerson), Sanity is madness put to good uses (George Santayana), If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia (Thomas Szasz).

Antonyms, see sanity.

II

(Roget's IV) n.

1. [Mental derangement]

Syn. mental illness, mental disorder, derangement, psychopathy, madness, dementia, amentia, lunacy, psychosis, alienation, neurosis, psychoneurosis, phobia, mania, craziness, aberration; see also complex 1 , disease .

Mental illnesses and disorders include: schizophrenia, dementia praecox, catatonia, paranoia, hysteria, catalepsy, manic-depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, melancholia, cyclothymia, delusion, hallucination, delirium, amnesia, split personality, multiple personality, autism, mental retardation, senile dementia, obsession, fixation, compulsion, obsessive-compulsive disorder, mania, phobia; nervous breakdown*. Disorders usually accompanied by impaired mental functioning include: Down syndRome, Mongolism*, cretinism, microcephaly, hydrocephaly, Alzheimer's disease.

Ant. sanity*, reason, normality.

2. [Utter folly]

Syn. senselessness, foolishness, foolhardiness; see stupidity 2 .

Syn.- insanity , current in popular and legal language but not used technically in medicine, implies mental derangement in one who formerly had mental health; lunacy specifically suggests periodic spells of insanity, but is now most commonly used in its extended sense of extreme folly; dementia is the general term for an acquired mental disorder, now generally one of organic origin, as distinguished from amentia (congenital mental deficiency); psychosis is the psychiatric term for any of various specialized mental disorders, functional or organic, in which the personality is seriously disorganized

III

(Roget's 3 Superthesaurus) n.

mental illness, psychosis, derangement, dementia, schizophrenia, paranoia, madness, lunacy, craziness, unbalance, psychopathy, diseased mind, loss of reason. ''A perfectly rational adjustment to the insane world.''—R.D. Laing.

WORD FIND

• alcoholic’s: delirium tremens, hallucinosis, Korsakoff’s psychosis

• amnesic flight from reality: fugue state

• brain lobe removal treatment: prefrontal lobotomy

• conscience, without: antisocial personality, sociopathic

• corpse, sexual attraction to: necrophilism

• delusion that one is great or powerful: delusions of grandeur

• deteriorating behavior due to long-term stress: decompensation

• emotional agitation, extreme: hysteria

• excessive, irrational talking: logorrhea

• hands, delusion one has lost one or both: achiria

• memory loss, profound: amnesia

• mood swings disorder: manic-depressive psychosis

• multiple personality: multiple personality, split personality

• nonstop talking: logomania

• odor hallucination: phantosmia

• overeating, pathologic: hyperphagia

• perception of sights, sounds, smells that aren’t there: hallucination

• persecution, delusions of: paranoia

• pregnant, delusion that one is: pseudocyesis

• primitive behavior, reverting to: atavism

• psychosis involving thought processes, moods, emotion: schizophrenia

• schizophrenia marked by constant silly grin: hebephrenia

• shock therapy: electroconvulsive therapy

• stupor marked by muteness, motionlessness: catatonia

• unstable or rapidly changing moods: lability

see disease, mania, neurosis, phobia

IV

(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun 1. Serious mental illness or disorder impairing a person's capacity to function normally and safely: brainsickness, craziness, dementia, derangement, disturbance, insaneness, lunacy, madness, mental illness, psychopathy, unbalance. Psychiatry: mania. Psychology: aberration, alienation. See SANE. 2. Foolish behavior: absurdity, folly, foolery, foolishness, idiocy, imbecility, lunacy, madness, nonsense, preposterousness, senselessness, silliness, tomfoolery, zaniness. Informal: craziness. See ABILITY.