Help finding interesting writing on chaos/complexity of the mind

August 26, 2015 10:45 PM

I'm looking for interesting writing on chaos, confusion, losing control, being insecure, complexity of the mind, thriving in chaos. I would love something from writers like Alan Watts and William S. Burroughs or someone along the same vein.
posted by poorchanticleer to Writing & Language (7 answers total)

Janet Frame's autobiographical books come to mind.
posted by frumiousb at 11:09 PM on August 26, 2015

Two books I can think of that evoke chaos, loss of control, being insecure, and the complexity of thought in fascinating language are Clarice Lispector's The Stream of Life / Água Viva and Bernadette Mayer's Studying Hunger. Both are more or less attempts to get down on paper how thoughts/feelings/sensations intermingle from moment to moment and jump from one thing to another, and I think you could say Lispector's exhibits thriving on it.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 11:13 PM on August 26, 2015

Bit of a leftfield one, but I bet you'd enjoy "The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind" by Julian Jaynes. It's a well-researched, somewhat convincing but ultimately fairly batshit hypothesis on the psychology of the ancient world and how concsiousness as we experience it may be a much more recent development than we think. Jaynes' basic idea is that the people of the Iliad heard the voices of the gods at all times, telling them exactly what to do - which they unthinkingly obeyed.

One of the most unusual and thought-provoking books I've read recently.
posted by Ted Maul at 11:33 PM on August 26, 2015 [5 favorites]

Maybe try Daniel Schreber, Memoirs of my nervous illness. Written in the early 1900s by a man who was quite clearly delusional, and was trying to develop coherent explanations for his thoughts.
posted by yesbut at 12:11 AM on August 27, 2015

Bessie Head wrote about her nervous breakdown in A Question of Power and it is an extraordinary book.
posted by glasseyes at 7:16 AM on August 27, 2015

I don't know about thriving in chaos though. The books I know about this state of mind are scary and sad. See also Wide Sargasso Sea, written as though by Bertha Rochester.
posted by glasseyes at 7:20 AM on August 27, 2015

I'm not sure if you're looking for a writing style that is chaotic or chaotic mind as subject matter or both. But here are a couple ideas. Madness by Marya Hornbacher is an excellent memoir about being bipolar, and the portions about mania are really well-rendered, making you feel that chaos. Acid House by Irvine Welsh is pretty chaotic. There's a good book about learning from chaos. It's by Elizabeth Lesser and is called Broken Open: How Difficult Times Help Us Grow.
posted by mermaidcafe at 7:21 AM on August 27, 2015