The societal norms initiated in the family, amplified by the school, ratified by the communities and working groups require adaptation, which is usually transformed into a sign of obedience, submission or revolt. The human being is always standing before someone - the other -, and it is precisely this relation that shapes us as human, that makes us feel accepted, humanized, or it is through this relationship that we are reified, positioned, generating immobility.
Monotony arises when one is marked by the rhythm accepts/does not accept, agrees/rebels. It is equivalent to listening to the sound of a drop of water that repeatedly falls from a faucet. Interrupting the paced movement is also depriving oneself of a rhythmic, calculated and controlled process.
In these processes of adaptation, overcoming stages, breaking obstacles allows victories and failures. The rhythms are amplified, melodic variations arise, although always predictable. Setting the pace, not getting off the beat, becomes fundamental. The survivor feels victorious; every misstep, every mistake is also a reference, a mark, a sign for the right path. In this process, displacements appear: for the survivor, it is not enough to change himself/herself or the other, landscapes and environments must be reconfigured as well. By mastering rules, worrying about correctness and mistakes, one perceives oneself to be isolated, stuck to the maintenance of schemes, and to constant dreams of achievement. Life is constancy and monotony, which define nothing beyond the maintenance of control.
In this way, certainty, confidence, autonomy and perspectives disappear. Alone, the individual becomes the very delimitation of his/her fragmentations. When one considers experiences as good and satisfying, comes the need to share them, but this same need of the other destroys what he/she seeks - the other -, which is then transformed into a receptacle of information. When one’s experiences are considered bad, negative, one tries to hide them. One keeps revolving around oneself, nothing happens beyond isolation and solitude, which is characterized by the display of displacements and frustrations, as well as by apology and establishment of controlling rules.
Marked by others’ opinions about oneself, one loses every condition of understanding who one is, what one does, feels, what motivates him/her. This autoreferencing is the beginning of madness. Crises, outbreaks, depressions arise when there are insertions of other parameters impossible to be absorbed in isolation. Crisis is the impotence generated by the need and inability to break the previous process of monochordic adaptation, of submission granted to conflicting divisions. Alienation is established, along with total disorientation. At that moment, relief is usually given to the madness and not to the human being who goes mad.
Circumstances, adhesions and symptoms establish the process considered madness, and from this it is attempted to free the individual from this situation, forgetting that in every disease there is a patient, and that typification disfigures the subject by creating his/her character: the mad. In this view, there is no sick subject, there is an object - the disease - to be modified, manipulated. Medication, socialization, as well as religious and fatalistic explanations, are ways of seizing human despair to make it non-dangerous, useful, and adaptable. These are new faucets, with broader rhythms, reaching more significant and disturbing universes. It is necessary to avoid this border of the abyss - the madness - because from it, from this margin, the returns are increasingly difficult, adherent, acting in the sense of emptying.
The point is not to treat madness, is to avoid it. For this, leaving the imposed standards is fundamental. To have rhythmic processes is always a consequence from the breakdown of significant totalities of being in the world; that is, of the presence of the other being transformed and replaced by passwords of acceptance or rejection, signs of approval and disapproval, consequently, devitalizing fragmentations. The restructuring of the processes that allow the perception of the other, when initiated, enable the breaking of the maddening rhythms, of the perceptive distortions, and reintegrate the individual.
These situations are found in psychotherapies, as well as in relationships characterized by availability and acceptance. Otherwise, the continuity of crises, outbreaks and depressions lead to floating anchorages: addictions, drug dependencies, and constant surprises represented by fear, panic in front of what is expected and unexpected. It is fundamental to be what one is: a possibility of relationship and not a need for relationship. To be is not to seem. Relating is not subjecting.