Insane

Insane, Rainald Goetz's first novel, and the first to be translated into English, draws upon Goetz's clinical psychiatric experience to paint a portrait of the asylum as a total institution, to use Erving Goffman's celebrated term. It follows the protagonist, Doctor Raspe, a reference to Jan-Carl Ra [...]
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Insane, Rainald Goetz's first novel, and the first to be translated into English, draws upon Goetz's clinical psychiatric experience to paint a portrait of the asylum as a total institution, to use Erving Goffman's celebrated term. It follows the protagonist, Doctor Raspe, a reference to Jan-Carl Raspe, one of the conspirators in the notorious Baader-Meinhof gang, through three long chapters. The first, 'Disengagement', consists of loosely organized conversations with asylum workers and inmates that offer a sense of the inner experience of the asylum environment; the second, 'Within', is a linear narrative of the doctor's experience inside of the asylum, weaving together many of the episodes that had appeared earlier in the book and detailing the slow collapse of the doctor's inner defense mechanisms; while the third section, 'Order', blends collages, cartoons, and images from newspapers and textbooks, allowing Raspe's narrative to finally collapse and reveal the writer's intentions behind it.